School Board Votes To Take Homes From Residents
Increases Operations Taxes to Maximum Rate
The Dripping Springs School Board vote to increase the tax rate to the highest level under the law during one of the worst economic depressions ever in the state. How does the Board justify doing so? This is going to hit residents hard.
Superintendent Mard Herrick resigned on the same night the Board voted to raise the tax rate. Hays County (near Austin) currently has the highest home foreclosure number in its history. It is raising taxes when Texas has the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. The DSISD Board continues to show that it is out of touch with the residents it serves.
Public Education is supposed to serve the community, NOT destroy it.
In large part this is occurring because Governor Rick Perry and the Texas Legislature continue to divert the State’s Constitutional responsibility onto local county government and Texas homeowners to provide a public education for Texas children.
This is a bad move by the Board. If other school districts follow suit, it will enable opposing forces to challenge the very existence of public education. Some of those forces are an increase in home schooling, public education will be unaffordable for many more poor and middle class residents, there may be a surge in home foreclosures in the district, a school voucher program may be passed this time when the Legislature convenes that will draw tax dollars from school districts that will enable parents to use their school taxes to pay for their children’s private and charter school education.
Texas already is at the bottom of the list of states providing a quality education for its children. With this latest ploy, the DSISD Board is striving to be last on the list.
Property owner would be wise to challenge the Boards decision.
Peter Stern, of Driftwood, Texas, writes on political issues, is a former Director of Information Services in private industry and government, a university professor, public school administrator and teacher, a disabled Vietnam veteran, and holds three post-graduate degrees.
