To: The Dallas Morning News
Date:  May 10, 2006
Subject: School Finance 
Result: expurgated version printed (paragraph 3 omitted)

Dear Editor,

There's a problem, which I've never heard addressed, with this whole concept of "wealthy" school districts being required to "share the wealth" with the poorer school districts. That is, there are many people who live in a district that is called "wealthy", like the Richardson Independent School District where I live, who are far from wealthy, and in fact may be downright poor. Yet they still have to contribute to school districts where there are probably some people who are very wealthy.

There is only one fair way to "share the wealth", and that is where the people who actually have the wealth are the ones doing the sharing. And the only way to attain such equity and fairness is with a state income tax, which would be based on people's actual wealth, and not just their proximity to wealthy people.

Concerning the financing of public education, another problem I see is that our attention is solely directed to how to get more money to pay for it. It seems to me we ought to do a lot more thinking about how to reduce the costs. And I believe the number one way to do that would be to consolidate the many school districts into a few regional districts - if not one state-wide authority that makes all public education decisions.

Thank you, John Vehon