Are We Willing To Take Our Tax Breaks From the Pockets Of Our Children?

[rbirds]

On January 29 we will vote on a constitutional amendment that puts an average of $20/month in our pocket. Unfortunately the Legislature chose not to protect public education and the $20 we pocket must be picked from the pockets of our children.  According to the House's own analysis, per public student funding will decrease an average of $20/month as a result of this property tax relief.

But what does this mean exactly? The legislative analysis, found at http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Documents/loaddoc.aspx?FileName=h7001Db.PBC.doc&DocumentType=Analysis&BillNumber=7001D&Session=2007D estimates that public schools will lose an average of $500 million a year for the next four years.  Divide this number by the roughly 2.5 million public school students and we come up with an average impact of $195/student.  Averaged over the 10 months of the school year and we have an impact of $20/month per public school student over the course of the 10-month school year. 

A dollar for dollar trade.  An extra half-tank of gas per month or one more extra large meat-lover's pizza will only cost us dropping from 41st in per pupil spending to 42nd, passing Alabama on the dismal end of the per pupil funding scale of states. For Duval County this loss adds up to about $20 million per year.  What does such an abstract number mean?

Well, Duval County losing $20 million each year translates into 2 elementary schools, using the latest state figures on the average cost of schools.  Or we would end up with 1.5 fewer middle schools, or two-thirds of a high school.  Or we could build these schools each year but would have no money left over for teachers to teach these new schools' students.

Can a few gallons of gas or an extra night at McDonalds for an average family each month be worth further hobbling our students.  Fewer schools, fewer teachers, fewer materials, fewer teachers' aides, all would be the result of this property tax cut.

Is this what we all want -- increasingly inadequate state funding of our schools so we can put a couple of dollars a month in our pockets?

[jbm32206]

Yeah, and we're already dealing with severe cuts in our budgets this school year...we're down to bare bones...

[Charles Hunter]

And how will we meet the Class Size Amendment of a few years ago?  Isn't it supposed to be really kicking in over the next couple years or so?  We will need more classrooms and teachers, but have even less money to do it - less than the inadequate education funding we have now.  Brilliant!

[jbm32206]

That's exactly the reason why the schools are having real financial problems...we're forced to have smaller class sizes, but we're not getting the funding. The thing with the class reduction is, it's not exactly how many kids are in each individual classroom, they do an average of how many students are enrolled and how many teachers are 'needed'

What happens, (which happens at the school I'm at, and most likely others) is that administration will opt to have less kids in the classes that will be taking the FCAT, then load up the ones in the younger grade levels. Like at my school...(on average) the classes in grades 3-5 each have less than 15 kids per class and the K-2, the numbers are much higher...many having 20+ students.

You end up with bigger classes in the younger grades, resulting in higher frustration levels (mainy due to lack of discipline in schools) and teachers unable to teach...so they cycle continues to worsen and children reaching the grades that take the FCAT are unprepared.

[rbirds]

A very interesting description, jbm32206, of how school districts must game the system to protect their schools and students from the wild fluctuations of ill-conceived national and politically-motivated education policies. A recent study of NCLB-mandated state education policies -- found at http://epsl.asu.edu/epru/documents/EPSL-0503-101-EPRU.pdf -- shows that gaming NCLB policies is the standard response to illogical policies that do many things but most of them are negative and only accidentally lead to any positive results.

The link between NCLB, the Florida class-size amendment, and $500 million/year impact of the proposed tax reduction constitutional amendment on the state education budget is that each is a policy borne of partisan political viewpoints to meet narrow political goals. Their only real link to education is the word found somewhere in the legislations' title or description.