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Gotta love those two women from New Jersey interviewed, both of who say property taxes need to be raised. Huh? I thought the whole reason so many were swarming here from up there was that our cost of living was so much lower--now the minute they get here, they want to raise OUR taxes to be like theirs were.
I don't think they want their taxes raised up to 7k or 12k. They are simply stating that they would pay more money to get better schools. In the past it has been proposed to raise taxes. I don't remember exact figures but it was like $50 a year or something stupid and the people here freaked out. Most people have no idea how far $50 from each house in the county would go IF they took that money and put it directly into the schools.
Part of the problem with the taxes here is when you get a tax bill it does not state exactly what your money pays for. You have to go on Wake Gov website and look it up. My old tax bill from where I used to live had line items for every dollar I paid. I knew how much of my money was going to fund schools, police, fire, roads, even the library. Many people think raising taxes is just big government taking their money. What people don't realize is that local taxes have the biggest impact on your daily life.
I still don't get why people say that teachers' salary is less due to lower cost of living? Is it only property taxes we're talking about? I haven't found a break in the cost of living in the now 11 months I've lived here-not complaining, I love it here, but...
Here: property tax on house I'm renting is 5,500
Midwest/WI: property tax 4,500
sales taxes are more here, car insurance went down about 100.00/year for two cars/drivers but the car tax or whatever you call it is an extra charge
food is the same to a bit more here
water bill-almost the same here
My salary as a teacher there was 20,000 more annually, but I am not seeing 20,000 less anywhere in annual expenditures.
Where is this lower cost of living I keep reading about?
Again, not complaining about the area, but the low teacher pay doesn't seem to make sense.
Location: Chapel Hill, NC, formerly NoVA and Phila
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I found it to be an interesting article because I just moved from Fairfax County, VA and I lived in Montgomery County, MD prior to that. Fairfax has always been regarded as one of the best, if not the best, large-county school system in the nation. It is also a very wealthy and educated county. And as a whole, the higher the education and wealth, the better the students perform. Montgomery County is up there, too in wealth and education. That's probably one main reason they both perform better than Wake. I think size-wise all three school districts are pretty similar.
Another factor to point out is that Fairfax (and MoCo) has neighborhood schools. There are boundary changes from year to year and new schools are built that redistrict some students. But overall, the changes are small compared to Wake. And they do not bus students across the county for school. Each address is assigned a school. On the other hand, there is very little choice in Fairfax County (not sure about MoCo). You can apply for special programs like a Spanish Immersion school or a magnet school but those are fairly hard to get into and beyond that there's not much choice. In high school, you are allowed to switch schools if your school is an AP school and you want an IB school or vice versa. That switch is pretty much guaranteed. Wake does give you more options.
A third point, which might not sound too important, but for the wealthy and competitive in Fairfax, they want to buy into a good school district, and knowing that the home they're buying gets them in a certain well-rated school is key. Without that "guarantee," the wealthy will move to other competing school districts (note: it's not really a guarantee in Fairfax County, but much more stable than Wake).
I do think they get high-caliber teachers in Fairfax and they are fairly well-paid, even for the area. I was shocked how low the teacher salaries are in Wake. On the other hand, the cost per student is probably not as high comparitively as it seems because real estate is so much more money. The cost to build a school in the DC area is astronomical. I assume that gets factored into the cost per student, so I'm not sure if that's really a big factor in the school quality. I don't think the article addressed that.
One other point that the article didn't bring up is that Fairfax County has one of the highest regarded high schools in the nation - Thomas Jefferson. It is very competitive to get into, but that doesn't stop people from moving into the area in hopes that they will get to go there. This includes people who move from foreign countries. So the school system really attracts high-caliber students (note: that TJ is a regional school, so not all students come from Fairfax, but over 80% do).
The one point in the article I didn't like was when they brought up a couple of people from New Jersey who were complaining about Wake and having to buy tons of school supplies. I'm not sure why they brought that up. New Jersey schools are mostly small districts and are generally well-funded from high taxes. Fairfax County is exactly the same way as Wake with a mile-long school supply list including tissues, wet wipes, etc. I think the difference in that point was the people moving from a small district with high taxes in New Jersey to a larger district with lower taxes like Wake. Because those people would have been just as surprised moving to Fairfax. When I moved from large Fairfax to small Chapel Hill, I was pleasantly surprised by how short the school supply list was. Then again, I am paying much more in taxes here than in Fairfax. Not sure why that was even brought up as being relavant in the article.
Anyway, those are my thoughts based on living in Fairfax and now living in the Triangle (although not in Wake).
ETA: I should add that Fairfax County Public Schools has plenty of problems, too. I think that goes along with the territory of being a very large school district. There are funding squabbles, gifted program sqaubbles (what schools they should be in and what percentage of students should go, etc.) and when there is a redistricting proposals, there's almost always an uproar. There is also a fairly wide disparity between the "rich" schools in the county and the "poor" ones. It is far, far from perfect. I think it just performs better than Wake bassed on what I outlined above.
My school supply list is pretty much the same as it was on Long Island. Property taxes are about the same in NY/NJ - we paid $12K on a 1700 sq ft house built in 1938. Taxes on my old house are now about $14K by they way. About $7K of that is school taxes alone. I think NJ is even more out of control with the stuff they pay for in their taxes. I think they even had field trips paid for which is insane.
I'm saving about 10K a year on property taxes so if I have to shell out another $20 a year on school supplies I'm OK with that. Some people are not only short sighted they are lazy to boot.
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