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In response to the 10/21/14 post, “The Money Follows the Student... A Really Bad Idea for Taxpayers,” an Old School LYS Assistant
Superintendent writes:
SC,
You didn't even scratch the surface with your post. Every
educator needs to send the post to 10 people they know outside of the
profession and to their elected representatives. Send that out to everyone. Let
the “School Choice” movement be exposed for what it truly is, another subsidy for the
affluent.
SC Response
For those who doubt what a bad idea vouchers and “School
Choice” is for taxpayers, I’ll share a snippet of an editorial written by
Republican State Board of Education Member, Thomas Ratliff.
In the current
education debate over private school vouchers, we often hear the statement,
“Let the money follow the child” but we never hear about WHOSE money is
following that child.
Today, when a
parent takes their child to a private school, the parents pay the school’s
tuition. The parents’ money follows the child. Also, many public schools allow
students from other districts to “transfer” and attend their school, so the
state’s money (and tests, accountability, transparency, Common Core
prohibition, etc.) follows the child based on the state’s funding formulas.
Under a voucher, or a “taxpayer savings grant” proposal, the money following
the child is not quite as simple.
The average cost
of educating a child in a Texas public school is $8,500 per year, So, the
question is, which taxpayers in Texas pay enough local property or state sales
tax, or a combination thereof, to fully fund their child’s education without
the aid of their fellow Texans or Texas businesses?
A Texas family
must either own a home valued between $800,000 and $850,000 or spend between
$100,000 and $150,000 in sales taxable transactions every year, or some
combination of the two, to pay enough local property taxes to their school
district and/or enough sales taxes to the State of Texas to fully fund their
child’s education at a public school. These amounts are PER CHILD. For a family
that has more than one child in public school we need to multiply these figures
times the number of children.
As you can see,
very few families fully fund their child’s public education. So, when we talk
about the “money following the child” in this debate, we are really talking about money from taxpayers across the state
following somebody else’s child or children. This is really no different
for a “taxpayer savings grant”
which allows a business to defer taxes it must pay to the State of Texas if
that business contributes money for the purpose of funding scholarships for
private school vouchers. These are tax
dollars that are owed to the state and should be treated with the same
accountability and transparency as every tax dollar given to and spent by the
government.
Think. Work. Achieve.
Your turn...
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