“Broke down, cracked and shattered, left in pieces like it never even mattered. Broke down, torn and frayed. Ain’t nothin’ left you could give away. There’s no turnin’ round, It’s broke down.”
- Slaid Cleaves
“It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.”
- Edmund Burke
The Dallas ISD Administration is similar to that of the City of Dallas when you compare them in the areas of greatest expense: personnel, vehicles and buildings.
When you look at your property tax bill, the mil rate, or % billed to taxpayers for services, is broken down. Over 3/4 of Dallas property tax money goes to Dallas ISD. The other 1/4 goes to the City of Dallas.
Dallas ISD is charged with educating children.
The City of Dallas is charged with providing a multitude of services, including water, police and roads which are crucial to all taxpayers.
Companies like ICMA collect data on efficiency of cities by comparing costs of personnel, vehicles and buildings. These companies publish reports which are distributed, and the cities can then compare themselves to each other in terms of efficiency.
You pay that 3/4 of your property tax money to DISD regardless of whether or not you have children or if your children are not of public school age.
When you look at the efficiency, for each $1 the City of Dallas spends on personnel, vehicles and buildings, Dallas ISD spends $6 for the same thing.
What are you getting for your money from each of these administrations?
Are you sufficiently satisfied with the quality of services your family has received from Dallas ISD to continue to pay more?
As a resident of the city of dallas and a home owner that pays taxes i feel that there has not been enough explained to me about where the money has gone and what dallas plans to do to make certain that this does not happen again. i am not interested in seeing my taxes increase in order to make up for the huge loss that dallas achieved last year. i feel that when property values decrease—as they are going to because of the recession that the city must be receptive to accepting these lower values and therefore decreasing the available money for the disd’s budget. facts are that the schools are horrid. if the schools were better the demand for private schools would be much lower. this city has private schools on every corner and still we cannot manage to raise the quality of the disd schools with the enormous budget that they have. the city of dallas needs to think private in how they climb out of this whole. they need to compete with the private schools and convince the tax payers that their money is being well spent if they ever want to evolve into something other than what they are today. small communities like preston hollow should have exceptional schools based on the enormity of their taxes, yet the home owners in preston hollow are very likely to send their kids to private schools based on the quality of the public schools in the area. the dollars are significant and we tax payers should have the right to know where they are going—and we should have the right to share our opinion on how they should be used.
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By: eric maas on January 5, 2009
at 5:47 pm