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To me, the teacher pay to COL is one of the results of Colorado missing the mark on it's tax structure. By having such a low property tax rate to overall tax rate, CO and Denver allowed housing costs to rise much faster than tax revenue, which will only allow for modest increases in salaries from the public fund.
We can argue all day long on whether teachers are paid too much or not, but it still stands that Denver is one of the worst bang for your buck cities if you want to be a teacher. Existing teachers probably won't change much, but it will definitely deter new young incoming teachers, and eventually this will drag down educational quality.
The other area where this out of wack property tax rate is readily manifest is in congestion and road condition. The low property tax rate stimulates additional home building while reduces revenue that can be used for roads. Hence you have places like eastern CO Springs where they're building thousands of homes a year along a 2 lane artery road. The whole city, but especially the east side, is just one big traffic jam waiting to happen.
To me, the teacher pay to COL is one of the results of Colorado missing the mark on it's tax structure. By having such a low property tax rate to overall tax rate, CO and Denver allowed housing costs to rise much faster than tax revenue, which will only allow for modest increases in salaries from the public fund.
We can argue all day long on whether teachers are paid too much or not, but it still stands that Denver is one of the worst bang for your buck cities if you want to be a teacher. Existing teachers probably won't change much, but it will definitely deter new young incoming teachers, and eventually this will drag down educational quality.
The other area where this out of wack property tax rate is readily manifest is in congestion and road condition. The low property tax rate stimulates additional home building while reduces revenue that can be used for roads. Hence you have places like eastern CO Springs where they're building thousands of homes a year along a 2 lane artery road. The whole city, but especially the east side, is just one big traffic jam waiting to happen.
You have to be careful what you wish for! Look at Chicago, politicians over promised hefty pensions for state workers, CPS, and the state is a financial mess. Majority of property tax goes to school. The positive part is the state or Chicago suburbs have great schools due to fund allocations.
Perhaps you should read the entire thing, or maybe learn how your tax system works. It works pretty much the same way most other States provide of local school funding.
First of all most of the school funding comes from State and Federal sources, not local. However a portion comes from local sources through property taxes. The amount of property tax that is added to the overall bill is determined by voter approved millages.
The local contribution to schools is established through millage on property tax. In other words, the voters are asked to approve a tax on their property in order to provide additional funding to local schools. The voters then decide whether they want their property tax increased to better fund their local schools or not. The school districts do not in fact establish taxes.
Millages are a very common way for voters to decide how much they want to be taxed in exchange for services. Typically you will have millages for schools for parks, for fire and police support, for local public recreation, sometimes for bike trail, green-space, etc. Voters have the option to increase their taxes if they want these things in their community. However, the school district cannot just raise taxes. Nor can the fire department, nor the police department increase your taxes if they need more money. They can only ask you to increase your taxes. If you do not want good schools, you can vote against a requested millage or millage renewal.
Under TABOR however school districts are limited in how much they can collect regardless of millage votes. If they collect too much,they must refund the excess to the local populace.
Most states limit what the local millage portion of school support can be used for. Often it may not be used for operating costs (i.e. teacher salaries) this helps (supposedly) prevent the wealthier districts from luring away all the best teachers by providing better pay than less wealthy districts. the reality is even if millages are limited to use on capital improvements or maintenance, it still allows districts to provide better benefits and better working environments for teachers. There are also some wealthy areas where favored teachers are simply handed cash by wealthy parents. This is rare, but it occurs. So when I said teachers do not get tips, that is not 100% accurate. There are places where parent will raise a pot of money and distribute it to teachers in order to keep the best teachers in their district (sometimes directly, and sometimes through other benefits of financial value but not cash). However that is very rare.
If you look back, you will see that i referred to this exact process earlier. The millage process is one of the reasons teachers have to put in extra hours. It is not a written requirement of their job, but often, if they want to keep their job, they have to work on the campaign to ensure a millage passes. Depending n how much the school is dependent on local funding and the life span of the millages it can mean a little time here or there or a lot of time fairly often. It all adds up.
Even where millage funds are limited in their use to building improvements, the failure of a millage can mean teachers lose their jobs or take a pay cut.
But no, school districts do not increase taxes, not in Colorado, not anywhere. The districts can "raise" tax funds meaning they can acquire he money from voters millages on property. that does not mean they can "raise" your property tax. Only you can do that (and inflation, but that is not related to schools). I can see how the use of the word "raise" taxes could mislead you when read out of context. However tax systems are quite complicated and as with most laws, you need to read and understand the whole thing to grasp the meaning of a single sentence or word.
Back to the actual subject matter. At least some of the teachers are very happy with the new deal, and even more happy to be back at school. Striking it terrifying, and it seems like most youngsters today are subject to anxiety issues and panic attacks and the like. So taking away the specter of losing everything (job, house, savings, wedding plans, etc) takes a huge load off of at least some of them. I remember being nearly broke after years of saving and having no job even for a few days. It is very difficult to handle. Suddenly overnight things went from horrific to significantly better. They are dancing in the streets (or at least in the hallways).
I for one am glad to see teachers joyuous. I have always held them in high regard (not just because I have so many kids in, and going into some form of teaching). They deserve a moment of joy.
The parents did a very nice welcome back/valentines day thing at my daughter's school, it left her in tears of appreciation.
Wrong again! https://www.cde.state.co.us/cdefinance "Colorado public schools receive funding from a variety of sources. However, most revenues to Colorado's 178 school districts are provided through the Public School Finance Act of 1994 (as amended).
In budget year 2018-19, this legislation provides for over $7.0 billion of funding to Colorado school districts via state taxes ($4.5 billion), local specific ownership (vehicle registration) taxes ($183.8 million), and local property taxes ($2.36 billion). Moneys provided via the Public School Finance Act of 1994 are available to each school district to fund the costs of providing public education."
This is a very good summary: https://coloradosucceeds.org/policy/...ado-need-know/ "Public education in Colorado is funded by a mix of local property taxes and state income and sales taxes. There’s also some federal funding in the mix, especially for schools serving a high number of low-income students. Despite all the publicity federal education policy receives, the federal share of funding is relatively small compared to state and local funding in Colorado. (For the sake of this post, we’re focusing only on state money.)"
Graph shows federal funding at 0.9%. A lot of that is for the school lunch program.
A Mill Levy Override is a ballot measure that asks voters living in a school district boundary to approve the collection of additional “mills” on property taxes, above what is allowed by the state of Colorado. That additional tax collection is then directly distributed to the local school district. This is the ONLY way a school district can collect additional operational dollars."
I'm pretty sure it's illegal for teachers to campaign for anything on work time. If they're spending time campaigning, that's their own time, and can certainly not be included in work time.
When I moved to the Denver burbs several years ago, I found the COL similar to what I left in suburban Philadelphia. Now with the housing component going through the roof, it has to be higher today.
When I moved to the Denver burbs several years ago, I found the COL similar to what I left in suburban Philadelphia. Now with the housing component going through the roof, it has to be higher today.
Even the Jersey side of Philly like Cherry Hill? I was in Naperville IL for work this week. Nice burb very busy lots going on. I browsed a house out of curiosity. It was about $700k for 3500 soft, similar to Denver. Property Taxes were $18k!!!!! That would be like $6k here. Regardless, Denver like the coasts has a good economy, good jobs, lots of them so its in demand and space is limited. It makes sense housing is going up. I will say that outside of housing its on the cheaper side as far as food, energy, and taxes. for now at least.
You have to be careful what you wish for! Look at Chicago, politicians over promised hefty pensions for state workers, CPS, and the state is a financial mess. Majority of property tax goes to school. The positive part is the state or Chicago suburbs have great schools due to fund allocations.
No your right, we don't want to go to the other extreme either. In a situation like the US where people and companies can move back and forth, you don't want to be the high tax state depressing business or the low tax state begging business and people to come and be unable to keep upkeep and maintenance properly after they've arrived.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sammy87
Even the Jersey side of Philly like Cherry Hill? I was in Naperville IL for work this week. Nice burb very busy lots going on. I browsed a house out of curiosity. It was about $700k for 3500 soft, similar to Denver. Property Taxes were $18k!!!!! That would be like $6k here. Regardless, Denver like the coasts has a good economy, good jobs, lots of them so its in demand and space is limited. It makes sense housing is going up. I will say that outside of housing its on the cheaper side as far as food, energy, and taxes. for now at least.
Depends on where you are in life. It's still fairly reasonably affordable unless you are trying to buy your first home and have a family. That's where the COL just sucks and anything nice will be unaffordable. Denver salaries are above average, but not exceptional.
West Virginia teachers just went out on strike again. What's at stake? Republican lawmakers were cynically granting public employees a 5% raise, but the legislation would have simultaneously legalized school privatization for the first time in West Virginia.
The issues were nicely summed up by Katie Endicott, a rank-and-file teacher from Mingo County:
"Our students are not for sale, West Virginia is not for sale. It’s infuriating that people would try to profit off us: privatization would give millions of dollars to elites and it would create even more haves and have not. We’ve seen the charter school system fail students all across the US and that’s why we risking our pay raise to defeat this bill. We want better funding, and better schools, for all students. All students are worthy."
West Virginia teachers just went out on strike again. What's at stake? Republican lawmakers were cynically granting public employees a 5% raise, but the legislation would have simultaneously legalized school privatization for the first time in West Virginia.
The issues were nicely summed up by Katie Endicott, a rank-and-file teacher from Mingo County:
"Our students are not for sale, West Virginia is not for sale. It’s infuriating that people would try to profit off us: privatization would give millions of dollars to elites and it would create even more haves and have not. We’ve seen the charter school system fail students all across the US and that’s why we risking our pay raise to defeat this bill. We want better funding, and better schools, for all students. All students are worthy."
At least in West Virginia (and elsewhere, I might add, even Denver), these strikes are not simply about pay raises.
The Republicans tried to privatize education here in Douglas County with their voucher initiative. We are thankful it got blocked and now the district is recovering from the mess previous school board created.
Wrong again! https://www.cde.state.co.us/cdefinance "Colorado public schools receive funding from a variety of sources. However, most revenues to Colorado's 178 school districts are provided through the Public School Finance Act of 1994 (as amended).
In budget year 2018-19, this legislation provides for over $7.0 billion of funding to Colorado school districts via state taxes ($4.5 billion), local specific ownership (vehicle registration) taxes ($183.8 million), and local property taxes ($2.36 billion). Moneys provided via the Public School Finance Act of 1994 are available to each school district to fund the costs of providing public education."
This is a very good summary: https://coloradosucceeds.org/policy/...ado-need-know/ "Public education in Colorado is funded by a mix of local property taxes and state income and sales taxes. There’s also some federal funding in the mix, especially for schools serving a high number of low-income students. Despite all the publicity federal education policy receives, the federal share of funding is relatively small compared to state and local funding in Colorado. (For the sake of this post, we’re focusing only on state money.)"
Graph shows federal funding at 0.9%. A lot of that is for the school lunch program.
A Mill Levy Override is a ballot measure that asks voters living in a school district boundary to approve the collection of additional “mills” on property taxes, above what is allowed by the state of Colorado. That additional tax collection is then directly distributed to the local school district. This is the ONLY way a school district can collect additional operational dollars."
I'm pretty sure it's illegal for teachers to campaign for anything on work time. If they're spending time campaigning, that's their own time, and can certainly not be included in work time.
You still do not get how taxes work. School districts do not increase taxes for schools. Only voters can do that (and in some cases the state legislature.). Read the articles more carefully. Collecting taxes is not levying taxes. those are two different words with two different concepts. the Colorado system is little different form that of most states. the voters decide whether they want added property taxes to provide better support to their schools or whether they want lower property taxes and broke schools.
In higher end places, school millages tend to get approved consistently because better schools help keep property values up. However sometimes voters say enough is enough and tell the schools no more. But it is the voters who make the decision. You could ask a lawyer to review the law and explain it to you, but you would not listen, because one just did and you still cannot grasp how it works (or you are pretending not to).
What is not fair is that the property taxes apply only to property owners (although the cost is passed on to renters). However everyone gets to vote on the issue whether they will have to pay any part of the resulting tax or not.
You also misunderstand the concept of teachers working on campaigns. What I think you either cannot grasp or refuse to is that teacher's work does not end at the end of the school day. they then stay at school or go home and work. this work is not on school time, but it is still required for the teacher to do the work.
Campaigning for millage is not required by the school district, it is not "on school time" but it is required for the teachers to keep their jobs. Perhaps since you have never worked in this type of job you are not able to understand how some jobs require a lot of work outside of work. Whether it is official time on the job or not, it is still part of the job. Sometime or some jobs, you are always on call even while on vacation. You may get five or forty calls or E-mails that you have to address while on your vacation. You cannot ignore the calls or E-mails it is part of your job to respond, but you are not "working" you are still on vacation and you are using up your allotted vacation time. For teachers, they must work after school and on weekends. It is not officially part of their job, but it is required.
Actually it does not really matter whether you can grasp these concepts or not. Other people do and since we rule in part by majority voting, teachers do not need every retired nurse to understand their jobs. Enough people do understand, and that is why the teachers have the support of most parents.
Frankly I think you are just playing games and pretending to be unable to understand this, or being obstinate just for the sake of being obstinate. So, I am done here. Good luck to you.
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