In addition to Sen. Dennis “The Tax Menace” Nolan (R-Las Vegas) pushing plans to charge (tax) parents if their kids play sports in school and fine (tax) parents if their kid gets sent to detention, Nolan is also co-sponsoring a bill to REQUIRE kids to wear bike helmets.
Parents who never wore a bike helmet when THEY were kids and somehow lived to tell about it would be fined (taxed) $10 if their kid is caught riding on the sidewalk on his Huffy without contributing to the profits of the bike helmet industry.
This new Nolan Tax proposal is bad enough, but the Big Brother justification for this by Frank Adams, executive director of the Nevada Sheriffs and Chiefs Association, should be frightening to any Nevadan who still clings to the notion of individual responsibility and freedom. According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, Adams “predicted parents voluntarily would comply if there were a law requiring helmets.”
Yeah. A lot of people “voluntarily” comply once they’re “forced” to by the government. Just like how all of us “voluntarily” pay our income tax every April 15th.
Posted on March 25th, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: Nevada
After school programs to be paid by the users. That sounds reasonable. A user fee.
The concept of self reliance, small government, self sufficiency, lower taxes and volunterism are the hallmarks of Republicanism. For conservatives to start kicking their feet when they have to pay their own way and demanding tax money for unnecessary expenditures is, well, unseemly.
Or, is it hypocrisy? It seems a weak argument to demand more monies be spent on educational functions (only about 55% of Nevada education dollars is spent on direct education), and simultaneously ask that after school programs be fully funded out of the limited dollars available, and then make fun of those that would either agree raise taxes or ask that the users pay their own way.
Thank you southy! Someone that is using logical thought.
Good morning Vance and Southy,
I’m assuming neither of you have kids in school sports or you would know that we do pay fees when our kids are playing. Nothing is free as they say nor do parents expect to have it to be fully funded with education dollars. However I would rather see money go to interscholastics activities and sports than condoms on cucumbers.
I would agree with you Trisha. I dont have kids but I agree with you on that. I would rather have kids in afterschool activities as well. I understand that you do have fees but I would rather leave the fee to those parents that want to pay for their kids to play sports than all of us as Mr. Muth would have the online community believe. It is not a tax, it is an optional fee and I shouldn’t have to pay for something that I dont want. This gives people that option. If you want your kids to play sports you pay for them to do so, if you dont want them to play or you cant pay there is a mechanism for that.
What a ridiculous argument.
What if I don’t want my kids to take French in school? Let the parents who want their kids to speak foreign languages pay for that privilege, right? Ditto art and music. Give people an option, right? If you want your kid taught a foreign language or how to play the kazoo or how to make a ceramic ashtray…then pay for it yourself, right? Why should the rest of us have to fork over money so your kids can learn to French, Bach and van Gogh?
Then again, maybe you’re actually onto something here.
Hey, I’ve got an idea. Let’s ONLY teach reading, writing and arithmetic…thereby GREATLY reducing the cost of public education. If parents want their kid to take gym, music, art, home economics or anything else not part of the core curriculum, they can pay for it themselves instead of us taxpayers footing the bill.
Yes, you’ve convinced me. If you’ll agree to charge parents fees for ALL non-core classes…before OR after school…then I’m open to socking it to parents with kids who are actually athletic enough to make it onto the baseball or football team.
Gee, I guess with open dialogue such as this, you really can come to a consensus.
I am confused. If parents are already paying for their kids to be involved in after school sports that is interesting (and illegal), as the bill that Nolan is putting forward would allow that to happen in October 2007.
Chuck…if the taxpayers pay for all day kidnergarten you are against it and call it free day care, but if it is an after school “elective” you equate that with curriculum that is offered during normal school hours. I don’t see what congruent argument you are offering, here.
Nice try.
If you’re advocating the elimination of all non-core education courses in public schools, and returning the money saved to taxpayers, I’m with you. If parents want their kids to take music, art, French or home ec, let them pay for it with the tax savings.
And if you allow parents full, universal school choice by way of vouchers or similar tax credits, where the education money follows the student, then maybe we can talk about OPTIONAL full-day kindergarten funded by eliminating existing programs that don’t work…such as Gov. Miller’s class size reduction boondoggle..
Vouchers and the elimination of all elective courses. You OK with that?
Would you allow the use of vouchers at National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) schools?
I’m not going to agree to changing the scope of the argument being between asking the public to fund pre and post “normal school hours” programs, and funding whatever goofy curriculum that the Board of Education has allowed; that is a different public policy issue.
Honest citizens know, in general terms, why our schools are “failing” and it has nothing to do with dollars spent per student.
Parental choice means parental choice. I might think a parent would be ill-advised to send their kid to a NAEYC school, but that’s the parent’s choice. So yes, in the immortal words of Judge Mills Lane, “I’ll allow it!”
And yes, I honestly know why our schools are failing: A government monopoly on education combined with the harmful influence the teachers union has. I guess we can at least agree on that?
Uh, you might have a different definition of “failure” than the one I follow; standardized testing scores. Seems to be what “everyone” is using, so I follow along.
I’d also like to mention that there seems to be some parental participation issue at the heart of the failure for many students; some which is empirically linked to culture.
Teachers union having a delitorius effect on education?; yeah, along with their adminstrators, they have been caught misleading the public in several instances.
I’d appreciate your observation on the issue of Nolan’s bill in that it would allow the local school board to charge parents for kids participating in the school’s organized sporting events as it relates to the anecdotal comment posted above that schools already are doing this. If what Nolan is proposing is not yet law, ie there is no current law making this economic charge permissible, than have the actions of at least one school board or school, been ultra vires? Would the injured parties be able to sue for remediation and seek damages?
If you’re going to use standardized test scores, then compare us to other nations, not other monopolized school districts in this country. “Failure” in the only word that would describe our rankings…even against many Third World countries. The fact is, like it or not, we are competing in a global economy now…and that’s not going to change.
And being one who supports bringing government decisions down to the level as close to the people as possible, I’d be all for allowing the school boards to make such a decision…as long as parents had the ability to opt out of the public school system with a voucher they could use at the school of their choice, public or private.
If you are asking me if our education system does not match up to many other industrialized countries, I have to agree. Name a TWN that exceeds us.
how is it that at least on school board has been charging parents sports fees, when there is no law allowing them to charge?
NYC long ago (20 years), had schools run by parents, teachers, and a principal. Principal could be removed by the vote of the other 2 parties. As I recall from my graduate school studies of some 20 years ago, they were referred to as “community based schools”. Maybe they are called empowerment schools, now.
Article 11, Nevada Constituition;
“Section 2. Uniform system of common schools. The legislature shall provide for a uniform system of common schools, by which a school shall be established and maintained in each school district at least six months in every year, and any school district which shall allow instruction of a sectarian character therein may be deprived of its proportion of the interest of the public school fund during such neglect or infraction, and the legislature may pass such laws as will tend to secure a general attendance of the children in each school district upon said public schools.”
Seems some private schools could not be allowed.