When are you completely educated? The Madison School Board wants more money and that means higher property taxes. Education is a massive financial segment of the overall economy, but the supply and demand principles of economics are distorted by the unlimited demand for knowledge. In an infinitely complex world complete understanding is impossible. The limits on learning are desire and resources and time. Because there is no endpoint to be achieved the question becomes when is a person adequately educated?
The School Board referendum is coming up for a citizen vote on a work day, Tuesday May 24, 2005. This will be a special single issue election knowingly calculated to avoid the high turnout of broader contests. The issues are reasonably presented here with links to groups on both sides of the yes/no divide.
The education debate will be a contentious political struggle as long as financing is primarily achieved by a permanent debt obligation upon property owners. This financing system of the past was fair to the degree that children were a probable outcome of sex and society benefited from children having a basic education. For the last two generations, however, having children is an option, and families with fewer children allow parents to focus more resources on a greater breadth of learning for each child. In the reality of planned families, the old way of funding education is increasingly unfair to segments of the population. Fairness can only be approached when those people who decide to have children assume a higher portion of the cost of their education.
The School Board referendum is coming up for a citizen vote on a work day, Tuesday May 24, 2005. This will be a special single issue election knowingly calculated to avoid the high turnout of broader contests. The issues are reasonably presented here with links to groups on both sides of the yes/no divide.
The education debate will be a contentious political struggle as long as financing is primarily achieved by a permanent debt obligation upon property owners. This financing system of the past was fair to the degree that children were a probable outcome of sex and society benefited from children having a basic education. For the last two generations, however, having children is an option, and families with fewer children allow parents to focus more resources on a greater breadth of learning for each child. In the reality of planned families, the old way of funding education is increasingly unfair to segments of the population. Fairness can only be approached when those people who decide to have children assume a higher portion of the cost of their education.
