School Funding – Thoughts From The Middle of Nowhere

I read <a href="http://www.billingsgazette.com//index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2004/04/16/build/state/25-school-funds-ruling.inc">this story</a> this morning and was flabbergasted. Whether the state is funding education enough is not the thing that made me wonder. My question is, where is the state supposed to get the money? You can't get blood from a turnip and taxes are all ready squeezing us so hard there is nothing left to give. When there is nothing left in the pot you are kind of at the end of a rope. I know somebody will say that we need to find another pot. But where? I can barely make ends meet on my ranch and the second biggest expense I have is taxes. You try to find another pot in the tax base and I, like many others, might just go under. What I don't understand about taxes for schools is where my monies go. The local taxes I pay for schools go to a school my children are not allowed to attend since it is a private school and my children don't meet the requirements to attend it. Now this kind of school funding really makes a lot of sense. n<!–more–> nYou look at the <a href="http://leg.state.mt.us/textonly/mtcode_const/const.asp">state constitution</a> and it says: n nThe legislature shall provide a basic system of free quality public elementary and secondary schools. n nand I feel that the state is providing exactly that, a basic system of free quality education. The constitution even defines where the monies are to come from to fund education. If the state is using these funds as the constitution states, isn't it upholding its own constitution instead of violating it? Just another example of judges legislating from the bench and punishing all of us for a minority that thinks they are abused. n nJudicial judgment must take deep account … of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today. Felix Frankfurter