02-08-2004, 12:02 AM
Maybe the teachers salaries should be paid from a separate source. Or, citizens should be more involved in taking control of their local governments, to insure that the compensation of a teacher is higher than the city garbage collector (not that garbage collectors are unimportant).
In my experience, citizens are more than happy to pay the necessary expenses for garbage collection. The same is usually not true for education. Thus, lack of citizen control is not the problem. School funding is actually higher when the citizens at large do not take control. This is why school taxes often have to be put up during special or primary elections when the majority of the citizens are less likely to go and vote. For schools to get the funding they want, they have to rely on those who do not have kids in the school system not being motivated enough to show up and shoot down their tax increases.
Garbage collectors could easily be considered more important than teachers anyway (they certainly are in the short term; the long term is harder to say). But the reason they get higher pay is because the demand of people wanting to be garbage collectors is not so high, while the need to have them is not very negotiable.
In my experience, citizens are more than happy to pay the necessary expenses for garbage collection. The same is usually not true for education. Thus, lack of citizen control is not the problem. School funding is actually higher when the citizens at large do not take control. This is why school taxes often have to be put up during special or primary elections when the majority of the citizens are less likely to go and vote. For schools to get the funding they want, they have to rely on those who do not have kids in the school system not being motivated enough to show up and shoot down their tax increases.
Garbage collectors could easily be considered more important than teachers anyway (they certainly are in the short term; the long term is harder to say). But the reason they get higher pay is because the demand of people wanting to be garbage collectors is not so high, while the need to have them is not very negotiable.