Elephant in the room

From the Courier Post Online:

Fix our public schools and broken tax system

In my humble opinion, the elephant in the room in New Jersey is manifold: the real-estate tax policy, the public school institution itself, the teachers’ union and special education.

The major factor driving it is the outdated real-estate tax policy used to support the outdated one-size-fits-all school institution. Teachers’ union demands and special education, with its unmet needs, are also money pits.

Think about it, whose job is it to educate your kids? Obviously, it’s your responsibility. If you live in a town such as Haddonfield, where you can choose a public school paid for by taxes, or one of the private schools, the cost of educating one student could vary from as much as $12,000 per pupil (public school) to $6,000 per pupil (Catholic school). The difference is union labor and costly contracts.

Of course, if you choose Catholic or another private school, you must also pay your share of the $12,000 public-school bill. Common to all of us in Haddonfield is the fact that we pay 69 percent of our tax bill to public schools, while the statewide average is 65 percent. Also, less obvious is that 80 percent of what goes to the public schools is used for teachers’ union contracts and is not limited by spending caps.