I have to agree with Hal. Giving the power to tax to boards of education is a bad idea. First of all it will clearly increase our overall tax burden and the size of local governments. Money collected by the board will free up revenues for county commissions to spend on other things or to create new programs. Furthermore, education expenditures should be considered in the context of all other priorities, and tradeoffs should be made explicit. Indeed, this is why boards of education do not like the current system. It forces them to stand on an equal footing with other components of the budget and clearly state why the money should go to education as opposed to the sheriff’s department or to parks and recreation. The only circumstance under which I would support giving the local school board the power to tax is if the taxes were levied on families based on the number of kids they have in government schools–or does that sound a little bit too much like capitalism for our socialist education system?