Jacksonville is experiencing flight to the suburbs, not to work mind you but for people to live and the reason is our schools and this will have devastating consequences for our schools.
Our schools receive the bulk of their funding from property taxes and as values plummet in Jacksonville the loss can be at least partially made up by more people buying and owning houses. Well if more and more people who work in Jacksonville are choosing to live in the neighboring counties, building and buying houses, then that property tax money goes to fund those schools rather than ours.
John Peyton said we are one great school system away from being a great city. John Delaney echoed those sentiments and Adam Hollingsworth the governor’s new chief of staff has bemoaned our plight as well. Businesses report having a hard time finding qualified applicants from our recent high school grads and you can’t go more than a few days without reading about some new horrifying crime created by one of our young people.
Make no mistake our school system drives our economy and our economy considering our resources is nowhere where it should be.
The good news is we can turn things around if we had the will to do things the right way and we could do so with a minimal investment. The bad news is our education leaders have shown little desire to do things the right way for quite some time now.
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