Every child left behind?Link.
By Rick Perlstein on July 29, 2007 - 1:55pm.
The part that worries me most about the Foreclosing of America's new home abandonment phenomenon is the effect on our schools. American public schools are largely financed by local property taxes. That's bad enough on its own—one of the most savage inequalities in the entire system: it means that if you can't afford to buy into a nice neighborhood, your child's "equality of opportunity" gets strafed. Now, a spiral unto apocalypse: what happens to the school systems in communities where the net assessed values of the homes has tanked?
Is anyone in Washington prepared to do something about this? Anyone?
(And I'm sure that's a rhetorical question....)
1 comment:
No, no, no. Many public schools in the US are financed by property taxes. While the basis numbers are funked up so that shifting property values don't affect tax receipts, a tanking real estate market with numerous sub-prime houses going into foreclosure would or could be a problem i.e the number of occupied houses drop dramatically and/or enough distress sales can eventually affect receipts.
As for your Randian tendencies -- a fascinating subject (for another time) -- email: m.sneft@gmail.com. We gotta stop meeting like this :)
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