| UPDATE: Readers note that The Advocate has also come out in favor of approving the renewal of the 1 cent sales tax for the EBR Parish School System.
The Daily Kingfish urges the voters of East Baton Rouge Parish to vote YES on the renewal of a 1-cent sales tax for 10 years.
We do not come to this decision lightly, as we are talking about one of the more regressive taxes in the nation - the sales tax. It certainly hits the pocketbook of those with less money harder than it does those with lots of it.
Opponents of the renewal rightly point out that there has been a regression in the scores of EBR Parish students. There's a simple explanation for that ... Zachary, Baker and now Central have all left the EBR Parish School System. Those students were, when in EBR Parish, among the highest scoring students on the LEAP test. We no longer have them, and thus, our scores have gone down.
Opponents of the renewal talk about how we need to send a message to the EBR School Board by voting no, and force them to focus on raising the students' scores before they will renew any new taxes. That's the wrong message, as opponents of public education (let's be real here ... that's what Rolfe McCollister and his ilk are) have NEVER adequately answered the question of how taking money away from public schools is supposed to help them. Taking money away from a business doesn't help them compete in the marketplace, nor does taking money away from public schools help them compete with private schools.
However, it our belief that in order to make our school system a place where we can teach our children that education is the key to success in life, we must not shortchange it. It makes absolutely no sense to cut education funding when the East Baton Rouge Parish School System is poised to break free of the shackles of past racism and the austerity budgets of the 20th Century. We have only built some of the schools we need to educate our children in the 21st Century. We have more to build, as there are 3 on the way, and more on the drawing board.
VOTE YES on the School Tax Proposals. |
