I have been accused of just complaining and offering up no solutions. Since I offered up we need to pay teachers what they were worth, I followed it up with solutions on how to “afford” it.
On a side note to this letter, is this story showing we do have a crisis!
As was reported this week, General Electric made $14.2 Billion in profit last year. They then paid a whopping $0.00 in taxes. Yes, not one cent and that’s not the worst of it, they also received $3.2 BILLION (with a B) in welfare.
Here is my letter:
I recently wrote a letter saying our teachers are underpaid, and have been accused of offering criticisms with no solutions. While there is a faction of community members whose only solution is to cut wages and benefits, please allow me to be a little more forward thinking and offer up some actual solutions to help save our schools. These are not unique to me, but they all make sense. As we know strong schools are ESSENTIAL for maintaining property values, an educated workforce and giving our children a head start in their career, amongst other reasons.
The first solution is a penny for kids(http://apennyforkids.org/). A simple one cent increase in the state sales tax, designated strictly for education, would raise approximately $850 million dollars annually. A simple penny more every time you spend a dollar can help fund our schools without raising individual property tax.
The second solution is a financial transactions tax. Currently there is no tax whatsoever on financial transactions. If you go to Ho-Chunk or win the lottery you get taxed at a fairly high rate, when you gamble your money in the stock market, you pay nothing in taxes whether you win or lose. A simple .25% on the sale or purchase of a stock could add up to $100 Billion dollars a year. Make sure that money goes directly to infrastructure(ie roads, schools, bridges, etc..)and every state can benefit.
Another solution is to do what every other industrialized country in the world does and come up with a single payer health care system. It is inexcusable that we have millions of Americans uninsured. Instead of trying to cut teachers benefits, they would all go into the shared (IE community) money and we could take that expense off of each individual school districts budget.
Another solution is to set a minimum standard for school maintenance. No child should have to attend a school where the ceilings are falling down, bathrooms do not work etc… There should be a general fund that allows for the maintenance of schools that need it without causing those districts to go to referendum or lay off teachers to do general much needed maintenance.
Finally, stop bashing the teachers unions, unions are pure democracy in action. All throughout the last 20 years, when the economy was booming and record bonuses were being paid out, the teachers were capped by the anti free market QEO. Now teachers are finally able to do, what most every other profession in America can do, and that is bargain for their wages. Let’s work with the teachers and not treat them as the enemy.
These are just a few solutions to the education crisis that we are seeing not only in Monona Grove but nationally also. Use these, or come up with your own, and call your state representatives and tell them to stop talking about it and fix education now. Our future depends on it!
These are my solutions, what are yours?
