Word: kalkaska
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...hefty income. Homeowners angry at being repeatedly dunned on the basis of a long-paid-for house have become the nucleus of a nationwide anti-property tax rebellion whose most jarring manifestation occurred, as it happens, in Michigan. In March 1993, public schools in the town of Kalkaska shut down after citizens rejected the school levy. Just as alarming are potentially crippling court cases in more than 40 states provoked by the ghettoization that results when only districts with high real estate values can finance decent schools...
...most attractive aspects of the plan is that it fees the schools from dependence on local property owners, who may to may not have children in the public schools. Such was the case last year in Kalkaska, where voters were asked to approve a property tax increase that would have allowed the schools to stay open. They refused, and the bankrupt system was forced to close 10 weeks early. The new plan greatly reduced the power of the old and wrinkled over the education of the young...
...Kalkaska, Michigan, the students know all about cramming. They just tried to cram a year into seven months. Their spring term bumped to a halt last week when local school authorities, glumly eyeing a $1.5 million shortfall in their $8.2 million budget, chose to declare summer vacation in March. All through a cold winter, Matt Johnston had trudged to a 7:30 a.m. calculus class he hoped would earn him advanced-placement credit at college next year. Though teachers rushed through their lesson plans as the premature vacation neared, Johnston still wonders whether he should have stayed...
After approving a hike in local property tax rates in 1989, Kalkaska voters, about a fourth of them retirees living on fixed incomes, have three times in the past year turned down requests for additional increases -- most recently by a 2-to-1 ratio. Some of them want officials of their rural district to follow the example of other cash-strapped schools and pare programs. "No way" is the reply from district leaders, who four years ago temporarily cut art, music, field trips and some athletic programs, then shortened the school day by an hour. "It was devastating," says Kalkaska...
What there was of it, at least. The predicament of Kalkaska's schools is not unusual, but their decision to shut down rather than slim down is. Making do has become the working philosophy of American education. After a long recession and an even longer era of citizen tax revolts, schools around the country are rebinding old textbooks, letting ceiling plaster crumble, cutting out art and sports programs or closing down for days at a time. All the while, parents and educators are wondering which cuts are tolerable, which fatal. Is it O.K. to use outdated history books? How badly...