Austin school district tax increase

I read this editorail in statesman.com which talks about an issue of voter's approval to raise pay rolls to Ausin's teachers. These days, many people are very much concerned about their job security beside their increase in tax. Moreover, the district is asking voters to approve well-deserved pay raises for the 12,000 teachers and other full-time employees. I like the author’s idea of mentioning the fact that pay raise to teachers is not matching the pace of inflation. Author has mention that because of the low pay for teachers, many school districts cannot employ capable teachers, so it is leading to poor quality education but surrounding districts are giving raises and are aggressively recruiting Austin's experienced teachers right out of their classrooms. It is clear that raising the salary to teacher means more or less raising the local tax. The author also brought up a good point that without approval from voters, there is no way that teachers’ pay would go up next year. In this editorial, the author has blamed to Texas School Districts for fund mismanagement and lack of proper auditing their balance sheet but, he has failed to mention the way how it can be corrected.

Recently, I red an article about Dallas School district in Dallas Morning News. Dallas District is fixing to lay off as many as 415 teachers because of extreme budget deficit. It was also started due to budget mismanagement in the beginning. In the same manner, Austin ISD is also very vulnerable in a way that voters will look at the teachers’ raise. According to the author, pay raise for teachers’ means rising of property tax. The rise in the property tax not only goes to Austin ISD, but also to the State government according to Texas School Financing law, the author mentions. It is very hard to predict how much raise is sufficient to make a decent raise in teachers’ salary. The author admits that the time of tax raise is very unfavorable during this economic downturn. It is very hard to say that voters will agree with increasing their tax when they are trying to find the way to save penny. At the same time, many Austin ISD teachers are not really encouraged by the way they are being paid. Obviously teachers’ dissatisfaction means lack of quality education for students. At the end, the author tries to become bit more political by mentioning voters would of course think about this situation when they go to the poll.