With Gov. Christie cutting back on state funding for schools, every town in New Jersey just held a vote to increase local taxes to schools. Our town was one of the few in our county to vote down the tax levy. As a result, a bunch of teachers are going to get fired and the school district is going to move to half-day Kindergarten classes. Special education will be cut. Property values will probably go down.

Even though the tax increase would have only have increased taxes by $20 per month, people voted it down. Why? We have a lot of seniors in our town who don't think that the schools benefit them and believe that the kids are spoiled. Sexism plays a role, because education is still a female-dominated profession. There are a lot of people who are genuinely struggling in this economy, and $20 is a lot for them.

One of the biggest problems in getting these local tax levies passed is the fact that school elections are held in April. Only the die-hard voters show up; the die-hard voters tend to be seniors. A lot of parents are too busy to show up to vote. School elections have been run at odd times for a hundred years in this country, because they were set up by the Progressives who wanted to isolate the schools from the corruption of regular politics. That tradition has lived on, because school board officials want to keep their elections uncompetitive. If school elections and tax levy votes were held in November, it would be much better for our schools.

It's interesting looking at the voting results for these local towns. The elections were decided by a couple hundred votes. This is one case when it highly rational to vote. Your vote really does make a difference. But only a fraction of the voters show up at the polls. Apathy wins the day.

It's not just the towns in New Jersey that are facing major cuts in schools. The New York Times reports that this is a nation-wide problem.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan
estimated that state budget cuts imperiled 100,000 to 300,000 public
school jobs. In an interview on Monday, he said the nation was flirting
with “education catastrophe,” and urged Congress to approve additional
stimulus funds to save school jobs.

The U.S. government has bailed out Wall Street and the auto industry. Is it time for a national bailout of schools? Shouldn't our schools be too important to fail?