It appears the North East School District believes artificial turf is really important and they’ve committed $3.5 million to replace the track and field with the best synthetic materials your money can buy. If the NESD was a huge and growing feeder school supplying football players to Big Ten college teams, you might agree it makes sense, but that isn’t the case and the size of our student population is actually declining. With dramatically higher prices for everything you buy, you’re now paying for artificial turf and higher taxes, too.
During and after the lockdowns put in place for Covid, many parents and students began looking for alternatives and the longer the public schools kept the doors closed, the more intense the search for options became. This occurred across the country and it happened in North East as well. Now the district is proposing an almost 5 percent tax increase because they can’t balance their budget and they point to the cost of charter schools as a major problem, but public schools, here and elsewhere, created that problem themselves.
School choice provides an incentive to do better
Vouchers, where school tax dollars follow the student wherever he or she may decide to go, are a great way to give students a choice and it provides an incentive for public schools to improve through the simple, but very effective, process of competition. Although school choice is growing fast in many states, PA has been slow to adopt the idea because our Democrat governor and Democrat controlled house refuse to support it.
If students and their parents want something better than what the local public school is offering, there are more and more options becoming available every day. Public schools should welcome the chance to prove their worth by offering an excellent product, but they seem locked into an era long past, the time when public schools were huge, student populations were growing and there were no other options. It was one size fits all. These days, in those locations where parents have options, many vote with their feet. In Florida, where school choice has become very successful, some public schools may even close because the students have chosen to go elsewhere.
There are many education alternatives in Pennsylvania:
Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools
PA Cyber Charter Schools
Pennsylvania private schools
Christian Schools in Pennsylvania
Home school resources in Pennsylvania
The links above are just a place to start. Many of those links lead to a list of many more related links. If you are interested you can easily find more resources on your own and talking to parents in the area whose children are enrolled in one of these alternatives to regular public schools will yield a wealth of information and encouragement.
If you think the public schools are doing a great job and spending your money wisely, you don’t have to do anything, but if you believe there are more important things for schools to focus on than artificial turf, you might be ready to look at one of the alternatives. Not every option is right for everyone, but there’s a good chance one of them might be right for you and there’s no reason not to check them out. You might also ask your state legislators to establish school vouchers for real school choice, so parents will have more and better options for their children.
See also:
The Parent Revolution A book by America’s most prominent and influential advocate of school choice
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Jim Konzel says
The NFL is moving away from artificial turf due to the high injury rate to players. Why is NESD moving towards it, and raising taxes?!?
Joan Bubna says
If we could supply great football players every year I might agree but I don’t see that happening and with our economy I don’t think this is the time how many of the students have parents that are school taxpayers
Ted Jones says
This has been the blame for the last few years. Between the State not having their budget done prior to School Districts being forced to have their budgets complete, blaming it on parents finding alternatives are at fault for endless increased taxes.
As one former school board member stated…be prepared to have your taxes raised for the foreseeable future if the district continues to loose students to alternative education.
As long as the district can legally raise your taxes without a say from the people they have shown that’s exactly what they are going to do and there is nothing we can do about it!
Paul Crowe says
That’s the result of Pennsylvania’s Act 1, signed into law by Governor Ed Rendell (D) in 2006. It needs to be changed. It was sold to the voters as property tax relief, but it gives school districts a lot of room to raise your taxes.
America First says
People need to contact. Mr. Banta our State Rep and demand Act One is repealed. As long as it’s in place there are no guard rails keeping school districts in line.
Thomas J Buckel says
North East School district should not be putting in turf that usually has kids twist their joints and ligaments for football unless they are going to buy kids shoes that work better on the turf to help the dangers of twists. Was different years ago when mercyhurst college was going to help pay for and use for college sports also
Lorraine Haibach says
If people use alternative schools you still will pay school taxes for public schools. I am very much against the raise of the school tax. I am on a fixed income. The artificial turf is a concern also.
Paul Crowe says
Alternative schools are the first part of school choice. The other part is school vouchers which use tax dollars to fund the student, not the system. A student gets a voucher that can be used at any school to pay tuition, so if they choose an alternative, the traditional school they are leaving doesn’t get your tax dollars anyway, forcing the parents to pay twice. That’s where the real competition comes in. The fact that alternatives exist now without vouchers is an indication of how much parents and students want a change. Traditional school systems resist vouchers because they believe many more will leave if given the opportunity to apply their tax dollars elsewhere.
See also: American Federation for Children a voucher advocacy group
Concerned Citizen says
Not only are families exploring different education pathways but TEACHERS are too! We have lost too many good teachers and staff the past few years to neighboring districts…why ?!? There is something going on here in NE and it’s hard to “put a finger on it”. Teachers don’t feel valued so they too are embracing “school choice”. Not sure how to get this ship turned around. Without quality teachers we will be sunk.