Teachers, students, and public education funding: the walking tour

Nearly all state colleges and universities were created out of the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, which allocated a significant portion of public lands as the funding source of such institutions.

The property tax today provides a majority of the revenue for most public schools across the country.

A candid recognition that land values are a function of the presence of community in all its extensive iterations begs the question, "Why not socialize the whole of land values and thereby satisfactorily fund all public education, K through graduate school?"

Come along on a walking tour of San Francisco social movement history that explores just such a political course as a route towards abating racist educational outcomes based upon rent-seeking privatization of community-generated locational values. Put plainly, the failure to socialize the high price of Bay Area land enables San Francisco to lead the nation in proportion of private schools to the general city population. There is a relationship between high land values and the de facto segregation of child education: lower income households send children to public schools, higher income households send their children to private schools. Socialized land values would support first-rate public schools.

As a bonus, Leon Phat, candidate for all even-numbered supervisorial districts, and a champion of municipal legislation tending towards land rent socialization, will be attending the walk!

Leon Phat: http://www.LeonPhat.com