The Education Challenge

The Education Challenge

Pam calls the Fall Class of Geese to Come to Attention

While school funding equity, the primary goal of Act 60/68, may have been accomplished, one consequence of this legislation has been to drive up the taxes to support the costs of public education to exorbitant levels, all in the face of a shrinking student population and a stagnant economy.

Clearly the issues resulting from Act 60/68 need to be confronted.   However, the Legislature refuses to do so when they clearly have the authority to cap school spending. Instead they have been complicit in driving up property taxes.

I support school choice in the form of charter and private schools which creates a dynamic and competitive marketplace.  And in a free market offering options for parents, school boards will have incentive to control costs and insure quality.  This does not provide immediate relief, but the start of the process to control public education costs. 

The income sensitivity level of $90,000 should be challenged.  I realize this would be supremely unpopular but until more voters have a greater stake in controlling education costs, property taxes will continue to escalate.

If State mandates  are driving school budgets, local school boards should be identifying these costs to their legislators and voters. If social services mandates are driving up local education budgets, that should be clearly identified to the voters.

Expanding social  programs such as lifelong learning, adult education, non-profit teen pregnancy programs, relief for caregivers of the disabled, should be critically reviewed based on the tenets of Results Based Accountability with clear and measurable goals.  If the programs are not producing proven results, they should be cut back or ideally eliminated. 

I am admittedly a novice in this supremely complicated area. However, unlike more populated states, we have the ability to implement incremental changes without enormous adverse unintended consequences as we reverse the trend towards an unmanageable, unsustainable education system based on property taxes. 

I realize I have not provided a ‘magic bullet’ to education sustainability but I  think we are way too far down the path to turn this on a dime. 

In my years of service to the Town, I have been witness to more than one study sitting now on a shelf and I am no proponent of endless analysis without concrete goals and outcomes.  That is why I support a Results Based Accountability approach which uses plain language, common sense, less paper, and is useful to the community.