Chapter 4 Blog- Trustees fear spending cutbacks

http://www.leaderpost.com/news/Trustees+fear+spending+cutbacks/2340806/story.html

Summary
The provincial government are being worn by the Saskatchewan school board to not cut the funding for education from kindergarten to grade 12 since the school board is not able to set property tax rates. In order to reduce Saskatchewan’s dependence on property taxpayers to fund education, the government set province wide property tax and carry on more cost for school through their general revenue. This increased the province’s share of school funding from 51% to 63%; however, it also caused an education property tax cut for 2009. By 2010, the province has plans to reduce the property tax rate so taxpayers could save $53 million. Both the provincial government and the school board are planning a long term funding formula in order to replace the grant system.

Connection
In chapter 4, it mentions some of the responsibilities of the provincial government, including education and how the provincial government is restricted to collect direct taxes. Education is now a large portion of government spending and many people feel that the government should spend more money on education. School boards are not able to impose or collect taxes which is why they would not be able to set tax rates but they would need to ask for a certain amount of money from the property tax that is collected. Because education is the second most important provincial program (according to the textbook), government is spending more to provide an education for students.

Reflection
I think that the provincial government providing more funding for education will definitely benefit the students for a better education. In the article, it said that if the school board does not receive adequate funding for the schools, they would have nowhere to receive funding. This made me consider whether or not the government should come up with other ways to provide more money for education. I agree that the government should increase the spending on education, but by doing that, it would cause higher tax rates for property tax. It’s confusing how the article mentions that they would plan to increase the province’s share of education funding and decrease the property tax rate at the same time. Would they increase other taxes to have enough money? If they did then tax payers may not be happy with paying more taxes for other services.