Maybe the answer is not available yet
I respect Right of Center's question. It is one I would like to see answered, and I am a very staunch supporter of Senator Corzine in this election. I watched that debate Sunday morning with the Republican candidates and they all made unfulfillable promises. Some of them, Forrester in particular, seemed prepared to promise to blacktop everyone's driveway and hand you a couple of grand, personally, from his own wallet. At least the Senator has provided a written version of his intentions which, if not perfectly clear at this point, provides the basis for discussion and a starting point for all of our questions. Yes, I would like to know exactly how it compares to other proposals, dollar for dollar, and how it will be paid for.
Property taxes are not the only issue that concern me, though, as huge as they are. For one thing, I do not want to see our school systems gutted in order to pay for property tax rebates. This seems to be the direction some of the Republican candidates were taking. When you gut the public school system to pay for property taxes, you basically make real education the province of the wealthy only. There really aren't that many private schools to make up for a murdered public school system, and there certainly aren't that many that people who are not at least upper middle class can afford.
And let's call a spade a spade. There is an underlying purpose in the attack on public schools, which is to kill the teacher's unions because they consistently vote Democratic. That's what is going on in California right now.
NJ's school system is rated fourth in the country, which is pretty good. I don't want to see that drop. If anything, I want to see the standards raised everywhere, so that we are not only number four, but number four in a great national school system. If that costs money, I can appreciate that. The high school kids of today are going to be treating my macular degeneration when I'm seventy-five. I want them to be well-educated when they do.
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