Apr 11, 2015 4 min read

In states where voters decide whether a millage rate should be increased to support public services like libraries and schools – neighboring Ohio is among them – proponents often fear an inordinately high turnout of senior citizens at the polls.

The questions are often placed on the ballot in off-year or special elections, when turnout tends to be abysmal in the first place, and, of course, seniors are invariably the most devoted voters no matter the season. But many seniors tend to vote against increased revenue for schools, arguing that they are on fixed incomes and can’t abide increased property taxes on homes they have lived in for decades, and perhaps paid off years ago.

Those concerns are not without validity. But, just as often, you hear seniors complain that, hey, they finished school in the 1950s or 1960s, their kids graduated decades ago, and their grandkids attend school elsewhere. What difference does it make to them if their local school district is good, bad or indifferent?

This line of reasoning was reflected in some online comments on a recent Observer-Reporter story on trims the Trinity Area School District is making to its swimming and music programs at the middle and high schools in an attempt to close a budget gap. The same tale is being told across the region and state as schools try to get by with fewer resources. The cuts may be necessary, but they weaken the schools as institutions and narrow the horizons of students as they build their own lives.

Still, some of those commenting seemed positively gleeful at the thought of the curriculum cuts. One described parents who spoke out against the cuts at a school board meeting as “a bunch of spoiled brat parents wanting something extra for THEIR kids,” and “just a bunch of leaches (sic) sucking the life blood out of senior citizens and not the lease (sic) bit ashamed of themselves for doing it.”

Another said that “I never had swimming in school…Art was never in the mix,” while others suggested that parents pay for their children’s extracurricular activities and “What you think is necessary, many of us never had, but we received an excellent education.”

Leaving aside whether some parents can afford to pay for extracurricular activities – do we want extracurriculars and the enrichment they offer to be the sole province of the well-heeled? – the education of a community’s children is not a consumer transaction, where the obligation ends as soon as your children leave for college, military service or start their adult lives in some other capacity. The children who are in school now will one day be the engineers, lawyers and doctors who will contribute to society and the economy. And having an educated workforce boosts economic growth in the near term and long term, and cuts down on rates of drug abuse and crime, which saves us dollars that would otherwise go to police and prisons.

Someone who is now 60 years old and with grown children might well need the services of a surgeon 20 years from now. That surgeon could be in high school right now.

If you’re the one going under the knife, don’t you want that surgeon to be among the best and the brightest? If he or she is, chances are they sprang from a community that made education a priority.

And what schools offer has changed dramatically over the last half-century. Sure, art and swimming might not have been in the mix 50 years ago. Nor were other parts of the curriculum. But today’s students will also not have the luxury of going to get a union card and starting to earn a middle-class salary in a steel mill or glass factory immediately upon graduation. They are entering a job market where different skills are needed, and those skills can be nurtured through such seemingly tangential subjects as art and music.

Questions about how we fund public schools are legitimate. Some lawmakers in Harrisburg are considering now whether sales or income taxes should play a greater role.

That’s a debate we need to have.

But no matter how it turns out, no adult can absolve himself of responsibility for funding schools, which offer benefits to more than just the students enrolled and their parents.