"If you can't afford the taxes, you should move." An override supporter actually said that to a fellow citizen of Amherst; as it happens, a citizen whose ancestors have lived here for about as long as there has been a town. Comments like that are despicable. The situation that provoked it - the dependence on local property taxes to pay for education - is bad for our community and for the state as a whole.
Why bad for the community? Well, besides the callousness of that remark, there's the fact that property taxes are regressive, and have no relationship to people's ability to pay. Also, there is no relationship between services received and amounts paid. Very few if any residences pay as much in taxes per year as it costs to educate one child. The difference is made up by some state aid (largely based on gambling – a disguised tax on people who can't do math) and other tax payers who don't currently have children in the pubic schools. The competition for houses in desirable communities drives up the price of those houses, making it harder and harder for less affluent people to buy there. Tax increases make it more difficult for them just to stay in their homes. Both contribute to an upscale version of gentrification, changing the composition and values of the town.
Paying for education with local property taxes is also bad for the Commonwealth as a whole. It perpetuates and exaggerates class differences. Over generations, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Families that can afford to buy houses in towns or cities with reputations for good schools so their children will receive the benefits and competitive advantages of a better-than- average education. Other parents, who often started their own lives disadvantaged by racial or class discrimination, see their children suffering from an inadequate education - to quote the title of Jonathan Kozol's searing account, "savage inequalities."
Quite understandably, these parents, represented by their communities, aren't putting up with it. They sued. On April 26, a judge in the Suffolk Superior Court found that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has not been investing enough money in public schools, and, as a result, children living in poorer communities, especially children from low-income or non-English-speaking families, and disabled children, are suffering in comparison to other students in districts that can afford to spend more. Justice Botsford's conclusions do not settle the case; instead, her findings go to the state's highest court. If it decides, as expected, that the state has been inadequately funding public education, state aid to education will have to increase by $1.5 to $3 or $4 billion.
One of the towns in that suit is our neighbor, Belchertown. Several others are in our neighborhood: Holyoke, Orange, Gill, Montague, and Springfield. Springfield and Holyoke are among the poorest communities in the state. Amherst is not an island, remote from these troubles. We live in this Commonwealth; it is not good for us, our future, or anything we care about, to have children receiving an inadequate education. We depend on the health of the environment and the economy of this state, and this region in the state. In the modern economy, people cannot possibly be economically self-sufficient, let alone make real contributions to society, without a good education. Not to mention that I find it morally offensive to live in a state that talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk when it comes to equal access to education.
Even though we live in a town where people have sometimes decried the competitive aspect of many sports, we are collectively engaging in savage competition for what really matters in life: providing people with the knowledge, confidence and credentials to get the best jobs when they are adults. Children who come from disadvantaged families go to schools with far fewer resources. It isn't right, and it isn't good social policy. Bumper stickers say "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" or "children are our future." Of course, but it's not just the children in our little town. The children of Holyoke and Springfield need and deserve a bigger percentage of our tax contributions.