School tax

“ I will continue to press for tuition tax credits to expand opportunities for families and to soften the double payment for those paying public school taxes and private school tuition. Our proposal would target assistance to low- and middle-income families. Just as more incentives are needed within our schools, greater competition is needed among our schools. Without standards and competition, there can be no champions, no records broken, no excellence in education or any other walk of life. ”

“ Wherever these 'petty school sovereignties' have been abandoned, the schools are nourishing; where they are maintained, the reverse is true. Among hopeful indications for the future of the common schools are the efforts for the improvement of the teaching force and for bringing the rural schools under efficient supervision, and the increase of the local school-tax in sections of the country which have hitherto been negligent of that provision." Brief histories are given in the report of "Governmental Provisions for Education," and of the growth of State and local educational reports. ”

“ I.6 The expenses of public instruction, with the exception of Harvard University, are defrayed by means of a school tax, granted by the representatives of the state of Massachusetts, to which every inhabitant of the state is obliged to contribute. This praiseworthy arrangement exists also in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. In the last state, moreover, those parents who neglect to keep their children at school, are fined five dollars for every absent child, which sum goes into the school treasury. ”

“ And yet in our country it is proposed to tax books. This is the land of public schools, where you boast that education, like justice, is free to all at the common cost. But a tax on books is in direct conflict with this beautiful principle. Every argument for free schools pleads also for free books,—at least for freedom from taxation. It will be a curious inconsistency to rear the school-house, often costly, where every child is welcomed without charge, and then compel him to pay a tax of eight per cent on every book he carries in his satchel. ”

“ NON-RESIDENT TAX-PAYERS. Non-residents who pay a school tax in a district, are entitled to have the amount of such tax credited on their tuition and are required to pay tuition only when the amount of such tuition exceeds the school tax. ”

“ School tax funds shall be expended only for the support and maintenance of public schools, public vocational-technical schools, public education, and activities necessary or incidental thereto, including school lunch purposes. ”

“ The appellees' basic contention is the great disparity in funds available for education to school districts throughout the state is due primarily to the fact that the major determinative of revenue for school districts is the local tax base, a basis unrelated to the educational needs of any given district; that the curent state financing system is inadequate to rectify the inequalities inherent in a financing system based on widely varying local tax bases, and actually widens the gap between the property poor and property wealthy districts in providing educational opportunities. ”

“ In not a few cases the problem of financing schools has in recent years become especially acute. Communities are in many cases at the limit now permitted by state laws controlling the levying of taxes. The maintenance of schools even at their present level is very difficult, and all the time there is the urgent push within the system for enlargements and improvements. Other communities which see the rapid increase in school expenditures, even while they are willing to tax themselves more for schools, are asking for clear evidence that school work is being done efficiently. ”

“ The modifications to the Education IRAs that the bill would authorize are bad education policy and bad tax policy. The bill would divert limited Federal resources away from public schools by spending more than $3 billion on tax benefits that would do virtually nothing for average families and would disproportionately benefit the most affluent families. More than 70 percent of the benefits would flow to families in the top 20 percent of income distribution, and families struggling to make ends meet would never see a penny of the benefits. ”

“ If the state will insist on levying a general school tax, let it be divided pro rata according to the number of pupils taught in each school: let the denominational schools have their proper proportion, and the mixed or non-religious schools theirs. The amount thus apportioned to the Catholic schools might be deposited with a board or other executive body, to be composed in whole or in part of clerics and laymen, and, if necessary, let the state appoint proper officials to see that accurate returns of attendance are made. ”

“ To guard against any competition with the public schools as now organized, a special tax should be levied for the support of vocational schools, which, with the State grant for their support, should not be taken from the funds now provided by law for the support of the public school system. ”

“ The entire school year is about eighty-two days, and the teachers are paid upon an average $22.65 a month. We have never come to the taxing of property for education. Nothing but the poll tax of our State goes for our free schools, and the black man’s head-tax goes for the colored schools, and the white man’s head-tax for the white schools. ”

“ The board of education of each school system shall annually certify to its fiscal authority or authorities a school tax not greater than 20 mills per dollar for the support and maintenance of education. Said fiscal authority or authorities shall annually levy said tax upon the assessed value of all taxable property within the territory served by said school system, provided that the levy made by an area board of education, which levy shall not be greater than 20 mills per dollar, shall be in such amount and within such limits as may be prescribed by local law applicable thereto. ”

“ We do not tax only the people whose houses are on fire. It is a public necessity. We have the best illustration of the case in our schools. The tax-supported high school has killed off a number of private schools, and estimable people who were earning their living that way were thrown out of employment. And the tax-supported high school is in analogy with the public library. ”

“ In some of these states the additional tax is already sufficient, when joined with the avails of the school fund, to render the schools entirely free. If one plan is superior to both of the others, this is, perhaps, entitled to the pre-eminence. The school fund lessens the amount which it is necessary to raise by a direct tax; and still the sum which is levied in this way has a tendency to beget and maintain a lively interest on the part of capitalists in the administration of the educational department, and in the maintenance and improvement of the public schools. ”

“ There are also still less amounts appropriated from the income of the surplus revenue for the purpose of increasing the educational advantages of the children; not to be subtracted from, but to be added to, what the towns would otherwise grant. We may, then, consider the school fund of this state as embracing the entire taxable property of the state, from which such a sum is annually raised by tax as is necessary for the support of the schools. In Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, the schools are supported essentially as in Massachusetts, the difference being chiefly in the mode of taxation. ”

“ Because learning only takes place in an atmosphere of order, we want our teachers to be in control of their classrooms. So we're protecting teachers from the threat of frivolous lawsuits that often result from enforcing reasonable discipline. Because committed teachers often buy school supplies for their students out of their own pockets, the budget I have proposed includes a tax deduction to cover some of those costs. ”

“ This is supplemented by a county tax of at least six dollars for each child of the school age. City charters provide for the levying of school taxes in their respective limits, in addition to the state and bounty taxes. School districts are authorized by a vote of the people to levy additional taxes for school purposes" within a certain limit. All of which goes to explain why California is in the van of educational progress, with
her hundred and twelve high schools ”

“ But if the citizens of any state can not be brought to realize the importance of maintaining an elevated standard of common school education, and of rendering its blessings universal, without defraying the whole expense by a direct tax, then will a school fund prove to them a curse, and not a blessing. ”

“ Mr. "A," living in a town where he pays twenty mills school tax, ought not to be asked to help improve Mr. "B's" rural school, while Mr. "B" is himself paying but ten mills of school tax. The farmer is as able as any one else to pay a fair rate of taxation for his school, and should be willing to do so before asking for aid from other taxation sources. Rural education must not be placed on the basis of a missionary enterprise. ”

“ If, then, one system is superior to all others, it is that which is best calculated to beget in the popular mind a realizing sense of the necessity of educating all our youth in good schools. If this can be done in a state which has a large school fund, without diminishing the interest of the people in education, or relaxing their efforts to maintain improved schools, then may such a fund prove serviceable, as it will lessen the general tax. ”

“ Those in high tax brackets were not eligible for the tax credits. The bill would have benefited those low- and middle-income people who bear the burden of tuition to send their children to parochial or independent schools and, at the same time, pay their full share of taxes to support the public school system. ”

“ I also propose a tax deduction of up to $10,000 a year for all tuition after high school, an expanded IRA you can withdraw from tax free for education, and the largest increase in Pell grant scholarships in 20 years. Now, this plan will give most families the ability to pay no taxes on money they save for college tuition. I ask you to pass it and give every American who works hard the chance to go to college. ”

“ The struggle to secure the first legislation, weak and ineffective as it seems to us to-day, was often hard and long. "Campaigns of education" had to be prepared for and carried through. Many thought that tax-supported schools would be dangerous for the State, harmful to individual good, and thoroughly undemocratic. Many did not see the need for schools at all. Portions of a town or a city would provide a free school, while other portions would not. Often those in favor of taxation were bitterly assailed, and even at times threatened with personal violence. ”

“ I do not believe that high-schools should be supported, as a rule, out of the public taxes.”
“You are very radical in your opinions, Captain Gildrock,” added the instructor.
“Let us look at it a moment. There are two thousand scholars of all ages in the public schools of Genverres. Not more than one in five of them will ever reach the highest class in the grammar-school. The other four will leave school, and go to work: their parents need them, or what they can earn. But the parents of all those who fall out of the schools by the way are tax-payers. ”

“ The formidable task facing him can be better appreciated when one considers the creation of an entire public school system with very little money and few trained teachers available. The interest from the Literary Fund, all the capitation or poll tax, a new state property tax and a new one dollar annual tax on each male citizen twenty-one years and older were to constitute the financial support of the public school system. Local school and capitation taxes were optional with each county and public school district. ”

“ The actual mean average cost of the schooling of each public school scholar in the United States is about ten dollars. Assuming then that the adult population of each state bears the burden of educating its children, and that all the children of school age in each state are enrolled in the schools—as they should be—let us ascertain how much the tax per capita would be on the adults bearing this burden in each state and territory. ”

“ The schools are fair and improving, the community is awake to the need of educating all the children, even in the remote country; and though the taxes for education are still very light, there is a disposition to increase them. In Texas, for example, where there is a state tax, the people have by constitutional amendment authorized all school districts to double that amount by local taxation. If the Whites were the only people to be educated, and if education were the panacea, if it brought assurance of good government, the Southern question would in due time take care of itself. ”

“ Now, if I've got the math right, more teachers teaching smaller classes requires more classrooms. So I also propose a school construction tax cut to help communities modernize or build 5,000 schools.
We must also demand greater accountability. When we promote a child from grade to grade who hasn't mastered the work, we don't do that child any favors. It is time to end social promotion in America's schools. ”

“ It includes $35 billion in tax relief for higher education, including our HOPE scholarship for tuition tax credit to make the first 2 years of college as universal as high school is today and a tax deduction for the cost of any tuition after high school. ”