Why do we have 18 school districts in Montgomery County? Why do we have several governments in many of these districts? Why do we insist on living on with lines on a map drawn for a different time, and a different place all these years later?
Are we getting the best education for our kids- all of them? Or have our lines on a map become more important than the results?
Greg Hunter and David Esrati give you five and a half minutes of their thoughts:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J25o2SsSLo[/youtube]Enjoy!
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6 minutes of what?
If you want change this is not the way to go about it. Explain to me why the suburbs should pay for the city of Dayton?
@Gene- start signing your full name- and then I’ll start paying attention to your incessant needling. And- if you want- start your own blog- http://www.wordpress.com
cheers.
Basically, you want change for 1. the sake of change, 2. bc you think it is a good idea, 3. transportation costs, 4. perception. None of this is clearly explained nor is it even relevant. I would never start my own blog – blog owners are know-it-alls, and I certainly know my place. You just cry about this school thing but show no statistical evidence or any evidence that supports a successful merger. Suburbs DO NOT WANT THIS. I suggest that you find a new topic. Heck, you are from Cleveland. Why don’t you talk about how the Browns used to be good? And in the future the Browns will be good… BC that is what you are doing here. Talking about the past and a future that will never happen. All you do is rip on the DDN, yet they have several relevant things to talk about, but you go off on this bull shit school district thing. What a waste of time. How about trying to get 5k people to live downtown. This seems practical, relevant and possible. The school thing is none of these. Just a suggestion big boy.
AND on the school district things, you never ever mention parents, the number one asset to a child’s success. I know it is yet somehow you don’t. Maybe you should quite doing what you are doing then.
blog owners are know-it-alls, and I certainly know my place
LOL, ROFL!!! Yes, Gene, you certainly never act like you know it all.
All I know is that we will never merge school systems, so why bother talking about it.
Oh, and I also know that a school’s success is determined 100% by the parents of the kids. When you have Parent’s Night and 3 people show up and then you wonder why the system is broken, well it is right in front of your face. Fix that and you fix the schools. You don’t force suburbs to pay for loser parents mistakes.
I’m not sure I follow your economics: increasing the supply of teachers increased their pay? Really?
Also, not sure how grouping the school districts together would affect the stats in any meaningful way; all of the schools get their own individual ‘report card’, so you could still see which ones are the good ones and which are not so hot (are you saying we should mask the info at the individual school level?). I looked at the elementary school ratings the other day for a friend and was appalled that they were mostly ‘academic emergencies’: http://www.dps.k12.oh.us/cms/schools
I’ll be honest, if we had school-aged kids we would not be living in the city limits. Sad, but true.
18 districts does seem like too many though.
560k people (Mont Co.), 18 school districts, 1 district per 31K people……. sounds good to me.
Just dividing the total population by the number of districts doesn’t really give a good idea of how many students each district serves. The school-age population estimate for every district in the nation is available on the census website [1]. Here’s a couple rows from that spreadsheet:
————————————————————————————————————–
District | Total Est. Pop. | Est. Pop. 5-17 yrs old | Est. Pop. 5-17 in poverty
Huntsville, AL | 186,234 | 30,009 | 4,785
Dayton, OH | 173, 150 | 28,599 | 7,726
————————————————————————————————————-
So the Dayton City district serves a pretty big chunk of the population relative to other districts; that means some of those other districts in the county could probably stand to be consolidated. The percentage of students in poverty is twice a comparably sized city (though Huntsville has never been as big as Dayton was). If a district can serve a population of 180k successfully (I included Huntsville because it is similarly sized and successful), why the need for the plethora of all the other little ones? Consolidation wouldn’t fix Dayton city schools’ problems, but it would lower the overhead for the taxpayers in the rest of the county.
[1] http://www.census.gov/did/www/saipe/downloads/sd08/USSD08.xls
Why do we have counties ? Why do we have states ? Why do we have countries ? Why can’t we all just be one, big, happy world ?
Here’s a scatter plot of all the data in that spreadsheet showing Dayton in relation to all the other school districts in the country: http://tinyurl.com/yhqqhrg
Maybe one of the ‘know-it-alls’ around here can say something smart about it…
Say What?
“So the Dayton City district serves a pretty big chunk of the population relative to other districts; that means some of those other districts in the county could probably stand to be consolidated.”
We consolidate other districts bc Dayton is a bigger district than others in Monty Co.? Not sure that helps Dayton, not sure that makes sense. The CO. where Huntsville is located has a population of 320K. Monty Co has 555K-560K. So why compare these two….. DE is talking about consolidating the Co., and that means smaller suburban cities like Kettering and Centerville and Oakwood would have to share resources with Dayton.
Jstults – Thanks for the data plots and I would love to get more information on how these issues interact through openess of the government data sources. The NYT has an article on this subject today, which would help in the analysis. I also do not want to get involved in narrative fallacy based on the data, which Mr. Taleb warns against. Gene is stuck in a fallacy and really so are the purveyors of this site. Dayton’s issues are directly related to responses from Racism and Classism. The “getting away” from the other because they are not the same color or that they are not on the same “rung of the ladder” is a prescription for Dayton’s decline. Our lack of accepting these facts makes the problem harder to solve, and if we look around Dayton, then one would have to agree.
I like that Gene is on this site as he boils down the issues to what I consider is the mainstream narrative fallacy concerning the data presented. I agree that Kettering and Centerville do not want to share resources, but this kind of “I got mine, screw you” is a mentality that appears to have detrimental effects to the community at large. I would argue the data points to this, and when people like Gene get confronted with overwhelming evidence that indicates they are wrong, they will stop talking, but not change their minds.
I really do not want to start with school children to solve a problem of adults. I would rather consolidate all of the local governments, police and fire into a countywide system as it makes the most sense and leave the school districts in place. Until we have an honest discussion about how things occurred, only then can we provide solutions to rectify the problems.
A. I have never said I was against any of this, rather pointing out the SUBURBS are against this sort of thing.
B. Centerville does not want to share with Kettering, so this is not necessarily an anti-Dayton situation. Greg, you are the one living in fantasy land. Centerville wants to be……….. drum roll please……….. Centerville. Oakwood want to be…………… drum roll please……………. Oakwood. That is what YOU liberals don’t understand. They don’t want to be anything but what they are, and improve their own little world. Right or wrong, it does not matter. That is just fact.
C. What evidence? What are you talking about? I am talking reality, you are talking fantasy world. Evidence is bullshit. If I gave everyone ten bucks in Dayton the evidence would show they are ten dollars richer. Big Deal. We know Dayton is poor, and most people understand that there always will be a certain amount of poor people. Like it or not, that is the USA. Again, this is not a right or wrong situation, just the reality of life.
But I will bet you a hundred bucks that if poor people would stop having kids then there would be less poor people over time. Life is not perfect, nor is the county. I have never been against sharing of resources (so long as it makes sense and is practical), I just point out the suburbs are against this – and have the right to be against it. Greg, if you are so smart, why are not you rich?
So what exactly am I “wrong” about Greg?
Gene I agree, take away tax breaks for children and insurance for having babies. I like the idea as there are plenty of people in the world. Once that is done, please explain how MAN can survive without expanding the pyramid scheme of growth. Allow schools to teach sex education because that abstinence only education is a loser argument from an evolutionary standpoint.
Man is surviving just fine… at least in this country, not sure about other countries.
I guess my suggestion is that although consolidation may help Dayton, suburbia does not feel the benefit enough to go along with these “ideas.” If we want Dayton to do better, Dayton needs to stop producing kids that come from homes that are not fit to raise children. Yes, there is judgement in that, but as we know some kids are not being feed, not being read to, not being educated. This is not a school problem, rather a home problem. Societies ills would be curbed greatly if poor people stopped having kids. But no one wants to talk about that.
We can solve most of our major problems if we would teach all people that in order to have a family you should (not that we would make it law) have some financial and emotional stability. BC starving and uneducated kids don’t make a solid foundation for the future.
@jstults . nice plot, I like the fact you showed the relationship to poverty levels.
I’ve long been a proponent for countywide schools. Every time the subject comes up I am ready to jump in. Gene correctly points out the argument that the suburbs will complain they don’t want to pay for the “poor people’s” schools. But he is wrong stating that argument will prevent any movement to regionalize. Having lived in a couple of states (MD & SC) that have countywide districts the affluent communities still voice the same complaint even after enduring decades of county wide schools. Fact is that those districts are producing excellent results and saving both the affluent and the poor tons of money through the elimination of redundant services. As David point out one example is transportation. Do we really benefit from the overhead of maintaining 18 bus garages in the county? Wouldn’t you like to explore using the same bus to serve multiple schools unrestrained by 18 district boundaries? Every bus eliminated results in about 100k in annual savings.
But it goes beyond transportation. 18 payroll departments, 18 accounts payable departments, 18 IT departments, 18 school boards, 18 superintendents and so on gets into significant duplicated infrastructure and associated costs.
If you think about it in terms of maintaining all the existing schools and the same attendance patterns to those schools then not much will have changed for the student and parent. What will change is the taxpers (and businesses) will not have the confusion of 18 different tax rates across the county and this will pretty much answer the State Supreme Court’s ruling to bring equity to the school funding formula. Oh yeah and we will still have the great interschool sports rivalries between our high schools.
Gene, with quotes like this “Societies ills would be curbed greatly if poor people stopped having kids. But no one wants to talk about that” I doubt you will get many votes to become our country’s benevolent dictator.
Gene, just make up a last name.
Somehow, David thinks that makes you sound more credible and response worthy.
Why do we have counties ?
Seven counties in Massachusetts no longer have county-level government:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_in_Massachusetts
David, I left Mass in ’85 and had no idea this happened. Looks like it was a big question of funding that caused the dissolution according to this example in wikipedia:
“On July 11, 1997, the Massachusetts State Legislature abolished Middlesex County as a governmental entity due primarily to the county’s insolvency. Middlesex County continues to exist as a geographic boundary”
The other counties I checked dissolved around the same time. Some services were picked up by the state and others were divided among the municipalities within those counties. Very interesting and thanks for the heads up.
I’d also forgotten how many big the counties were. Over 30 school districts in this county alone. Massachusettes has 14 counties and 391 school districts. Ohio has 88 counties and 895 school districts.
Gene,
When do we get our ten bucks?
interesting conversation. sorry if this goes OT a little bit, but let me rant. I am an architect and design schools for a living. A handful of these districts are my clients. Many of these District have recently, or will be soon, designing major additions, renovations, or new construction (either through the Ohio Schools Facility Commission, or local bond issues). These are public projects in either case. What is frustrating to me is how many of these Districts outsource the design of the school buildings outside of our region. For example, over 50% of the Dayton Public Schools projects were designed by firms outside of our region. Miamisburg is being designed by a firm in Toledo. Beavercreek, Vandalia Butler, Mad River, Brookville – all designed by a Cincinnati firm. Huber Heights is 50% outsourced, Xenia and Trotwood by a Celina Firm. There are very qualified Architects and Engineers in our region who excel at these types of projects; remember the “Creative Class” we are supposed to by trying to support. Districts don’t necessarily have control of who builds their buildings (i.e. lowest and most responsible bidder) but they do decide who designs them through a qualifications based process. There has recently been about $1 billion in schools design in our region, most of which has been outsourced. This equates to nearly $100 million in design fees that could have been invested back in our community, through decent paying profession jobs. For the record, Oakwood City Schools, Kettering, Centerville, part of Dayton Public, Milton-Union, Greeneview selected regional design firms, nearly everyone else went outside of our region for these projects. Montgomery County, also, is good about hiring regional design firms to provide these services. It frustrates me that many local leaders complain about the regional economy while at the same time continuing to outsource our local taxpaying public projects outside of our region?
rant over .. thanks David for providing the platform…
Mike Ruetschle
@Mike Ruetschle
Thanks for the rant- and attaching the info to this site. It’s been interesting to see how a few partnerships have popped up- with local firms working with bigger ones. It’s not quite like minority business setasides- but- this would be an excellent place to insist on some Mentor/Protegee type programs being instituted.
Glad to hear your firm has some of the work. However, if we had one district in the County- we might also make it easier to administer all these building programs- with greater expertise. Dayton has built over 20 schools and has knowledge that others don’t. Wouldn’t it be great for taxpayers not to have to pay for learning these non-core skills- over and over?
Sorry Mike,
That is the way it has always been in this town/region. If you are good, go somewhere else, because nobody in this town wants to pick somebody in the town to do the work due too, IMHO, jealousy, insecurity, incompetence or fear of favoritism.
The problem with favoritism was exposed a few years ago as the Warren County Engineer used someone too many times to do road resurfacing. Problem was that they got the work done efficiently. It is tough to make sure that work gets done well and all get to participate, especially with public dollars.
@David Esrati: Gene makes valid points and arguments, albeit with some attitude, but why would you push him to leave? I rather like his points. @Mike R.: Would you rather plan the economy and force people to utilize locality? People in Ohio also address the needs of schools in other states. Efficiency is for each market to figure out. @David Esrati: By what means would you want to accomplish this? Do you think it should be a mutally agreeable by each city and becomes a natural progression of efficiency or are you asking it be done by vote? If you are asking it to be done by vote are you suggesting that a simply majority would be allowed to take away the sovereignty of a city that does not want to participate? If you are saying you want to force it through this way, then it is another example of force and coercion to acheive Majority interest which may be seen as tyranny by the simple minority. This would be completely wrong. However, if you think Cities should pursue this as a means of efficiency we can examine some arguments that would have to be overcome by 2 parties willingly looking at a merger. (also why the majority would be seen as a tyrant) Approximately 50% of school funding is provided locally. Meaning property and income taxes. What you are asking by going to regionalism is that each city throw in and combine all their income. If the suburbs generate more revenue for schools than the city proper, why would the suburb want to fund additional schools thereby increasing their taxes or lowering funding for their own children? But, I think we all agree that government is inefficient and becomes even more so with size. So, if regionalism happened would mils have to be uniform through all cities? I am not sure why Oakwood would willingly vote themselves a higher tax rate to have it spread through every community and receive only a small benefit for their efforts. So for example, centerville funds %72 of their district locally and is… Read more »
Upper end schools already help pay for Dayton. Centerville receives about 1/5th the amount of money per student as Dayton. Centerville has lower administration costs and Centerville averages spending 4K LESS per student per year than Dayton. Why would they want to merge?
Receives from the state via state taxes.
DE, you mentioned bus service for schools…..
What about you favorite suburb, Oakwood? They don’t have a bus. Maybe they should get a “walk to school” credit?
Oakwood has a fleet of limos.
No they don’t. They walk to school. Or have their private limo drop them off. Or, if old enough, drive their BMW or Mercedes. But the school does not have limos. Rather Suburbans, to transport kids to sporting events, debates, or to oversee their business investments in Poor Town, sorry, Downtown.
The high school students, years ago, started a development company and must tend to their investments. A typical 15 year old can not necessarily command their chauffeur to drive them to their projects, especially is said chauffeur is taking mum to the country club. But there are NO city sponsored/owned limos (that I know of.)
Greg, you grew up in Kettering, right? Your dad may have been a landscaper for an Oakwood estate, perhaps your mum was cleaning lady for an Oakwood family. Or maybe your mum could have been the gardener and your pop could have been the handy man…. whatever, it does not matter. Those Oakwood families took care of your parents. But there are no city owned limos or buses.
You guys want Oakwood people to pay for buses throughout the county, yet they don’t use buses…….hmmmmm……
Slightly OT, but kinda funny.
Greg:
Just like the Copenhagen delegates:
http://www.businessinsider.com/not-enough-limos-in-denmark-for-copenhagen-delegates-2009-12
Yes, the Global Warming Hypocrites. It is Fricking Unreal.
Al Gore. John Edwards…………. and their buddies………. oh, they are allowed to pollute, just not us………
question: where can I find that school district map Greg holds up in the first minute?
http://www.puc.state.oh.us/pucogis/statewidemaps.htm
There is a state wide one here and I will try to locate the Montgomery One.
It is nice to live in a walkable community with limo service. A public policy issue that all should emulate.
Public education is not the sovereign duty of cities. It is the state’s consitiutional responsibility. The state creates the school districts and if they created county wide school districts they would have the same millage county-wide. The question is not why would a suburban city want to have county-wide districts but what interest would the state have in consolidating districts.
@Joe Lacey-
The State would want to consolidate districts for simplification and for efficiency. How many superintendents salaries must we pay? How many of all the other support functions? Reporting functions would be simplified as well- plus- the responsibility of payroll taxes gets much easier as we simplify districts- although I believe almost all Ohio schools are funded by property taxes (even though Quickbooks insists on adding a field for Ohio School District tax).
There also would be less time wasted on negotiating so many different union contracts- and since they all pay into the same pension fund- this would simplify things even more.
The reasons are countless to do it-
There may be good reasons, but let us take DE “superintendent” argument. I am not sure eliminating/consolidating superintendents is really “saving” on resources and money. After all, they do work. It is not as if they sit around all day. My point is a Super can be over 1800 kids and be very busy but you think consolidation with another district of 5000 kids will DECREASE his/her work load. So rather than having Two Supers you have one with 3 Assistants? And now this Super has even more of a political role, so they are no longer working in the capacity they were meant to, rather as a head of the Super department. And the quality of work may suffer….. Well, frick, I can consolidate a lot then. 75 students per class, then we need less teachers. We save. Kids can share books. Buy some candles!!!! Turn off those lights….. We can consolidate the busing system, great idea, and DDS will pick up your kid at 4am and drop them off at school at 8am….. less buses, less pollution, we all win. If you want to get “better” at school I think we should go the other direction, smaller. More Supers, more of a chance to allow parents to interact with teachers. All neighborhood schools, smaller districts. There should be 3 districts in Dayton alone, at the very least. All kids would go to the closest school from their home. I think you get my point. Just consolidating for that sake of consolidating is not worth it. As far as I can tell all school districts (with the exception of a few) are spread thin as is. Spreading them thinner would not help. And the biggest misconception in the history of education is the correlation of a child’s academic success and money spent on a kid. A good teacher does not need a fancy classroom, but a kid needs a good parent. We have been teaching kids since the beginning of GD time, and only in the last 10-20-40 years did some political driven egomaniac start correlating the two. Somehow,… Read more »
>>> the responsibility of payroll taxes gets much easier as we simplify districts- although I believe almost all Ohio schools are funded by property taxes (even though Quickbooks insists on adding a field for Ohio School District tax). <<< Even if you have county wide school districts “the responsibility of payroll taxes” does NOT get MUCH EASIER. Ohio still allows for local municipalities to collect income taxes. For example, if an employee lives in Dayton but teaches in a county wide school district building in Kettering, that teacher will still have 1.75% of their pay withheld for working in Kettering and an additional .5% (for a total of 2.25%) withheld for living in Dayton. As long as it’s the law that income taxes of any kind are withheld, it doesn’t make much difference to the payroll department (and the payroll software) if they have to withhold and remit to 4 entities instead of 5. (and, PLEASE David, don’t take this as an opportunity to climb on your soapbox once again to promote Uni-Gov!! It’s tiring!) The reason that Quickbooks “insists” on adding a field for the School District Tax is because…..IT’S THE LAW!! Sure, most school funding comes from real estate taxes (technically different than property taxes) but many rural districts also have passed an income based tax to further fund their school districts. Since you probably don’t hire too many employees that live in these outlying areas in your business you’re probably not too familiar with this tax. >> There also would be less time wasted on negotiating so many different union contracts << That’s an interesting comment. Unless the school buildings through out this fantasy county wide district of yours contain a homogeneous mix of students throughout the county, my guess is that the union is going to negotiate different pay rates for working in different parts of the district. Is a teacher that works in a building located in an area of the county where the parents are involved with their kids and the parents back the teachers and their efforts (which generally… Read more »
@ David
That was the point of my post. The state clearly has an interest in consolidating. Individual cities do not but it is not their job to educate children.
So let’s institute a “Stupid tax”- that’s charged to parents of kids who under-perform in school- and for parents that don’t get involved in raising children. Solves all problems.
I find it interesting that the County has no problem mandating classes on “helping children succeed after divorce” but none on how to rear children- more on this later…
Poor people don’t pay taxes.
I want to hear your “more on this later….” now :) .
No need for taxes. Real simple. Parents must attend mandatory assembly type meetings before the school year, at the Holiday break and two weeks before school ends to establish/re-establish their duties. If they don’t show up, their kid does not move start school/return to school/ move on to the next grade. Parents would have a one-on-one at sometime during the school year.
Remember the commercial ” We don’t make a lot of the products you buy, we make a lot of the products you buy better.” We, that is school. We don’t teach your kid to read, we teach your kids to read better. Which means, for the hard of hearing, that they have to learn to read at, drum roll please……………. at HOME.
We don’t teach your kids math, we teach your kids math better….. OK, that does not sound right, but you get the picture.
Now where is this “more on this later….”
Gene and David – It is not all about getting rid of people although there will be some of that. It is about rethinking how to operate the district within a larger scale. There are ways to reshape the duties in the central office that can bring vastly greater learning opportunities for the children that they cannot get now. Specialists leading district wide departments that cannot be afforded in the current systems would be possible. What departments and offerings would you see as beneficial? How can the region benefit from a more dynamic education system?
Some of the suburban districts are already cooperating with each other in order to expand learning opportunities for the children. Several of these districts have “block programs” which are focused courses of study in various areas. Some of these programs are open to students in other districts. I know that Centerville, Kettering and Oakwood all cooperate in this manner.
” There are ways to reshape the duties in the central office that can bring vastly greater learning opportunities for the children that they cannot get now.”
Sure. I agree. But what is the problem here? Is it to bring “vastly greater learning opportunities? ”
Maybe.
But why are we fixing “the house” by fixing the roof first and ignoring the cracking and crumbling foundation. Education has become complicated for some reason. It should not be this complicated. Adults have been teaching kids since the beginning of man. Let us get back to the most basic of “basic.” We NEED to have PARENTS teach their kids to read and write, teach them math, teach them right from wrong, teach them to behave, teach them to co-operate. You folks are worried if they read a certain “book”, I am worried they can’t read any book.
Better parenting and personal responsibilities shall shore up any ills in the education system. It is not complicated. But the liberal mentality is band-aid at best. Tell parents what is expected of them, and YES, how to raise their kids. BC they are doing a very poor job of raising their kids.
You can relate this to jobs and culture and money. But when TF did it become common place to allow your kid to misbehave? I think if we work on the foundation first then the walls and roof will fix themselves. But keep on hammering the “minor” issues. We have taught kids for years, and parents overall were better parents. You had discipline, you had expectations, you had order. Now it is a free for all. Just ask any DPS teacher. Better kids (from better adults) makes it for a better learning environment. A good teacher can teach well behaved kids with a hundred year old book under a couple of oak trees. Hard to do with shitty kids. And most of this is aimed at Urban kids, bc that is where the problems are. Rural kids have little money yet seem to do well. Wonder why?
Somehow, someway we went all these years teaching kids with minimal financial support yet a larger parental role and influence. Now it is the exact opposite. Is this a liberal thing? It is a critical thinking thing. It is a connecting the dots thing. It is a sound policy thing. I agree that we need to have less poor people having children, so get rid of tax break for having them and impose rigorous sex education standards. Abstinence Only is stupid and expecting your child not to have sex is stupid, so it should be mandatory. If you want to send your child to a religious school, so be it, and rear a sexually active idiot. Not wasting the investment of school buildings and having children walking to school should be a matter of public policy, so how do we promote such a policy? Tax Incentives and Open Discussion. I will provide an anecdote, based on my experience. My parents move into Kettering during the 60’s and proceeded to breed 3 children (Single Income Household) and we all made it through the Kettering System, by walking to the Schools. This was perfect and the school system was at capacity. However as we graduated, my parents had no incentive to move an allow a family with school aged children to move into our house and continue to feed children into the system (Pyramid Scheme). Therefore these people moved to other communities where new schools had to be constructed, while Kettering had to consolidate children, increase busing and sell perfectly good schools to churches or absorb them as an amenity known as an art center. So with some thought and foresight, movement of my parents along with all of the breeders in the walk to school neighborhood. Please note that prior to the greed generations (Post Carter, Post American Peak Oil Production) people decided they needed more space and income the Middle Class fell into the “Two Income Trap” leading to less time at home and less preparation for school. Connect the Dots People. Despite the efforts of two wage earners, the… Read more »
It all comes down to funding, which I posted above and no one addressed. Tell me how you fund it and if you are transferring resources from one region to another……….more so than gov’t is now or less so.
Also, is it forced or natural? As Bubba mentioned there are cities that work together for mutual benefit. That does not mean forcing them to work together would be for everyone’s benefit.
These are valid points and it was very hard to post because I really just want to say we would not have this issue if we could just get rid of public schools altogether.
GH – great link. Have not read it all yet, kinda busy. But i have to disagree with the “consumption” thing. People are trying to keep up with the Jones. If you make $75k and live in a $250 house, rather than a $140k house, well that is your fault for over consuming. Same with clothes, cars, electronics, eating out, etc. That money spent is……. real.
All facets of government transfer resources from one region to another: roads, infrastructure, TARP money, defense contracting, public assistance, you name it. The fact that government solutions to problems often transfer resources from one region to another is nothing new.
And yes, when the state makes the school districts they very often “force” regions into school districts where they would prefer not to be. Parts of Riverside are in the Dayton school district. Many in Riverside don’t like that but, that’s the state’s decision from long ago. I’m sure that there are parts of Washington Twp that don’t appreciate being tied to the Centerville school district. They are contributing to a less affluent area. It would be nice in government if everyone got what they wanted but it doesn’t always work that way.
Another interesting paragraph from Greg’s link:
Greg said:
That’s not what I got from that book review at all. It seemed pretty clear that families used their new market power from the second income to move to better neighbourhoods so that their children would have better educational opportunities. Those newer, growing suburban school districts with all of those foolish two income families have the schools that tend to perform the best. I’d argue that it is single income, single parent households that are unable to compete with the two-incomers and relocate to the ‘good’ districts, and these are also the households where the primary care-giver will likely have less time to spend on school prep / enrichment. So you get less competitive households left behind in the urban core. There’s probably a feedback loop in there too, as more people leave for better districts, the ones that are left are probably not doing much to bring up the averages, so there’s more incentive for more people to leave…