A City Without Memmory 2: Funding Education, A History Lesson

Funding Education: A History Lesson
When Florida’s community colleges were born, they were an example for the nation. Their funding was intentionally drawn from the state so that each college would have equal funding. They were placed throughout the state so that no person would be more than 99 miles from a college. It was a bastion of equalitarian funding, and a huge ladder out of poverty for thousands of students.

But soon legislatures were being courted by neoliberalism—a profit-over-people ideology that says the state is not responsible for human services, and the state began rolling back funding. Each recession is used to cut state funding and increase tuition, and this one has proved no exception. The share the state pays for education dropped precipitously, which is what has Miami-Dade College scrambling for cash and asking to tax the local community. But the recession is not the reason we cannot fund education. The higher education system is only the latest causality of an ideology that says the government can’t do anything.

The state can access certain tax streams that the local government can’t. The state can legally tax corporations and higher income earners. Counties and cities can pretty much only use regressive and moderate taxes, such as property and sales taxes that target poor and middle class people. Passing the fiscal ball from the state to the local government allows people and companies with the greatest resources get away without paying much.

Amendment 8, which would allow the county to vote to raise sales taxes to support Miami-Dade College, is a last resort, and really important to keeping the college alive. But we should be looking at the larger picture; we should be thinking about progressive funding at the state level. Let’s not just try to put a band-aid on the situation, but really remember how we got cut in the first place.