Notes from my Knapsack 11-15-18

Notes from my Knapsack 11-15-18

Jeff Gill

 

Community and continuity

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We've passed the most recent school levy, and no doubt will have to face questions of how public education is funded again within a few years, because that's the system our state legislature has created.

 

Property taxes do not increase with land valuation, so there's something called a rollback built into the system. Add in unfunded mandates for expenditures from federal policies, fluctuations in enrollment while square footage and other fixed costs stay the same, plus the overall cost of everything, and you have a system which as is well-known has been declared unconstitutional by our state Supreme Court, but is still the prevailing model.

 

Our statehouse points out, accurately, that they are spending more on education in biennial budgets, and that they keep moving more money to less fortunate districts, which is also true. So a residentially blessed area like Granville has the weird double whammy of having less business tax base to absorb some of the cost of running a top-flight public school district, but we are having state formula funding taken away even as by law the district doesn't see benefit from increasing property values unless we choose to give and re-gift it to them in property tax renewals.

 

So we now have an income tax basis to try to add some stability to our education budget, and reduce the frequency with which the school board and administration is forced to come to the voters for funds. I think it was a good idea, and it's done, or as done as any such voter driven process can be.

 

I wrote my way towards this last request for levy support through our local and state history about education funding, not wanting to make the story about an endorsement per se. That's not what the Sentinel really wants to see these contributor columns doing, anyhow. But I do want to figure out how to do an endorsement of a different sort.

 

What I think needs support and endorsement and a public campaign of some kind, with the involvement of school board, staff, civic officials, business and commercial interests, and indeed all of us, is this: consider staying in Granville. I'd like to make a formal endorsement for a plan I am already acting on myself . . . staying in Granville after my child has graduated from our excellent and high achieving schools.

 

Because it dawned on me as we approached our son's high school graduation that a startling number of the friends and fellow parents we'd been associating with and chaperoning alongside and working shoulder to shoulder by were putting out "For Sale" signs the day the "Graduation Open House" signs came down.

 

I'm still wrestling, almost three years later, with what this means. I know it's true almost anywhere to some degree, and it's hard to find hard data on the phenomenon (I've been trying).

 

But my anecdotal evidence, and general conversational inputs, have all told me it's remarkably common here, and perhaps more than in most places, maybe even more here than in other high achieving school districts. Families come for the schools, and my wife and I have to admit we moved here in the middle of our son's first grade year, and they leave quite often once the kids are off to college.

 

Downsizing makes sense when the nest empties, and it can be hard to downsize in Granville. That's no doubt part of the problem. And taxes are higher here, but not by as much as folks seem to think. I want to continue this discussion into 2019, and ideally carry it into this question: what would it take to help make Granville a place people would want to stay in after the school years are over for a family?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he and his family have lived in Our Fayre Village since 2004. Tell him about why you came, and stayed, at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.