Saturday, February 25, 2012

City Schools Students (and teachers!) Support the Bottle Tax



Patterson High School students were featured in The Baltimore Sun this week supporting a proposed bottle tax that would help raise money for facility upgrades.  Baltimore City Schools currently has a $2.8 billion list of facility repairs and the visit to Patterson highlighted some major problems.  The students and The Baltimore Education Coalition invited City Council Vice President Edward Reisinger and education advocates on a tour of Patterson that featured broken boilers, sweaty classrooms and students comparing Patterson to a “prison” and a “slave ship”.   The proposed bottle tax would increase the tax on bottled beverages from 2% to 5% and would generate $10 million annually.

Without a doubt, many city schools are desperately in need of repair and renovation.  The bottle tax is one potential way to increase funding, but we need to find many more.  Student and teachers should not be subjected to conditions like those in Patterson High School.  It’s a much more regular occurrence to find school conditions like this than many people realize.  Students cannot learn to their full potential while sitting in a sweltering classroom.  Kudos to the students and teachers at Patterson for speaking up about this important piece of legislation.
Posted by at

1 comment:

robglot said...

Colleen-

I agree with you that the bottle tax is an important first step in trying to find a way to fund renovations for Baltimore City Public Schools' facilities. If the environment in a school is uncomfortable, unsanitary or just unappealing, it is hard to imagine that children would want to go in the building, let alone learn. When representatives and guests enter one of the schools that is dilapidated and underserved, they have every right to be astonished, but then something must be done about it.

Unfortunately, some industry representative oppose a tax like the bottle tax because they believe it is bad for business. “This tax will have a chilling effect on Baltimore’s economy, driving customers away from local Baltimore businesses into the surrounding suburbs to do their grocery shopping and costing good jobs,” Ellen Valentino, executive vice president of the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Beverage Association, said in a statement. (taken from http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2012/02/27/baltimore-bottle-tax-opponents-hold.html). The bottle tax , for the most part, will affect luxury sales on things like soda and alcohol. It is a choice to buy these items, not a necessity. I believe with Baltimore showing it will try to pull its weight in paying for some of the necessary improvements, state officials may see merit in contributing to the Charm City’s schools.

Rob

March 1, 2012 at 10:19 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)