Saturday, January 21, 2006
School Bus Daze and the Black Hole
Unfortunately, I missed John Stossel’s piece on ABC’s “20/20” on Friday 13 January 2006. (My husband and I rarely watch the “big three” networks, since they have so few programs on worth the precious life-moments we would spend watching them.) But I did see his article on Townhall.com. Apparently, the sparks have been flying, with teachers around the nation protesting their innocence (“We work hard at our jobs”) over Stossel’s claim that our money spent on schools is being wasted. The teachers are fighting back. Sounds good, but…
They’re dead wrong, and Stossel is absolutely right. (Ever hear the expression “Me thinks thou dost protest too much”?)
My article (posted here since the paper doesn’t put its opinion page on the Web) for the local paper addressed the busing “checker game” being played with our children by the Wake County School Board. This article goes beyond that into the “Black Hole” that is the pocketbook of the Wake County School System.
In Wake County, NC, the School Board is debating how high they can go on their bond referendum [article 1, article 2] so that voters will go for it on November 7th. Bring it on a little at a time. (Sounds like putting a lobster into a cool pot of water and turning up the heat slowly, with taxpayers in the role of the lobster.) Well, parents are already up in arms about their children being bussed around the county. So, you’d imagine that they’d really be enraged by this. Think again. As a North Raleigh resident put it in article 1 above, “I'm not thrilled to raise taxes, but the people are coming. We have to do something about it…That's money well spent.” (She was probably even straight-faced when she said it.)
What she forgets is that taxes are being raised on every property owner, even couples like us who have no children. Gee, I just love paying for our neighbors’ children learning such useful skills as how to feel about two and two or mastering tree-hugging so they can become the envirowhackos of tomorrow. Meanwhile, our police and fire personnel are underpaid.
The bond referendum will pass, of course. Too many people are committed to “That Hillary Woman’s” idea that “It Takes a Village…”
One proposal that has been put forth to keep taxes lower is changing at least one school to a year-round schedule (nine weeks of classes followed by 3-week breaks, with no long summer vacation). It’s a schedule more in line with our modern times, not the mostly agrarian society that spawned the original set-up. But no, this will not do. In fact, the idea is so unpopular that, as one parent put it in article 1, “I'm willing to dig deep into my pockets to make sure that doesn't happen.” Pardon me, but I think that’s MY pocket you have your hand in.
The big issue that’s getting missed in Wake County and across the nation is, as Stossel pointed out, government (“public”) schools. If everyone who had children knew that he/she would be responsible for the total cost of that child’s education, i.e., that they could no longer force their neighbors to pay for it, I suspect we wouldn’t be having this mess going on right now. The issue of how much to tax wouldn’t exist.
(By the way, did you know that having the government in charge of our children’s education is a tenet of Communism? It’s true. Check out the Manifesto of the Communist Party by Marx and Engels. That way the government is pretty much in charge of whatever goes into your child’s brain. Think about it.)
Another thing I would like to see is a switch away from using property tax as a way of getting revenue for schools. Of course, if all schools were privatized, this issue would be moot, since only the parents of children attending the school would pay (unless people wanted to donate money to their local elementary, middle, and/or high schools just to show support for local education).
Ah, the Black Hole that is our Government-run Education System. All hail!
Copyright © 2006 A.C. Cargill
