TNT letters: How to reform U.S. schools; why Pierce County needs a sales tax hike

Affordable housing sales tax

Everywhere in Pierce County you have seen the tents of our homeless neighbors. Or perhaps you have been looking for a rental or are ready to purchase a home and you now know there is a crisis: rentals and houses are expensive. Even the good people working with the homeless can’t afford an apartment since rent is well above $1,500 per month while many employees earn less than $20 per hour.

Thankfully the Pierce County Council has a Housing Action Plan that would address many of the housing issues, from shelter and services to streamlining new affordable housing building projects that would make both for-profit and non-profit organizations more likely to build housing throughout Pierce County.

Addressing housing and homelessness will be a win/win for all of Pierce County as shelters, services and low-income housing will be increased.

Finally, after several failed attempts at solutions over the past decades, the Pierce County Council had the foresight to propose its Housing Action Plan and now potentially fund it, through a sales tax increase that would add one penny to a $10 non-food purchase.

Let’s all encourage the Council to support and pass this plan.

Carol Colleran, Lakewood

School reform

It is a given that drawing conclusions from statistics can be risky business. But there can be times when the statistics are so overwhelmingly clear there cannot be any room for equivocation.

The Center for Education Statistics, which collects and analyzes data for the Department of Education, recently published a report looking at the growth in public schools between 2000 and 2019. The statistics are astounding. During this almost 20-year period, the number of students enrolled In public schools nationally rose 7.6%. In the same period, the number of teachers increased by 8.7%. However, the number of district administrators shot up an incredible 87.6%.

There can be only two conclusions:

First: The bureaucratic inertia of public schools makes it virtually impossible to implement meaningful reform via the leadership of the current educational establishment.

Second: Reform can only be achieved by empowering parents to have greater control over schools.

This can be achieved by education reformers, with the aid of parents and allies in government supporting policy efforts to reduce and downsize school districts. Additionally, now more than ever, it is time to implement school voucher and tuition tax credit programs that will enable parents to select the school option of their choice, to the benefit of all students. These choices could include public, private or home-school options.

Mike Jankanish, Tacoma