Cost of construction and maintenance varies across the country. Putting up the same building in a high priced school district might cost 3 to 5 times what it would cost to put up that same building in my school district. But the same number of kids should merit the same size school. Sure, rich kids shouldn't get personal computers if poor kids don't, but physical facilities should all be kept up to snuff everywhere.

Just in this case for education infrastructure.

In Illinois some of the rich suburban districts spend like $22K/student but get a combined $2K from the state and federal. The rural districts spend like $8-10K with funding coming significantly from state and federal (numbers may be off but the trend is like this). How would this situation be handled? You have to have a redistribution of property taxes - no other way to handle it.

Since the vast majority of education in this country is funded by state and local taxes, mostly property taxes, there is no way to redistribute that across state lines.

Not without a Constitutional amendment, and no way your getting enough state legislatures to go along with an amendment setup just to redistribute the money that right now the legislatures control. First because around half the states will "lose" money, so they won't go for it, second because the ability to level taxes then control and spend those funds is a source of power for state legislators and they are not about to give that away.

Not to mention the huge right wing hysterical reaction if you proposed giving Congress and the Federal Government the ability to control and levy property taxes. That would be really swatting a hornets nest. But to make it fair you would have to, as te tax rates very wildly state to state and even county to county and you would have to equalize the rates to sell the idea in the name of "fairness".

It would possibly be doable in many states at the state level taking all the money and equalizing it at a state level. But nationally? Not going to ever happen in our lifetimes the way out government is setup without massive changes that won't happen the way our government is setup.

What this country needs is a national wealth tax. Taxing income doesn't work when a wealthy individual can basically control his/her own income, and can probably zero it out if they wish, and live off of their accumulated wealth.

The nation should tax wealth, primarily equities. I'd put a lower limit on it, just tax wealth over around $1 million or so and leave out real properties, which is typically covered by local/state taxes. Everybody pretty much already does an annual statement, just send in 1% of the net value. Would pay for a lot on needed shit.

And it sort of works, but not really. All of our property taxes related to funding of schools are gathered up and sent to the state to dole out in some equitable manner.

Dh and I chose to flee the large local school district years ago. We ended up less than 10 miles away in a small district where the median income was (at the time) far greater than our household income.

You see, schools and parents quickly figured out how to work around the equalization. Private foundations were formed. Parents donate to these foundations which in turn donate large sums to the schools each year for specific purposes. Our school's foundation pays for the 'extras' not found in neighboring districts- things like foreign language taught by a person instead of video; a full time art teacher, music teacher, librarian and counselor; small class sizes and a full school year.

(Insert liberal guilt about being able to move to a better district here.) There are always ways around equalization funding mechanisms.

Bond measures are still a local thing, and that's how we fund infrastructure. Our neighbors always pass bond measures because 1- they can afford it and 2- their property values are directly tied to the success of the school district.