Posted on 01/16/2015 4:37:19 AM PST by MichCapCon
Robert Luce lives in and pays property taxes to Canton Township. On a daily basis he watches school buses from the Plymouth-Canton school district pass by his house.
However, the subdivision where Luce lives is located within the jurisdiction of the Wayne-Westland school district. This is also the district to which Luce and his neighbors pay school taxes.
An elementary school in Plymouth-Canton is one mile away from his home, Luce said. The closest Wayne-Westland elementary school is four miles away.
“It makes no sense,” Luce said.
For parents it makes a great deal of difference though, and not just because of geography: According to a school performance analysis by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Plymouth-Canton has better schools.
Like Luce, other residents of Luce's Parkview Estates subdivision (which has about 40 homes) also want to be within the Plymouth-Canton school district. Together, they petitioned the district to make it happen. Attorney Joe Horka handled the case for Parkview Estates and said both the Plymouth-Canton and Wayne-Westland school districts denied the residents' petition. Horka said an appeal with the Wayne County RESA (an intermediate school district to which both regular districts belong) was also denied.
Now, the people who live in Parkview Estates are taking their fight to the office of the Michigan Superintendent of Public Instruction, which has scheduled a hearing for Friday.
Plymouth-Canton School Board President Judy Mardigian and Vice President Adrienne Davis did not return emails seeking comment.
Luce said the most important part of the debate is a parent’s right to get the best education possible for their children, and Plymouth-Canton schools are much better than Wayne-Westland schools.
“Every parent wants their kids to have the best education possible,” Luce said.
To get a truer picture of how much learning individual schools provide, the Mackinac Center's school performance analysis adjusts test scores to reflect the socioeconomic status of students. It gave 10 of Wayne-Westland's 15 elementary and middle schools a “D” grade. Four scored “C”s and one had a “B.” Plymouth-Canton school district had 20 of its elementary and middle schools graded. There was one school with a “F” grade, two with “D”s and 14 with “C”s, one with a "B" and two had "A"s. Plymouth-Canton’s three high schools received “B”s. Wayne-Westland’s two high schools received a “C” and a “D”.
The elementary and middle school grades are based on data from 2009 to 2012. The high school grades are based on data from 2010 to 2013.
Plymouth-Canton does allow students from adjacent school districts to attend 12 of its elementary schools under a state "schools of choice" law. Under this law parents are responsible for providing transportation for their own children.
Kyle Olson, founder of the Education Action Group Foundation, Inc., said the idea that government can assign children to specific schools based on where they live is antiquated.
“To me, it’s ridiculous,” Olson said. “There’s this belief that every school is of equal quality and every teacher is of equal quality. That was the rationale of having a system of schools where you are assigned to a school based on where you live. Clearly that is not the case. Today, we have data to show that there are schools that are better than other schools. Here, you have parents who are saying, 'I want my child to go to this school because it is better quality.' You have the state saying, ‘No. We have these artificial borders that we set up.’ It is such a disservice.”
Olson said the solution is to put the child and the parent at the center of the equation and “allow the dollars to follow the child.”
“But if that is what a parent decides to do and a school district can’t stay open, then that school district should have closed a long time ago,” Olson said.
(cough)
The redistricting that followed is rather byzantine, but everyone with an ounce of sense realizes that it is the equivalent of "forced busing." Kids on our street now go to the school that is over twice as far away as the one they previously attended. By a fortunate occurrence, the city happened to add more public transportation to allow "disadvantaged' children to ride all the way across the city to their new school. It is almost like… umm… a miracle how that worked out.
Mr. niteowl77
Where I live one of the selling points in a home listing is KISD (Keller Independent School District). If you have children it is probably more important to consider the school district you are in than the number of bathrooms when buying a home. The government doesn’t yet control where you live. You do.
Yet another example of why I support making FREE ‘public education’ paid like every other service...by those that use ‘em.
Kill the auto property tax and let market forces take effect.
Bad school? Fire ‘em
Bad teacher? Fire ‘em
Curriculum of choice for students/parents (arts vs. sciences vs. vocational vs.)
etc. etc.
People worry about whether government schools are teaching Communism.
Of course they do, because government schools ARE Communism.
Abolish government schools!
So the quality of the Godless, soul-killing Planned Parenthood government brain-washing center is a selling point, huh?
An added bonus has been being a member of St. Ann Catholic parish. We've seen it grow from 1000 to 8000 households, and is now the 6th largest parish in the US.
We're going to downsize in 2-3 years, but it will be a move closer to the HS and church. Our youngest will be in HS, and I'm burned out from all the trips to the HS when my two older kids went there (it's over 6 miles from our house, and a round trip is usually 30 minutes or more).
It would be nice if people could afford private schools but many times that is not an option. When my 4 children went to catholic high school it was about $4000 a year each, By the time the last one graduated it was $7000. Now tuition is $13000.
I always thought that being in a Catholic school sheltered my children from being exposed to ungodly teachers but I was wrong. My daughter recently told me teachers would say that the school doesn’t condone talking in favor of abortion and premarital sex but ...... and then would speak in support of abortion and even homosexuality.
STATIC THINKING! You are imagining trying to put children through private school WITHOUT REPEALING THE TAXES THAT PAY FOR GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS.
If government schools were abolished, all property taxes could be cut in half.
Since private schooling costs less than half as much as government schooling, there’s, in effect, more free money for schooling.
With their property taxes cut in half, all grandparents, relatives, and philanthropists could easily afford to provide the needed help for schooling for all poor children.
I ma against Catholic schools, also. They infantilize parents. As does “CCD.”
If something (the Catholic Faith) is so unimportant that parents don’t need to know it well enough to teach it to their children—which is the implicit premise of Catholic schools and “CCD”—then why should the children learn it?
Your argument that we need “free” government schools because some people can’t afford private school is an argument for Communism across the board. An argument we are losing. We now have government-run health care, 52 million people on government food, etc. Government school was the beachhead for the Communists in America.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.