by Ed Naile

Bedford, NH students who use the school parking lot are learning how public education funding works in reality, not just in the classroom.

The liberal, student loving Bedford School Board voted to increase the amount they charge students who drive to school and who then use the new parking lot. They increased the cost by just $10 dollars.

Of course that comes on top of the old $100 dollar fee they paid last year to park on school grounds.

And the year before that the pro-student, progressive Bedford School Board voted to quadruple the old $25 dollar fee, which is how we got to $100 dollars so fast.

I am not at all comfortable with these decisions, as a taxpayer activist who wants the/our children to learn. Knowledge instilled in students is the future of America.

If our children are paying attention they should have learned this:

1. Once you let government tax you the door is open to increases in that tax at the whim of those in power – $25, $100, $110 in three years.

2. Government do-gooder dictators love nothing more than to experiment with social engineering through taxation.

3. The “fee” to park is a TAX.

Lessons learned, I hope.

But a real lesson in public education in New Hampshire should include another experiment:

The use of the parking lot by students who drive should increase by between 6% and 7% every month from the first tax/fee they pay when they start driving to school and using the parking lot. Then students would have a grip on how the public school industry is funded – a never ending parade of increases passed on to local taxpayers.

But this lesson is wasted unless all the students pay for the student parking lot – just like taxpayers who do not use the school pay all their lives for the schooling of others, along with endless yearly increases.

What an education the/our children would get if only they shared in the “investments” and unjustified increases in “investments” taxpayers make.

I know this lesson seems extreme to some but you have to remember, the Bedford students are the offspring of the Bedford voters who thought they could get a $67 million dollar school for $.30 cents on the dollar.