Have you heard about HB-13? (Fletcher: construction, school districts, maintenance)
Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, CaryThe Triangle Area
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My understanding of the large school systems is that they are a response to white flight and re-segregation. Fifteen years ago or less Wake County Public School System was held up as a national example of how to successfully implement a diversity policy based on economic factors rather than race after race was disallowed by the courts. In the 70s there were two separate systems, Raleigh City Schools and Wake County Schools. In 1976 they merged into Wake County Public Schools. Most of the school systems across the state did the same. I think last I looked there were about a dozen that still had the old city & county systems, including Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools and Orange County Schools. (FTR, I would be fine if CHCCS and OCS merged, but they both seem to be good school systems on their own, too.)
I am old enough to remember segregated schools. Following Judge McMillan's ruling in federal court in the Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education case schools in my hometown of Fayetteville were desegregated and we were taken from our neighborhood school and bused across town to a different school with black and white kids. I am very much in favor of busing. My husband was bused from his Myers Park neighborhood in Charlotte across town to West Charlotte (the black high school) and he had a great experience there.
Wake County Public Schools suffered greatly, IMO, when the wave of transplants headed by John Tedesco came in and swept the school board and implemented changes that were geared toward resegregation. I have no desire to go back to the 60s and early 70s.
I'm sure improvements could be made to WCPSS. Any area that is experiencing this kind of growth is bound to have growing pains. But I'm not in favor of segregated neighborhood schools or smaller school systems that result in resegregation.
In theory the more people who live here the lower taxes should go.
Also in theory with all the new high paying jobs and higher end homes, taxes collected per household should increase without having to raise them.
I guess my quesrion is, looking at budgets year by year, was the local budget increased proportionally to tax revenue increase and if so where does the money go in the school budget?
They're in a deficit, and I don't consider smaller class sizes to be "less". It says right in the article that the higher class sizes were being used to fund art, PE, etc. I am all for lower class sizes - if it means a tax increase, in order to keep art and PE, I'm ok with that. Others may not agree.
I am not against paying more for schools. In fact NC has one of the lowest per pupil spending rates in the country and I think its terrible. In this case, they are saying that they will need to fire all the specialists, eliminate art, PE and music AND still increase taxes to meet the new mandate. I will give you an example, one elementary school offers 5 specials, they will let go of 5 specialists but they need to hire at least 8 certified teachers to meet the mandate.
I am not against paying more for schools. In fact NC has one of the lowest per pupil spending rates in the country and I think its terrible. In this case, they are saying that they will need to fire all the specialists, eliminate art, PE and music AND still increase taxes to meet the new mandate. I will give you an example, one elementary school offers 5 specials, they will let go of 5 specialists but they need to hire at least 8 certified teachers to meet the mandate.
I don't see where you're getting that from. The Newsobserver article you posted states:
Quote:
The state mandate could require an additional $27 million in local money to keep the special programs in Wake County, according to Wake school board member Bill Fletcher.
I know this will not be well received but everything about WCPSS is underfunded. The grounds are maintained about as minimally as possible, there have been temp trailer buildings out behind my neighborhood school for the 8 years I have lived there. Not even counting the salary issues we hear about constantly.
But it also means that taxes are a lot cheaper than some placed like NY state. My taxes are like 1/3 or less of what I would pay in upstate NY and they have school specific property tax. The money isn't going to come from the state cause the state doesn't have it either. Sounds like the State GA is going to force the local gov't (city/county) to raise taxes to fund this stuff.
Yes but fixed costs as a percentage will go down and variable costs (that increase based on population growth) should stay the same.
The problem is budget creep.
What exactly are fixed costs? I can't think of anything that wouldn't be affected with population increases - you're going to need more roads, more sewer/water lines, more power lines, more schools, more police officers, more firefighters, the list can go on and on..... (and don't forget about the maintenance of these new items and eventual replacement once past it's service life)
Yes but fixed costs as a percentage will go down and variable costs (that increase based on population growth) should stay the same.
The problem is budget creep.
Have you considered things are funded by one time gov't grants that aren't going to pay for the ongoing costs after the grant runs out and we can't live without it anymore.
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