Public schools could lose billions in funding under tax proposals

Sunday, Dec. 10, 2017 | 2 a.m.

“The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.” — John Adams, 1785.

That sentiment, which was shared by Adams’ fierce political adversary Thomas Jefferson, is worth repeating as House and Senate negotiators work out the differences in their tax plans.

Public education, a bedrock of the American experience, is under heavy attack by the Republican Party via its tax measures.

Both the House and Senate versions contain provisions that would disadvantage public schools, most notably through changes in what is known as the SALT (state and local taxes) deduction.

The changes — elimination of deductions for income and sales tax deductions, and a $10,000 cap on the deduction for property taxes — would indirectly affect the ability of public schools to obtain funding.

To understand how, first understand that state and local taxes provide the bulk of public school funding. The SALT deduction was designed to help state and local governments, including public schools, by making state and local taxes hurt a little less for taxpayers, and make it easier for them to fund those public institutions.

So cutting and capping the deductions threatens to make taxpayers chafe more about paying the taxes that keep public schools running, and more resistant to tax increases to provide more revenue for those schools.

The Government Finance Officers Association, a nonpartisan group of state and local finance officials in the U.S. and Canada, put it this way:

“Deprived of SALT as a tool for keeping their tax burden lower, they (taxpayers) would push back against the tool that they have available to them — local tax rates, which provide the revenues needed to provide essential public services, such as police officers, teachers, firefighters and other valuable public servants, along with critically important investments that provide for infrastructure, public safety, healthy communities, and many factors contributing to the quality of life.”

According to the National Education Association, the GOP’s changes could result in $370 billion in spending cuts for public schools over the next 10 years. As many as 250,000 jobs could be lost, the NEA said.

At the same time, an element in the Senate plan also would grant breaks to families who home-school their children or send them to private schools.

One such change involves 529 savings plans, in which earnings grow tax-free provided they are then used for college-related expenses. The Senate plan would allow 529 plans to be used for K-12 private and religious schools.

Although the expansion of 529 plans wouldn’t directly affect public schools, it would create unfairness in the education system. They’ll be most beneficial to people who can afford to invest in them, not people who are living paycheck-to-paycheck. Worse for middle-class Americans and the poor, 529 plans used for elementary and high school won’t be particularly helpful for those who can’t afford to make heavy investments in them early on.

It would be one thing to make private schools more available to families from across the socioeconomic scale, but this measure wouldn’t do that. And considering that less than 10 percent of children in the U.S. attend private schools, which is understandable given that average annual tuition at those schools is nearly $10,000, it’s more of an attack on public education than a benefit to the American public.

Taken together, the SALT and 529 measures threaten to reduce upward mobility and further harden the lines between our society’s haves and have-nots.

The GOP is pulling up the ladder, which is not what Adams and Jefferson had in mind.