“Only those who have children should pay for public schools.” An interesting thought, isn’t it? I heard it often while campaigning for the Christina School District referenda, “I don’t have any kids, why should I have to pay taxes for schools?” and it’s second cousin “Let the people who have kids pay based on how many children they have in school.” seemed to loiter whenever discussions about school taxes were had during the campaign. They’re hanging around again as we await the State Board’s decision on the WEIC plan and while I don’t live in the Brandywine School District, given that they’re going out for operating and capital referenda in March this year, they’re probably hearing these two challenges to the school funding system as well.
As with all things government service, you can’t take 2 steps without tripping over some sort of criticism or complaint about the way things are done. The public school system in Delaware and nation-wide, isn’t an exception. For however many legit complaints against public education there are though, the way we pay for it; everyone who owns property chips in, isn’t one of them. Public schools are the original crowd-fund project. Everyone pays for our schools (yes everyone, even renters). As far as I’m concerned, that’s the way it should be. The key word in Public School is “Public”
Public
ADJECTIVE
- of or concerning the people as a whole
NOUN
- ordinary people in general; the community
Anyone can send their kid to school without regard to their ability to pay for it. That makes public school, public. You live in Delaware? Your child can go to school. Don’t have kids? Your neighbor’s kids are going to be running your community one day, probably while you’re still alive. Their education is probably something worth you spending a bit of money on, no? If a school bills parents based on the number of kids they have enrolled, it’s no longer a public school, it’s a private school; we already have those (and they continue to lose students back to the public school system year after year).
One of my go-to rebuttals to these two arguments continues to be this: Imagine if we paid for other government services on a per use basis. Fire companies. They can’t douse your burning home until you pay them. Paramedics can’t begin to administer emergency medical care until your form of payment clears. Police can’t come take your car accident report until they verify your credit card transaction goes through. They can’t investigate your home invasion until you remit payment “Sorry sir, we don’t take Android Pay, only Apple Pay”. The 911 phone system. “The fee for this service is $2.99 per minute for the first minute, and $1.99 per minute thereafter, please enter your 16-digit credit or debit card number followed by the pound sign”. Transportation. I take Route 40 to work sometimes. Sometimes I take 896. Imagine if they set up EZ Pass sensors at every point where a secondary road connected. That’s the thing about living in a society. YOU don’t have to personally benefit from everything you help support, public schools included. You support these services to better your community as a whole. Although everyone likely does benefit personally from publicly educated people whether they want to admit it or not.
Maybe the property tax method doesn’t cast quite a wide enough revenue net, but it is a pretty big net nonetheless. So what do you say? Is it “fair” to have to pay for things like public education, police, fire, 911, ambulances, paramedics, transportation even if you don’t personally use the service? I’m interested to hear your rebuttals, or your support for this type of argument.