After whining for months about being cash-strapped, the Spotsylvania School Board is considering a venture that ordinary, budget-conscious people would never even contemplate (Free Lance-Star, emphasis added):
The Spotsylvania County School Board is considering allowing children of full-time employees who live out of the district to attend county schools tuition-free.
“We do see that this policy would be great for retention of our employees,” Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources Brenda Seals said at last night’s School Board meeting.
Current policy requires students who aren’t Spotsylvania residents to pay tuition of roughly $2,000 a year.
Are you kidding me?
The reason non-residents pay tuition is because they don’t pay taxes here. Thus, the tuition is their user fee. While school system employees provide an obvious service (well, usually obvious), they’re compensated for it with their salary. That’s the way the market works – even the market for public employees. For the school system to even consider a fringe benefit like this after demanding a tax increase that whacked nearly $200 million from county property values is beyond mind-boggling; it’s outright offensive to the taxpayers of the county.
If the school system is having such a hard time getting and keeping employees, perhaps they should consider attriting the jobs in question and save the taxpayer some money, for once.
Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal
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