One of our highest goals in life — and in how my wife and I manage our affairs — should be to avoid passing unnecessary burdens to our children as a result of the choices we make. I suspect many parents share that desire, aiming to lead our sons and daughters toward a solid starting position in life. That’s a right philosophy contained within the parental heart. Yet in our place and time, there are indicators that many in today’s adult generations prioritize present comfort over long-term financial solvency for those who come behind. Today, voters where I live in Lansing, Kansas, will decide whether an irresponsible school district superintendent and hard-left school board get to continue that cycle.
I won’t attempt to rehash the financial numbers, project listings, nor tales of woe from the school district – or the informed counterpoints. That information is publicly available and needs no recap here. What has been overlooked in the current debate is that school bonds are almost always about building palatial facilities beyond a community’s means or passing the buck of stewardship failure. Bonds have become another way that public officials trade their financial responsibility for debt that others must pay. But the bond being decided where I live today is particularly egregious in its design. That’s because it passes debt for the failures of today to a generation not old enough to have a voice in the ballot outcome… taxation without representation.
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Kansas Unified School District (USD) 469 — like so much of the government school industrial complex — suffers a spending problem, not an income problem. Here, in a near rural town on the outskirts of Kansas City, the school district reports average expenditures of approximately $16,555 per student annually. This is funded by the confiscatory power of the state through property, state, and federal taxation to direct an amount approaching $38,000,000 annually to pay for government schools in a city of roughly 11,000. That averages out to over $3,400.00 for every city resident to pay for an agency that reports enrollment of “approximately 2,600.” No wonder the district’s expenses are so high. It employs over 400, roughly one on the payroll for every 6.5 students. This makes USD 469 the city’s second-largest employer, behind the state’s maximum-security prison. What do taxpayers get for this sizeable investment, constituting 41 percent of the property tax bill? A 41 percent proficiency rate in English, 39 percent in math, 36 percent in science, and no priority on the Western tradition. At best, these results are underwhelming.
Despite receiving generous appropriations, school district officials continually fail to maintain the taxpayer-funded facilities entrusted to their stewardship. If any among you dear readers let a roof wear thin or a car go without maintenance, the responsibility would be left on you to repair. But government agencies are masters of passing the buck. Lansing taxpayers are already in the midst of repaying preexisting school bond debt in a state so highly taxed that its population is declining. Yet the district wants still more. The move to take on further bond debt is not because of an unpredictable emergency. It’s instead a cycle of fiscal indiscipline.
USD 469 officials are well aware of the aversion to higher property taxes in this already well-pilfered state, county, and city. That leaves them with two options: pivot to responsible budgeting, or find a new population to tax. The second option is precisely what they’re attempting with this latest bond initiative. Knowing the county’s tax fatigue, they snuck this initiative into an off-year and off-cycle election. The people who lecture us about "democracy" prefer decision by low voter turnout.
According to proponents, the bond increases current property taxes only slightly. That’s technically correct, assuming out-of-control property valuation trends continue. Its biggest damage is done in extending current bond debt by adding an additional $35-million principal debt load, serviced by $26-million of additional interest. The current bond debt is set to be retired in 13 years. If passed, this new bond initiative will extend that debt for another eight years — making it a burden for the community’s children to pay off.
Bond proponents aim to flip the paradigm from one in which adult generations enable a steady foundation for today’s children to one that instead saddles them with a future bill in order that irresponsible school district officials can avoid the outcome of their management failures today. The kindest term to describe this is chronological theft. On a moral level, it’s fiscal betrayal of those too young to wield the ballot by today’s adult generations. This madness must end.
Proponents of the bond would have you believe that indebting the next generation is the best interest of schools, kids, and community — in that order, according to the Vote Yes signs. Discussions about spending ever more sums of money on public schools always focus first and foremost on what’s good for the school, to the exclusion of all else. They forgot that the actual purpose of the district should be to provide a proper and worthwhile education. The school system should be a servant to that cause. But the arguments in favor of more spending always justify preserving and further enriching the system and teachers' unions — both of whom exist with an air of moral and professional superiority, and with hands always seeking a deeper place in taxpayer pockets.
Voters in Lansing will make this decision today. But the tendency is not limited to this city. Public school administrators nationwide have an ever-increasing thirst for wealth redistribution in the name of “education.” Will we finally begin holding the line and demonstrate living within a budget to our children? Or will voters add yet another financial burden to a generation already at a significant financial disadvantage compared to the conditions from which we started adult life? The only responsible, moral, defensible thing to do is vote no on the reckless and immoral USD 469 bond initiative here, and defeat similar efforts around the nation that enrich a growing oligarchic government school system by attacking the fiscal solvency of American families.
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