People hate taxes.

I remember being so happy to get my first paycheck last summer. It was my first job and I tore through the envelope. It was a total of $52.50, not much. But even so, the government was stealing a total of $4.02 out of my hard-earned paycheck. It didn’t stop there. Out of a total of $2,137 I’ve made in the past year, $262.55 has gone to the government. That leaves me with only $1,875. Enraging.

At the same time I realize that I benefit from these higher taxes. Social security, which took $132 out of my earnings, will help me when I’m old. The property tax my parents pay goes towards things like education, something that benefits me enormously.

In fact, education is one of the main reasons why I think people should pay higher local and state taxes (hardly any federal taxes fund education so they are less important).

Especially in the city of Harrisonburg, we need to value education more.

Students Over Structures preaches that we shouldn’t build a new high school because of the monetary burden, not even considering the effects of overcrowding. Class changes lengthen, class sizes bulge, teachers don’t have their own rooms.  

We pay our teachers an average salary of $48,560 while the average salary in Virginia is $68,070 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This makes it hard to compete for the best teachers. That’s not to say that we don’t have good teachers, but paying more for teachers will increase how many people want to become teachers and make it a higher-valued profession.

Even our schedule is motivated by expense. The four-block schedule makes it so that most teachers teach six classes a year. A six or seven block schedule, which helps learning by breaking up the amount of time students spend sitting and absorbing one subject, would make it so that most teachers would teach five classes a year.

All of these reflect our lack of willingness to pay taxes. 43.9% of the school system’s revenue comes from the city. This is not some far off, national or even state issue. This is right here. We can easily have our voices heard at city council meetings. We can easily vote people into office that will spend more on education. This is possible if we realize that education is something we need to value more.

A better education system helps all of us. If I start at preschool, work my way all the way to high school, have a good SAT score, have good grades, have good teachers, have good college counselors, get into college (possibly at one of the many colleges in this area), get a degree and get a job where I make more money than I would have if I hadn’t gone to college, I help the economy and make Harrisonburg a better place.

If I make more, I spend more, thus helping everyone who benefits from my spending: the local shops, the real estate developers, the retail stores. The more people that are educated better and have better jobs, the better off the economy will be in the long run.

Education is an investment. It’s not instant, but taxes for our futures today will truly pay off tomorrow.