Sales-Tax-Free Weekend Is a Bad Idea

ERICA ZEITLIN spoke with a critic of the proposal, Santa Monica resident Rick Gates, a longtime school activist and a member of various education advocacy groups.

One of the main problems with this proposal is that it is not targeted to serve those people who need the help the most in the schools; it’s just jumping on the tax rebate bandwagon. It won’t solve the real problems we face in funding public education.

I think the whole attitude of tax breaks, including this one, is presupposing that “we have done what we need to do and now we have too much darn money.” But the fact is that education spending has been scandalously deficient for 30 years and is now only creeping up to the mediocre.

Everyone wants better than mediocre schools. But while we’re asking kids to meet the new state standards and testing them six ways from Sunday, we’re holding them and their teachers and the schools accountable--but not the government.

We have had so many years of so little support from our string of governors that our state dropped to the nation’s bottom in funding public education. I think Davis is the real deal and serious about education. He’s trying different things.

You can fight this battle for education on a lot of fronts. You can put a lot of money into teachers’ salaries with the idea that the teacher is absolutely key or you can take the money and put it into intervention for the kids who are not performing at grade level. Put it in weekend and summer intervention programs and target it to these kids.

What’s happening now is that the money is so limited that we’re just putting the kids who need support the most back into the same crowded classrooms. These kids need to be in classes of 12, not 30--and with qualified teachers with the right resources and training.

These kids come from homes where their parents often can’t help because they don’t speak English and have no resources or computers at home. And while I think every dollar is very significant for a lot of families, the $80 or so they would save in taxes on a $1,000 computer wouldn’t be a major factor in whether they could buy it.

Davis’ proposal is at once too broad and too narrow; broad because it includes everyone, regardless of need or intention. Someone who doesn’t need the aid can get a tax cut on a $3,000 Powerbook. And it’s too narrow because it applies for this one weekend.

If you really want to aid education and the students who are stuggling, then find a way to target those kids who live in poverty. With the federal free and reduced-cost lunch program, for example, take that lunch and say, “If you qualify for this, you also can get a $150 check that you can redeem at the store for school clothes and shoes.”

But this proposal is harebrained. It just seems like a gimmick to draw out shoppers and a huge boon to the retailers.