Education drives economic growth
Physicians of Golden Age Greece developed many of the ideas and much of the language that we still use today. More than 300 years before the birth of Christ, Greek medicine painstakingly documented the stages in the progression of illness. The most important of these was that point at which the patient started to improve toward full recovery or fell into mortal decline.
They called this the crisis.
Some people describe Warren County government’s present budget problems “a crisis.” Our elected representatives ? the 24 county commissioners ? will be asked to vote tomorrow evening on a revenue and spending blueprint that will demand either an increase in property taxes or a reduction of public services. Continuing the present level of services will not be possible without some tax increase, and any improvement will require an even larger hike.
Not to lay too much of a burden on our commissioners, part of a the revenue shortfall results from a reduction in the aggregate value of all Warren County taxable property. For many years, county budget planners could rely on small, steady increase in the revenue generated by each penny of the tax levy corresponding to general property value increases, a fiscal bonus that took some of the edge off the demand of rate increases.
It is an ominous sign when a penny on the levy produces less revenue than it did the year before. That’s exactly what happened this year. There are several reasons ? most conspicuously the reappraisal of the former Carrier plant from some $16 million down to $2 million. Other commercial properties were also granted reductions in appraisal, reflecting their diminished profitability.
While real property values are heading downward for the first time in living memory, one major measure of poverty is increasing in Warren County. As local unemployment hovers around 10 percent ? around twice the national average ? the number of school children qualifying for free and reduced-price lunches here has jumped from 50 percent last year to 54 percent currently.
As manufacturing’s relatively high-paying jobs migrate out of the county, so the do the economically competitive (educated or skill-enhanced) employees who are also the parents of Warren County school children.
Even among the skilled and professionally educated classes in Warren County, we’re uncompetitive with other Tennessee communities and the rest of the nation. Average earnings for our classroom teachers is more than $4,000 less than the state mean, according to Tennessee Department of Education figures for 2004-05.
This is an especially strange and perverse result, because public education has historically been the engine for upward economic mobility for the children of lower- and middle-class families. The key to improving Warren County schools and the added value they offer our children is retaining and recruiting the best quality teachers, but we can’t do this on the cheap. The proposed teacher pay-parity that would put Warren County teachers just at the mid-point in Tennessee would represent a major step in boosting educational quality and opportunity for our children.
By deliberately under-funding education, we pay a double penalty. Obviously, we short-change our children’s future as competitive, economically self-reliant citizens. More subtly, we short-circuit industrial recruitment by posting national notice that we don’t put much value on education. Among the many condemning statistics from public Internet sources: per-pupil expenditure in Warren County in 2004-05 was $6,334, more than $600 below the Tennessee average and $2,200 short of the national mean.
Bill Zechman is a 1st District County Commissioner and chairman of the Education Committee.