Property Taxes and School Funding essays

Property Taxes and School Funding essays Most public schools in the United States depend on local property taxes for their initial funding. Admittedly, the wide disparity between schools in the poorest and wealthiest communities is due largely in part to the unequal funding created by unequal property values in said communities. Critics of this system, however, often overlook the fact that this phenomenon is a necessary part of the capitalist system. In order for any of us to succeed, some of us must get left behind. Residents of inner cities claim that they tax themselves at higher rates than residents of suburban areas in order to raise money for their public schools, but it is a known fact that their tax revenues must be diverted to meet non-school costs that wealthy suburbs do not face, or only on a far more modest scale. Police expenditures are higher in crime-ridden cities than in most suburban towns. It is important to note, though, that the thugs responsible for much of the crime in these cities and the students in these public schools are one and the same. If the students are out on the streets committing crimes rather than attending school, why should the taxpaying citizens even bother to continue pouring money into their schools? Most of these children will drop out before they graduate from high school anyway. The question that we must ask ourselves is this: whats the point? In my opinion, how the schools are funded is only a small part of the problem. There is no point in trying to reform these schools without first addressing the societal problems that plague these communities. If statistics continue to show that these children are more than likely to throw their lives away whether they have the benefit of an education or not, it is undeniably an effort in futility to continue funding their schools. Besides, the public school system works the way it does for a reason: to recreate the social divisions of labor and to preserve t...