Property Taxes Funding Public Schools is Crap
April 18th, 2010 by kcurranHow are public schools in America funded? Through property taxes, right? Something that has been debated for a long time is how utterly and completely discriminatory this type of funding is. We emphasize equal education for everyone in America; access to quality education and materials. This, like other American propaganda, is false. We fight to not discriminate against people because of race, color, ethnic background, religion, etc., but one thing this country has no problem doing is discriminating against the poor.
Property taxes fund most, not all but most, public schools in America. This type of funding is completely unfair to schools that are in low income neighborhoods. Property values are extremely low and so the taxes that go to the school are also incredibly low. What does this mean for the children who go to these schools that are funded by poor neighborhoods? It means they don’t get access to books, safe buildings, and teachers can’t reach their full potential because they don’t have the resources. Students must go to school, read from extremely outdated text books, fear the building caving in on them, and don’t have access to helpful learning tools such as computers and smart boards. In addition, these schools have a high turn over rate for teachers because there is no incentive to work in these schools other than wishing to do something good in a kid’s life.
So what does this tell the children of inner city schools? It tells them they’re not worth the time and effort to buy new materials, to have a safe, sturdy building, to have quality resources. And even teachers don’t want to be in the school, so why should the children want to be? The message we send to these inner city kids is that we don’t care about them. Property taxes are an unreasonable way to fund public education because children are not getting equal education or an equal chance for education and that is not fair.
America is all about equal opportunity, but such a thing does not exist. It’s nearly impossible to succeed in poor schools funded by poor neighborhoods. The children in these schools don’t get the same education as children in wealthier neighborhoods. We look down these kids and teachers for performing poorly in school, for getting into criminal trouble, for being deviant. We try to make our public education system better. We try to “fix” inner city kids by putting them in juvenile hall and what not. Why is there such hot debate on whether schools should be funded by property taxes? It clearly is an utter failure and everyone knows that. But since this system only really, truly affects the lower class, no one cares. Equal opportunity is a joke for reasons like property taxes funding public schools.