Let me start by saying I got no problem with private schools. None whatsoever. This is also not a rant against vouchers, teacher unions, or anything like that. It instead is a story about public schools in my district and why they matter as much to the community as they do to the children that attend them.
Now let me start by saying I am biased. I come from a family where education is about the most important thing. Period. End of conversation. Also a family that for several generations could have afforded to send their children to private schools.
But we all attend public schools from grade school through grad school and I will put the educations we received at the University of Illinois, Eastern, and Western Illinois (also LSU and Arkansas) against any school in the nation.
But more than anything this is about how most Americans and even our political leaders are so shortsighted when he comes in investment in public schools. Much more and little story below the fold.
I live in a small, southern Illinois rural town that was founded in 1837 by German immigrants. Population 5,500. Been about that size for the last 100 years. People have made their living since it was founded by farming, working in coal mines, and running small family owned businesses. In a way not a lot has changed in almost 175 years and people kind of like it that way.
But several variables have started to change that.
First, we have a huge Air Force base just five miles away that has a primary and secondary school, but no high school, so they give my school district millions a years to bus their students to our high school. A town of 5,500 has a high school with more than 1,000 students.
Second, we are only 30 miles from downtown St. Louis. In the past decade a wonderful Metro line has been built out to our town that runs to the far end of St. Louis, massive improvements to the major highway (64), and a $600M airport (our Congresscritter can get us pork with the best of them).
Finally, and this doesn't make a lot of people happy, but local (not corporate) farmers who have owned small tracts of land for many generations are selling it off. To say that new houses are going up everywhere around me would be a massive understatement.
I am willing to bet the 2010 Census might show my town has almost doubled in size. And it is estimated that in five years the number of the students at the high school will increase by at least 25 percent.
So in the November election there was a referendum on the ballot to increase our property taxes to raise $40M for a new high school. Now I don't live in a hardcore red district, but not really blue either and everybody I knew saw no way it would pass (even though we have the lowest property taxes in three counties).
Well, with 57% of the vote it did pass.
Now, and I can only speak for where I live and this may be the same strategy used in other places, but the campaign to get the referendum passed wasn't as much about "we got to help our children" as it was about the community as a whole.
They held countless meetings, went door-to-door, and direct mailed DVDs all with the same message, the reason we can't build houses as fast as we can sell them in our community is our school system is the best by test scores (and about every other metric you can come up with) for several counties. Parents care about this when buying a house.
More people move here and it gives us an increased property tax base and that also means more business and sales taxes for the locally owned hardware store, grocery store, barber show, pizza place, gas station, you name it.
Oh, and it can't hurt if our children have a modern high school.
Or put another way investment in our schools is a win, win, win on every level.
Good schools equal more people buying a house and spending money. I mean this isn't rocket science is it? So as the other larger communities around me are cutting spending on education, watching their test scores on the state tests fall, we're increasing spending and watching our test scores increase until we're now only a point or two behind the powerhouse local private school ($5,545/year).
Now I am often heard saying here (and elsewhere) that us progressives are not so good at framing the debate around issues. I think this is a perfect example. When I hear folks talk about public schools and spending it is all about the children. We have to do it for the children, we owe it to them. Of course I get that 110 percent. I might be in jail or god knows where else without my education.
But I am not sure that is the best way to frame the debate around this issue. I think talking about an increased tax base and economic development a strong school system can generate might be far more effective. I mean if a bunch of "farmers" and "hicks" can connect the dots, I'd think folks in larger cities could as well.