Pages tagged "education"
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Our Families Need a Child Tax Credit
Posted on News by Brandon Merritt · May 11, 2022 7:05 AMNow that the COVID clouds have cleared and just about everything is open again, people are going back to work. Businesses are up and running at full capacity, if they can help it. Government agencies may even start functioning again at some point.
Because of all this, the issue of child care keeps coming up. This issue is a big one that’s directly related to the workforce. Where are children, who aren’t in school, going to go when both of their parents are working?
The overall lack of providers is one big part of the problem. Another, ironically, is that the Oregon Legislature keeps trying to address it. The solution they keep trying is to pay the providers more. But if you raise those waves, you end up increasing the costs and that doesn’t end up helping.
I think the solution is to empower families. Who should be taking care of children? Their parents!
As such, I’m proposing a $7500 per child tax credit to be used for education and child care. This tax credit will ease the financial burden faced by parents. It would incentivize some of them to stay at home with their kids. It would make it easier for stay-at-home moms. And it would also relieve some of the strain on the system.
School choice is the cornerstone of my education policy. That includes the freedom for parents to home school their children.
The pandemic taught many parents that they’re better off educating their children themselves. Enrollment at public schools is dropping all over the United States. But the system is more concerned with the fact that this will mean less public funding, because it is tied to the number of students involved.
If there are fewer students in public schools, you don’t need as many teachers or administrators. You can reduce class sizes for those who are willing to keep their kids in public schools, instead of throwing more money at a failed system.
A child tax credit that encourages and enables more home schooling means that parents will have ore control over what their children are being taught. That’s been a huge concern for many parents.
The money saved by not sending those students to schools goes back to their parents to make it easier for them to take care of their children. This will result in Oregon having stronger families.
At the end of the day, children belong with their parents. The state government needs to get out of the way and help facilitate it.
I believe that my proposed child tax credit will go a long way towards restoring the most basic building block of our entire society—the family. For far too long, we’ve built up the state at the expense of the family and it’s time to reverse that disturbing trend. Instead of focusing on what we can do to prop up another system, we should put power back in the hands of parents. As your next governor, I intend to put those kinds of policies in place and make it a top priority.
*If you’d like to find out more about or support the Brandon Merritt for Oregon Governor campaign, please check out our website at https://www.merritt22.com/
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We Need Equal Opportunities in Education
Every election cycle in Oregon, education is one of the main issues discussed by candidates for state offices. So why is it that our school system consistently under performs compared to those of nearly every other state in the nation?
Let’s face facts here: It’s because status quo politicians have spent decades being beholden to the special interests that continue to dominate education. Candidates tell the teachers unions what they want to hear and promise not to do anything to upset them or overturn their apple cart. Those unions then hand huge checks to those candidates, who use those donations to buy their way into office.
But I’m not running for Oregon governor to keep things exactly as they are. I’m absolutely adamant that we need to take a different approach.
Having special interests dominate education at the statewide level for decades means that the voices of other groups are being drowned out. Most important out of all of them is parents.
I believe that our state government needs to be empowering parents, instead of trying to replace them as authority figures in students’ family lives.
Under Oregon’s current broken education model, special interests constantly lobby state officials for more funding. Because those officials are beholden to those special interests, they give in to their demands. Sometimes, they even create entirely new taxes just for the sake of providing more money to education.
However, those dollars flow straight to public schools, which immediately separates it from students’ families. They’re already cut out of the process.
What I’m advocating for is a new approach, under which we reopen schools with parents in charge. Instead of having education being top-down from Salem, my administration will prioritize local control.
My new model of family first funding will give parents school choice. Funding will follow the student. That way, parents will have the ability to choose what kind of education they want for their children, without having to worry about the cost of tuition.
This new approach treats access and to quality education as a civil right, instead of perpetuating the monopoly that teachers unions have enjoyed at taxpayer expense.
That monopoly has enabled these special interest groups to develop controversial curriculum that can be harmful to students, with no real accountability for whatever results from it.
A good example of this is critical race theory (CRT). Teachers, parents, and many newly elected school board members throughout the country are united in their outrage over the way these sensitive race issues are being taught. They’re rightly concerned that everything is being viewed through the lens of oppressors and oppressed, and that’s just wrong.
There are ways to educate children on these kinds of topics that encourage and facilitate open discussions that are balanced.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have met the authors of Black History 365, which is a complete and comprehensive history course that covers the entire arc of American history from the perspective of minority groups. It’s a reasonable alternative to CRT that is much more objective and doesn’t try to shame anyone due to their heritage.
The bottom line is that there are better ways to be doing things than the way they’ve been done in Oregon. There are many candidates running for governor who will not do anything to change a system that we all know is failing. But I’m not one of them.
I believe strongly that we need equal opportunity in education. It will be one of my top priorities as your next governor.