Sorry, Doug, but I have to dig back into my video to rebut something you said in a comment back here:
It was the school board member/real estate agent in the video who
talked about lake real estate (including his own) appreciating. The
appreciation has nothing to do with the quality of schools… it has to
do with the limited supply of lake property.
There’s no way for you to know this, but in editing my hour or so of video down to less than five minutes to fit it on YouTube, I left out this elaboration by Jerry Fowler:
Clearly, he believes — as do most Realtors, from what I’ve seen — that there is a direct cause-and-effect relationship between good schools and rising property values.
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But “good schools” are not just the brick and mortar. Good schools need good teachers. As you increase the number of schools in a district, particularly in the Midlands where growth has gone on unabated for at least a decade, where do you find the good teachers? An elementary school needs 30… a middle school needs 60… and a high school needs 90 or more. They aren’t growing on trees. Do a little research on what Richland 2 is having to do to bring in new teachers. They are going OUTSIDE THE COUNTRY to bring in (and pay the living expenses for) teachers. It’s happening. Ask around. I’ve already been told by the parents of my kids friends that they are seeing cases where teachers in core subjects like Math and Science do not speak English.
Too many people are worried about building schools when what we should be worried about is who is going to be teaching in those schools? It’s not a difficult concept to understand that there is a finite supply of good teachers. After that, we start getting average teachers. Then we get teachers who have some issues. Then we get teachers who have a pulse. Once you get beyond a certain population, performance will approach the average. Great school districts will become good school districts and there is nothing that can be done about it. No matter how much of other people’s money the school board wants to spend.
And, guess what? Every decent teacher that gets brought into Lexington and Richland counties is one less available to go into the districts where good teachers are already in very short supply. How are you going to get them into Allendale if they can get top dollar to work in a district with a tax base to pay more?
The cat is out of the bag, the horse has left the barn, and the genie is out of the bottle. The residents will reap what the developers have sowed – mediocre schools, clogged roads, lack of water, and more crime. Enjoy!
And, as Austin Powers said, “that train had sailed.”
Doug says: “Every decent teacher that gets brought into Lexington and Richland counties is one less available to go into the districts where good teachers are already in very short supply. How are you going to get them into Allendale if they can get top dollar to work in a district with a tax base to pay more?”
If gov’t was limited to FUNDING education instead of VENDING education, we could provide each parent with a $10k voucher or tax credit (the state currently spends $10.2k/child).
Any of the numerous franchise school operations could pay teachers upwards of $75k/year and still operate as a profitable taxpaying business, providing the diversity and quality level that the market demands, as they compete for each parent’s voucher dollar.
Student based statewide funding would provide EQUAL TREATMENT FOR ALL, eliminating the disparity as noted by Doug.