sounds like a good thing huh? well, no not really. Voters in Madison country voted down a proposed 1/2 cent sales tax increase. A 1/2 cent! I mean would you really even notice the increase when you buy your groceries???? I didn’t realize when they first started about the tax increase that everyone in the entire county would be voting. I thought it was just supposed to be Madison city – but no it would have affected everyone in the county, which means Huntsville city school system, as well as Madison county. We (Madison city) needed the additional revenue, of course, to build a new high school, but Huntsville and the county needed it much worse, from what I have read.
I don’t understand why the public would refuse to support our schools. These are our children we are talking about, our future! We must give them all the support we can to give them a fighting chance as they grow and learn. Madison city is one of the top systems in the state and even nation – but we still lag behind in community support. The following is an excerpt from the Madison city superintendent, Dr. Dee Fowler:
The districts that our children and schools are competing against, Mountain Brook, Vestavia Hills, Homewood, and Hoover have abundantly more local money than our district. They are able to offer additional programs, technology, lower class sizes, hire teachers above the state allocated number, and have state of the art buildings. These perks give them an advantage over our children. For example, the number of teachers over the state allocation allows them to offer additional classes and lower pupil teacher ratios. Hoover has a student population of 12,041 and 244 teachers over allocation. Mountain Brook has a student population of 4,303 and they have 142 teachers over allocation. Homewood has 3,341 kids and 113 additional teachers. Vestavia Hills has 5,833 students and 167 additional teachers. Madison City has 8,095 students and can only afford 44 extra teachers.
That is a just a glimpse of the extras that those systems have that our system lacks. Those children have a distinct advantage over ours. If you want to read more about the differences between ours and theirs read this
article at al.com
