Balmer notes that "the number of white students enrolled in public schools in Holmes County dropped from 771 to 28; the following year, that number fell to zero." These white parents took their kids out of the public school and started private schools that were white-only.
4/x
The segregation academies were founded as non-profit entities. Under the 501(c)(3) law governing non-profits, the institutions themselves didn't have to pay taxes.
law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26… 5/x
But not only that, under Internal Revenue Code 170(c)(2), those donating to the foundations could deduct their donations from gross income tax.
Basically, if you give money to these segregation academies then you didn't have to pay taxes on the income you used to pay them. 6/x
But the Green case undid all this: the judge found in favor of the plaintiffs!
Not only that, but Richard Nixon--fearing the collapse of local control after several state courts found school finance unconstitutional & illegal--changed the IRS code too. 7/x
To be clear: think of tax exemption as govt expenditure.
When the government decides not to tax what you have, you can kind of see it as the government giving you that money.
So the racists found a way to get a tax expenditure for their segregation academies. 7a/x
This tax exemption was a key material condition of white segregation post-Brown v. Board--which, remember, was mostly a publicity stunt during the Cold War: communists kept saying how unequal and unfree the US was, so the ruling class had to shut them up. 7b/x
The political economist of education Martin Carnoy once wrote that schools have a legitimate public claim to maintaining society's continuity. So imagine what it was like for white supremacists to integrate schools? They lost the means of maintaining their whole lifeworld. 8/x
The Green case pissed off evangelical leaders, especially as the IRS sent queries to church-related schools like Jerry Falwell’s Lynchburg Christian School. Falwell was furious. “In some states,” he said, “It’s easier to open a massage parlor than a Christian school.” 9/x
Evangelicals hadn't been super political, but conservative activists wanted to get activated to form a voting bloc. The loss of their white Christian schools' tax exemption status did the trick. But they couldn't come out and fight for this explicitly--it was too racist. 10/x
That's where abortion comes in. Balmer writes in another longer essay that abortion was the issue evangelicals could fight against as a sort of proxy or trojan horse to win back the loss of their white world. 11/x
amc.sas.upenn.edu/sites/default/…
I lay it all out here with more detail. And if you want readable socialist analysis of education with a focus on finance, sign up for the newsletter!
https://buttondown.email/davidibacker/archive/taxing-schools-forcing-birth/
Important clarification that I hadn’t seen: the “it’s all about segregated schools and only got taken up later” narrative is over-simplified. I think the issue was still in the mix and arguably played a key role, but we certainly can’t be reductive/ignore:
washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/0…
• • •
As professional class people move to cities and have kids in the US, we have to choose schools--which means participating in an intensely unjust system. I’m a socialist, professor of education policy, and a parent in this position. Here’s my story.
I grew up in a medium-sized town in western Connecticut. When I left for college, I promised myself I'd live in a city. I hated being in cars all the time, and hated the silent, soul crushing, isolated, anxious depression of the middle class scramble for status. 1/n
My urban preference syncs up with trends in millennials' choices. Dowell Myers finds that 2015 was the peak year for millennials in cities. (This is changing now, with millenials moving out of cities. I wonder if this is because of schools). 2/n
researchgate.net/profile/Dowell…
Read 25 tweets
david i. backer
@schooldaves
Jan 5
Omicron is surging and there's a crisis over whether to close schools. A key part of this issue is school building safety, specifically ventilation systems. I've been studying how these are financed so here's a with an explanation for how our school buildings got this way.
There's a difference between regular operating costs (salaries, books) and big project costs. Ventilation system maintenance and replacement are big capital extensive projects that take a lot of time and money to complete. These are called capital expenditures.
You might be surprised to learn that school districts and states in the US have to take out loans from Wall Street for these big capital projects. It leaves every district and state for themselves and subject to credit ratings, interest rates, and fees.
nytimes.com/2021/08/27/opi…
Read 11 tweets
david i. backer
@schooldaves
Jan 3
I've been looking up who's in charge of facilities stuff at the School District of Philadelphia given the buildings crisis. Who actually works on designing & financing things like school ventilation systems? Poking around the Office of Capital Programs, I noticed Nicole Ward.
Ward is the Design Manager for the district's capital management team. (She's the one behind 'ment' here.) She started in 2016.
If you want to design school construction projects or big maintenance programs--that reduce building emissions, for instance--she's an important person to know. This proposal bid was addressed to her.
phila.gov/media/20210205…
Read 10 tweets
david i. backer
@schooldaves
Sep 10, 2021
There's a facilities crisis in the School District of Philadelphia. Buildings full of asbestos, garbage not being picked up, roofs caving in. So I got interested in the District's facilities leadership: who makes decisions about facilities? I found some weird things. (thread)
The SDP's facilities are overseen by the Office of Operations, led by Reggie McNeil.
philasd.org/operations/. They also have a twitter feed:
@PHLschoolOps
In the Office of Operations is the Office of Facilities Management & Services (OFMS), which has a Facilities Dept and a Maintenance Dept. Under Facilities, we find Executive Director of Operations Ralph Carp and Director of Facilities Tim Holman.
philasd.org/facilities/dep…
Read 15 tweets
david i. backer
@schooldaves
Feb 15, 2021
Ever wonder why some schools have enough money for safe ventilation and others don’t? A thread.
@BisforBerkshire and
@Edu_Historian have a new book called A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door.
It’s about how if we’re not careful public education could be totally privatized. It’s great. But when it comes to the schoolhouse itself—it’s infrastructure—the wolves already control it.
Now for some basic accounting. A capital expenditure is diff than an operating cost. OpC is a regular expense, like wages. Capital project is a one-time or infrequent thing, like fixing your buildings. Ventilation systems are usually the latter.
threadreaderapp.com
www.politico.com
amp.cnn.com
