[VRWCTexan]

What you say about upscale apartments is very true -

I'm speaking more towards the many thousands of apartment complexes (e.g. around Houston and Pasadena, etc) that due to their age and "condition" are on the tax roles valued at rates comparable to homes ($250k) - yet these same apartment complexes typically house NUMEROUS large immigrant families... thus the $$ paid in school taxes per child is much less than a typical homeowner -

Certainly there should be some form of weighted calculation in taxes that takes into account the likely number of children eing housed - Not just the perceived market value as set by the taxing authorities

[Richard Kimball]

Yeah, there's a big difference. My friend refused to get involved with lower end apartment complexes, because he said the hassles of people tearing stuff up, illegal activities going on, and the number of people not paying the rent wasn't worth it. He believed there was a floor on monthly rent, and if people couldn't pay that, it was because they were incapable of taking care of their finances, and they wouldn't pay anything.

The apartments you're talking about are ones where the owners have little money invested in the units, so any money that comes in is positive. I've known a few people that worked apartment complexes that way, also.

There are several problems with school financing, some unique to Texas, some are nationwide.

To begin with, once you get outside of towns small enough to have a single high school, people who care about their children are leaving public schools in droves. As these people either home school, or send their children to private school, they are reluctant to spend ever larger amounts on failing systems. This accentuates the downward spiral of the government schools, as the best students (the ones with caring parents) leave.

Lawsuits make it practically impossible to remove dangerous students from the schools. I knew of several teachers in Austin who were physically scared of their students. Most of the older teachers had quit even bothering to teach in the classroom. They were just trying to hang on for a couple of more years to get their pension.

These retiring teachers are not being replaced by competent teachers, at least not in large city school districts. The last time I went to a large school district to talk to students, the teacher was about a 26 year old girl, maybe thirty pounds overweight, wearing faded blue jeans, thong sandles and a t-shirt. While I talked to the class, she read a magazine. In the small school districts, the teacher generally either listened with the class or completed her paperwork while I was working.

Unfortunately, when I've been to school board meetings in larger towns, the school board is composed of people with room temperature IQs. They're primarily concerned with getting federal dollars.