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Comment by afavour | Hacker News Reader

Surely that depends entirely on your definition of the word “fair”. Is it fair that a lower income child is deprived of an opportunity to improve their life through education because their parents can’t afford it?

Ultimately the debate here is “should richer people have to contribute back to society to help the lives of the poorer people”? Of course you can say no to that. But the majority of society doesn’t agree.

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At least in America aren’t school taxes extremely local? I’m not sure what you are suggesting actually happens, or at least you are exaggerating quite a bit.

Poor people typically don’t live in the same neighborhoods as wealthy people in America. Wealthy neighborhood public schools tend to have lavish facilities from the tax base, so it’s more like “wealthy guy X doesn’t want to pay for the very fancy facilities he isn’t even using”, not “wealthy guy X doesn’t want to pay to send his poor neighbor’s kid to school at all”.

Where I live all the districts in the metro area pool the money and divide it so the poor student is worth just as much as the rich student in a different district. (Assuming you don't go to a private school)

There are still schools rated much worse than others.

Yes school taxes are local (county and/or city or regional school district) but schools are typically still subsidized by the state too. The fact that schools are rated differently has nothing to do with who goes there, but how it's managed (which definitely has an effect on who goes there when given a choice). That's why I come to the conclusion that free choice of school (private, charter, public or homeschool) is the only sane way to go. Don't force me to send my kids to a bad school when there's a viable option available that I think is better for my kids. My kids, my choice.

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