The Schools and Taxes

[osugirl2]

Originally Posted by markg91359

If you look at my posts after the first one, you'll see that I am in favor of funding higher education rather than grade and high school. That way we are covering the benefit society receives from an educated person issue. Doing things this way will encourage parents to push their children to do well in school so that they can go on to college, and if taxes are helping to fund a college education society will be well educated and the individuals will have more income potential in the future. I don't feel the revenue would be uncertain because in order for your child to go to school you have to pay. If we are taxing people less, individuals will have more income at their disposal to put toward there children's education. If a single mom with three children isn't collecting child support, she needs to file a complaint with DHS and get it resolved. They will be giving her assistance with daycare, housing and food if she has a job or is going to school, and if she goes to school to further her education her income potential will increase as well. My divorced best friend with two children works 35 hours per week and receives food and daycare assistance, because she's not getting child support right now and she has more disposible income than I do, so honestly I'm not worried about someone in that scenario because their options to receive help and better themselves are bountiful. Doing things this way also ensures that families with several children are paying the most. If one doesn't want to pay tuition, don't have a bunch of children, or opt to homeschool your children. Go ahead and let some taxes cover maintenance and fund the school structure and let tuition pay for staff, supplies and such. Even if we did a 50/50 (private pay/taxes) system it would take a large burden off the tax system. Honestly some people probably would suffer under the system, but no matter what you do, someone is going to suffer. The best that can be done is to mitigate the suffering and make the system as fair as possible.

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If we did adopt the system that I think you are proposing, Utah would be the only state in the country to have something like it. I'm not certain it would be constitutional. There is a US Supreme Court case which has made it clear that states have an obligation to adequately fund a primary school system for students.

The notion that you could fund primary schools simply based on tuition payments for individual students is a flawed one at best. (I think that is what you are advocating). It would be a system in which well-to-do people had no problems educating their kids and one in which poor families would struggle dearly to meet the expenses of sending their children to school.

My example of the divorced mother trying to raise children on her on own is unfortunately a very common occurrence. Neither private attorneys or government agencies like ORS have been very been effective in collecting back child support as you would suggest they are. National statistics indicate that as much as 50% of child support awarded by courts goes unpaid.

I think colleges and universities would be among the most ardent opponents of your plan. They want students educated and prepared to do college level work upon admission to their institutions. A system which would inevitably reduce funding for primary schools is not going to do a better job preparing kids to go to college.

What many seem to miss is that by not accepting that education is at least partially a societal responsibility is that uneducated students will end up costing them in the end anyway. Uneducated people are more likely to end up in prison, more likely to require job training later on in their life, more likely to collect unemployment benefits, and more likely to have issues with drugs or alcohol which impose external costs on society.

The area that I do share some agreement with you and dcsive about is that I think families with lots of children should pay more than what they currently do for education. Perhaps, we should have more student fees than we do and be less willing to grant waivers from those fees? I think raising the sales tax on food is a good idea because its a tax that these families cannot avoid paying. I also would like to do more culturally to discourage people from having large families. However, that is a long-term issue that inevitably offends alot of people here in this state.

okay, so what about a 50/50 system? 50% of school expenses funded by taxes and the other by parents? or even 75/25? At any rate some extra money has to come from somewhere besides taxes because schools aren't receiving enough funds. I am not saying that society does not have some obligation to support education, but even at the education levels students receive now, there are always some who drop out, get into trouble, and develop addictions and you will never completely eliminate the problem. I think that this partially happens because parents are not taking an active role in their children's lives. Maybe if parents were actually having to pay some money out of their pockets they would pay more attention to their children, make sure they don't skip school, teach them responsibility and how to function in life as an adult etc, especially if there are additional funds out there to help them go on to college if they put in the time and make the grades. Too many times parents have children and then expect our educators to raise them so to speak. Governmental agencies do need to do a better job of collecting child support. My mom was one of those parents that had a difficult time collecting child support from my dad. The final payment for back child support finally came to her when I was 19 years old, because they garnished my dad's tax return. Long overdue, but appreciated nonetheless. I think the reason so much goes uncollected is because non custodial parents move around to different states and such for a variety of reasons. Maybe a national database is in order such as they do for sex offenders? That way it makes it much more difficult for a parent to move to a different state to avoid child support payments. Either way, there is relief for lower income single parents who are not collecting child support by simply applying for assistance. Besides the story of my best friend having more disposible income than me, I always noticed at the daycare my son used to attend that the parents who received daycare assistance (you could tell because they had to swipe a card everytime they dropped their children off or picked them up) drove nicer cars than me and their children had more expensive clothes and shoes than my son had, so to say that there are people taking advantage of the system, I think, is an understatement. If these state agencies would do a better job of regulating who is entitiled to assistance, that extra money could go into funding education for those that truly need the help.

[dcisive]

Some very highly intelligently expressed truths there young lady. I agree 100%. It goes back to what I said earlier. "If you have them, be wholly responsible for them" If you don't want them, get fixed or wear a condom. Sheesh. Far too many adults handle having kids like they are some fashion or societal accessory. NOT. They are little versions of ones self. May be a good or bad thing depending on the parent obviously.

[eggalegga]

Originally Posted by osugirl2

okay, so what about a 50/50 system? 50% of school expenses funded by taxes and the other by parents? or even 75/25? At any rate some extra money has to come from somewhere besides taxes because schools aren't receiving enough funds. I am not saying that society does not have some obligation to support education, but even at the education levels students receive now, there are always some who drop out, get into trouble, and develop addictions and you will never completely eliminate the problem. I think that this partially happens because parents are not taking an active role in their children's lives. Maybe if parents were actually having to pay some money out of their pockets they would pay more attention to their children, make sure they don't skip school, teach them responsibility and how to function in life as an adult etc, especially if there are additional funds out there to help them go on to college if they put in the time and make the grades. Too many times parents have children and then expect our educators to raise them so to speak....

You're right. Some parents are not taking an active role in their children's lives. I even have some of those very parents as blood relatives. Parents viewing their children's education as an investment is a great idea. Kind of like what a college student experiences. If I'm going to have to pay tuition to be educated, I will show up, be prepared, participate and learn. This mentality needs to be embraced by parents as well as students in primary & secondary schools.