Posted by
Rich from NW Indiana on Thursday, October 30, 2008 4:14:33 PM
One of the issues that usually come up in a election is school funding. Not so much this year for some reason. But it is still a good issue to talk about. Since I have been mostly writing about the failures of the "mainstream" media and such, lets talk about an actual governmental funding issue for a change.
Most people if polled would likely say schools are underfunded (and teachers are underpaid). Never mind that they do get a lot of tax money (often the largest part of your property tax), and much of it ends up getting wasted or spent on stuff that shouldn't be. Most communities property taxes are already too high to increase school taxes so that isn't an option for most places.
We do currently have a source of money that could be used for schools. It would not increase taxes, nor take any other money that the government has already taken from us.
I propose that all public school sports teams be funded by donations, not tax dollars. All the money spent on sports (outside of p.e.) should be directed back into the academic part of schools. I have never heard of any place doing something like this, if you have let me know.
No, we don't have to give up the high school football team (or any other sports for that matter).
Why get rid of tax dollars for school sport teams you may ask? Sports are expensive. The insurance on football alone costs from the hundreds of thousands to even millions of dollars for a average school district. It is far too much money that is outside of the core operations of a school.
Sport teams are outside the academic world of schools. Sure sports can teach, but the costs of those lessons are too expensive and shouldn't be paid by the taxpayers. Schools need to stick to academics not the running of huge sports machines.
Sports are popular enough to be able to raise its own support. The idea of losing a team or sport would rally the community to save it and I think money could be raised quickly. Any individual, foundation, civic organization, charity, business, and even the parents of the student could donate to the community sports organization. It could be set up to be tax deductible as well. It would give the community complete "ownership" of their sports teams. The only group that wouldn't be allowed to "donate" would be other government groups so the costs wouldn't be shifted elsewhere (like from a city budget etc.). They can only support in ways that they already do (crowd control, use of parks and other government property, etc).
Each community could set up a point non-profit organization for each school district to collect the donations. The biggest sport boosters could be the ones that do the fund raising, since they love the sports more then just about anyone. A idea like this could be fazed in, to get the community used to the idea. You could start out with raising 25% of the budget for sports the first year, 50% the second and so on. They could raise as little or as much as they would like. The the level of sports would be what the community wants and supports. Money could be from all kinds of places, admission, concessions, fees to the users, fund raisers, and whatever things people could think of. The use of volunteers would be paramount as well. It would give the kids involved a good lesson on economics and put a stop to some of the bad attitudes towards the community that sometimes come from sports.
Also, wealthy communities could donate to poorer districts, that would be allowed, encouraged, but totally voluntary. In my area (Northwest Indiana) towns like Munster or Lake Central could adopt East Chicago or Gary. It would help the areas communities get to know each other better and grow together. Sports do transcend different racial and economic groups more then just about anything. I think a community like Gary would be able to raise on it own, far more money then most people would think anyway as well.
Yeah, I know this wouldn't be too popular (at least at first). Yes, it wouldn't be to easy to start, and it could threaten the existence of some teams at the beginning. But privatizing public school team sports could be good for eduction. It would put education as the first priority, most honest educators would be happy to let some other group handle sports teams.
In a lot of other ways it wouldn't change school sports, teachers still would be hired to coach, the teams would still have school names, colors. playing fields would still be the same. The school districts would provide physical location, the coaching staff, those things at cost to the sports group. The sports group would pay for all of those things, like maintenance of the sports areas, insurance, coaching staff etc, but would get the income that may come in.
However all these sports groups MUST be private organizations. They must be open to all, but they should NEVER be a governmental organization in any way. They can never take public money or be allowed to tax. Other wise we will only create new money monsters that the community loses control off. In a lot of ways we don't have control of our public schools, something like this gives it back to where it belongs. In the community it is in and serves.
I would love comments on this. Help me fix little problems that would crop up if something like this would come to be. Lets hear them. I think this could be a solution to how we fund our public schools.