RE: [EDU] Tuition & Taxes

[Hai-Tri Le <haitril@microsoft.com>]

Hi, all

Anh Ian neglected to point out one very important thing, IMO, that this
school tax is voted on. It's not imposed. And it's finite in length of
time that it is applied. In my state, this is usually 2 years. A school
district has to prepare the budget it needs to maintain and improve the
school system, subtract the state and federal provided portion and put
the rest to a vote. The people in the community served by this school
district will examine the proposal and decide whether to vote for or
against the tax.  It's not uncommon to see a school levy voted down if
the cost is too much or if the school district's wish list is too
extravagance. At the end of the 2 yrs, the school could submit another
proposal and the cycle repeats.

True, once the tax is approved, you have to pay for it one way or
another. 

Regarding the consequence that some school district may be better than
the other, I don't have a problem with it. The state and federal
fundings provides for a "bottom line", if you will, of the quality of
the school system. If people in a community want a higher level of
quality for their schools, then they will choose to pay for it.

Ti`nh tha^n,
HL

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	ianb@sun670.telecom.tandem.com
> [SMTP:ianb@sun670.telecom.tandem.com]
> Sent:	Thursday, March 13, 1997 9:58 AM
> To:	Multiple recipients of list
> Subject:	[EDU] Tuition & Taxes
> 
> Hello everyone,
> 
> In the state of Texas (I'm not sure whether this is true 
> across all states or not) homeowners have to pay what we call 
> a School Tax, which is based on the value of one's property,
> which in turn is appraised yearly and varies with the market.
> If you are a renter, you don't have to "pay" this tax. However,
> the owners of the rental property have to. (And guess what? They
> just add the tax expenses to your rental cost! Same thing :))
> 
> The unusual feature of this system is that it doesn't matter
> whether you have school age children in your household or not.
> Everybody pays. I suppose the rationale is that everyone in 
> society benefits from the education system, therefore everyone
> is required to pay into it. (Just my guess) 
> 
> One of the consequences of this scheme is that areas where 
> property values are high have better schools. And people who 
> want their children to go to better schools would try to move 
> to the more "affluent" neighborhoods. Of course, those who can 
> afford to send their children to private schools don't care one 
> way or another (but they still have to pay this tax, regardless!)
> 
> It's not a perfect system, but it's been working for a long time.
> And one must realize that if the people of Texas didn't think this
> was fair they would have revolted (at election time, that is) 
> to have this tax abolished a long time ago. Indeed, a few years
> ago the State Legislature introduced a bill which the press coined 
> the "Robin Hood Law", which stipulated that richer school districts 
> should share some of its extra income with poorer ones in order to
> lessen the inequalities among school districts. Needless to say, 
> the bill was favored by voters in poor school districts and opposed
> by people in richer areas. In the end, the law was passed, but not
> without a lot of heated debates.
> 
> Around this same time, Texas voters passed a law allowing a state
> lottery. Some of the money from lottery revenue was earmarked to 
> pay for public schooling, though I'm not sure how much. I understand 
> that the State of Georgia has taken their lottery money to fund all 
> kinds of educational institutions, even higher ones (community 
> colleges, trade schools, universities, etc.) with a tremendous 
> success record. Many states (Texas included) have been studying the
> Georgian model to see if they, too, could implement something similar.
> 
> Just a little more information for your musing pleasure on this
> highly important subject.
> 
> Cheers,
> Ian
>