This post won’t get many views. It sounds boring, arcane, wonky. What it involves is discrimination against kids from poor districts. Panther Valley, which serves Summit Hill, Nesquehoning, Coaldale, and Lansford, has a very high property tax rate. It doesn’t mean much when the properties have a low value. The school district is starved for resources, teachers and administrators take higher paying jobs in other districts, students don’t have resources, and they have a tough time getting into good colleges (and their parents probably can’t afford good colleges anyway). According to a column by Bruce Frassinelli in today’s Times News, the Panther Valley School district doesn’t even have a librarian. No librarian!
The court case brought by a number of low income districts, including Panther Valley, is finally being heard after seven years. There is an expression: “Justice Delayed is Justice Denied.” Why does a case take seven years to be heard? What is wrong with this system?
Why didn’t the state legislators, who run every two or four years promising to do something about the property tax, never do shit? Why are non-issues that are either silly or stupid, like worry about “critical race theory” (not taught in Penna.) or mask wearing endlessly debated while kids in poor districts are shunted into dead end lives? This has got to be changed, and soon.
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