Chad, I see no reason to go down that road whatsoever. First, schools are a function of government ? give them the power to tax, and you are elevating them to the status of government. What is governmental power if not the power to tax, the power to lay claim on your property?
Second, there are far too many successful experiments going on with alternatives to public schools to hamstring citizens and education professionals with this particular method of education. There aren’t enough market correctives on public schools as it is; giving them the power to tax would virtually eliminate all concern for efficiency and the bottom line. Lord knows they justify everything as “for the children,” no matter how removed from helping the children they are.
Surely the legislature isn’t exempt from criticism. By all means, pile on. But just granting the power of taxation to school boards would be disastrous ? and if you consider the slippery-slope implications (as I see Hal did while I was typing this), it would be calamitous.
This is so obvious that the following thought just occurred to me. Is this part of the Crisis Manufacturing necessary to persuade citizens to support Easley’s lottery? Did the threat of higher taxation not shift enough people? Are they now having to suggest that Things Are So Bad that schools are going to have to tax? Then, letting folks fret about that long enough before providing Salvation: But they won’t have to tax if we finally pass the “Education Lottery”!
