Property taxes/fees, where I live in Bannock county, have gone up year after year, and there’s been no improvement in services, especially grade school education.

The last time I complained to the county assessor’s office (when my three kids were attending Pocatello High School) the employee told me to blame school district 25.  The employee showed me a chart that proved that the largest chunk of property taxes/fees was going to the school district 25.  The county employee also said that every time a levy is passed it increases the school district fee portion of the overall property tax bill.

That fee has gone up year after year, and is one of the reasons Bannock county has one of the highest property taxes/fees in all of Idaho.  All of Bannock county has a population of more than 82,ooo, according to U.S. Census Bureau 2010 numbers.  Compare that to Ada county, where the state capitol Boise is located, where the population is more than 390,000.

Then comes the U.S. Census Bureau report on how much each state spends on education, and surprisingly Idaho is second to last in spending (Utah is dead last).

Another surprise is that most of Idaho’s education funding comes from the state, not the counties.  66% of education spending in Idaho comes from state taxes (that’s higher than the national average of 46%).  So where’s all our county school tax/fees going to?

I am now the guardian of my children’s half sister.  She is attending Pocatello High School, and I’m amazed at how much the quality of education has gone down since my kids graduated (by the way, you also have to pay huge fees directly to the high school that your child attends, which is another reason to question the school district’s taxes/fees).  Not only that, but I finished high school in the early 1980s, and I can tell you that nothing has improved since then, as far as the quality of education.

Only since the No Child Left Behind act (aka Adequate Yearly Progress, AYP) went into effect, has school district 25 made real efforts to improve test scores, but they’re still not doing well enough: For 2009-10, one elementary school failed AYP,  all four middle schools failed and all three high schools failed.  It’s interesting that school district 25 officials are blaming the failures on “economically disadvantaged students“, as well as disabled and Hispanic students.  What is this a new kind of class/race warfare?

Decade after decade U.S. taxpayers have paid more and more money for crappy education that never improves!  What do we get for our money?  There’s been lots of paranoid new rules created: One year a high scoring student at Pocatello High School was not allowed to graduate because she dyed her hair pink (her parents sued and won)!  Also, huge school administrative bodies were created through the 1980s-90s, which suck up more money than the actual education of our children!  Do the kids get new books?  No: When my children attended Junior High they showed me their science book, which had an intro that said “One day man will walk on the moon.”!

As a parent and local taxpayer I’ve seen the funding for schools going up year after year (that might finally be over with this bad economy), and the quality of education going down year after year.  That is what makes education funding scandalous!