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Public Commentary Dear Editor: How did local controls of our schools result in unequal education for our children? Local school boards control the budgets, which are funded by local property owners. There is no good reason why each local school budget has to be individually funded by the local districts. This is inherently a bias situation because property taxes are based on the value of the property. Therefore the higher valued properties pay more in property taxes than areas where homes that have a lower market value. Most of the property taxes we pay go to our schools. Lower income families have lower value homes and pay less in property taxes, so the school districts get less funding than the districts that have higher priced homes. Oh sure, the New York State provides aid to needy school districts, which comes from our New York State income taxes, which retired teachers on pensions do not pay. This redistribution just adds to the level of bureaucracy we have to pay for, because our tax dollars paid to the state must be redistributed to each school dis- trict. It also gives a lot of power to the state. Of course each district has to have some calculated percentage of the need, adding to the bureaucracy. Politicians apparently think bureaucracy and this methodology creates a lot of it. This whole system can be easily simplified, while also reducing bureaucracy, so more of our tax dollars can go directly to our schools. All property tax funds within a County should be collected by a single entity and then be distributed to each school in the county, based on an equal dollar amount per student, so each district gets the same funding. Let's eliminate the current unfair system of school funding. All schools within a county should be equally funded per student based on a county-wide tax basis not the local district. Of course, once all schools are equally funded, home values would solely be based on the value of the home itself and its location, and not be effected by the level of local school system performance, resulting from better funding. Isn't that the way it should be?
Gerald D. Dana, Copiague
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