Is expanding control over Mi Schools wise or furthering bureaucratic waste/erroding local wisdom

Peter Luke: Lansing could offer incentives for school districts to merge or share services

By The Grand Rapids Press

August 16, 2010, 5:31AM

Whatever you want to call it — consolidation, rightsizing, reorganization — it should do two things. One is to use tax dollars more efficiently. The other is to rescue children. Full story »

 
my comment:
 
Remember when Governor Ingler came thru town touting Proposal A. Asked him why he thought it wise to put control of education in Lansing when it would be better at the local level.  His answer was that Proposal A would not do so and that local control when remain. Follow the money.  That brings us to one question, where is it better controlling government, at the local level or a higher level of government?
Each community has different advantages and disadvantages. Each community can afford more or less, but one fact is clear, when taxing is local, spending is local and who is also controllable. We are facing unparallel fiscal crisis and for the State to dictate it's demands onto a system that cannot afford it, what do we expect to be done when it cannot be sustained?
If you take the road of more State control, how far will we go before we cannot sustain it.  But if we were to move control of taxation back to the local level and were to eliminate State mandates on education and administration of it, how far could a local school district change to meet their fiscal reality?
If you do go down this road of greater state control, then it is imperative to change taxing for schools.  You must then eliminate all school revenue from property taxation and move it to sales tax. Education is now a monster, it's budget being larger then the entire rest of the State Budget combined. Who will control the bureaucracy as it continues to mushroom out of control.? Who will protect the people from losing their castles to pay for it by taxing their homes and business? Better to roll back Proposal A and put we Michiganders back in charge of our own future, Beelzebub.
 
R. George Dunn