[symple_spacing size=”80″]Just about everyone in New Jersey admits that our property taxes are way too high, even to the point of forcing people to leave the state. In the previous blog I talked about how the Supreme Court of New Jersey has misinterpreted the state constitution, the teachers and state works unions should have their pension changed to union funded, a state constitutional convention to fix the way we fund our schools and that our teachers/administrator/other workers should be paid for by the state. That was a mouthful of recapping and now lets explore some other options.

I think that we should look at what other states have done with this in mind; Michigan is the one to look at. What they did is that the money generated by the state’s sales tax pays for public education. They also capped the level of yearly property tax increases at five percent. With a result of a property tax reduction of about sixty percent.

Could it be that simple for New Jersey? And why have we not done this? Well for one thing our sales tax is very high already and the cost of education is also high. Again we can not just raise the funds needed from our sales tax. That is why I proposed that a new sales tax be put on products for children. And yes this would need to be put in a true dedicated fund, so it could not be raided for some other purpose. And yet I feel that there would not be enough money collected and there would still be a need to have a very small property tax for our schools.

Of course without controlling the spending costs of educating the children, these ideas would not work. A publicly available independent yearly audit of each school system is needed to see where your monies are being spent and how the school budget could be cut. Then everyone could see how and where your monies are be used without the ability of the school boards hiding it from the public. I think you might be in for a big surprise how your hard earned wages are being wasted.

The high cost of administrators salaries contributes to the high cost of schooling plus have you noticed how many vice principles and other assistants they now how compared to twenty or more years ago? I for one think it is time for a reduction of administrative staff, they cost so much more than teachers do and the teachers are the ones who directly interact with our children.

The why none of this has been done is fairly simple, our elected politicians do not want to tackle this hornets nest of a problem. They have been unduly influenced by the Teachers Union and by the dumb rulings of our State Supreme Court. That is why public unions need to be prevented from contributing to campaigns and lobbying. Also of course without a constitutional convention that would prevent the court from meddling with our schooling costs nothing can be fixed.

To be continued in the near future.

That is my opinion – Jumpin Jersey Mike