Writer wrong in criticism of Austintown tax issues

Writer wrong in criticismof Austintown tax issues
EDITOR:
In letter to the editor Feb. 13 titled "Austintown schools headed toward an unconstitutionally high reliance on property tax" the writer misrepresented some critical facts. First, the two property tax renewals which the board of education has placed on the May 2, 2006, election ballot, if successful, will result in no increase in local school property taxes for Austintown. Renewals of tax levies only serve to maintain the current tax revenue amount. Therefore, these tax levies do not increase the district's reliance on local property tax. The Austintown schools receive 43 percent of their total revenue from local taxes. The average percentage for local revenue support in the state is 55 percent.
A second point misrepresented by the letter is the difference between the "voted" tax mills and the "effective" or collected tax mills. Ohio law prohibits local tax authorities from collecting an amount of tax dollars that exceeds the total collected when the levies were first approved. Every three years the valuation of property is reassessed. As the total valuation of property for the school district increases the amount of mills collected on that property must decrease in order for the total collected tax to remain the same. Austintown schools have voted 51.1 mills of residential property tax, but increases in property valuation have reduced that to 30.9 mills of collected tax. The two property tax renewals on the ballot in Austintown this May will be for the voted mills of 7.3 and 4.9 respectively. However, since these levies are renewals, the total collected tax for both levies will amount to less than 8.4 mills. This is exactly equal to what property owners are currently paying.
DOUGLAS G. HEUER, Superintendent
Austintown Local Schools
One test should not decide a high school student's future
EDITOR:
I am a 15 year old freshman student at Jackson-Milton High School. One of the biggest complaints I have about high school is all the importance that is placed on the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT). Each and every year I study and work hard to pass all of my classes, and I do. I am an A-B student. However, no matter how well I do in all these classes, if I fail the OGT then I do not graduate.
Everything that you learn during the year is taught to you so you can pass the Final exams. And I must admit the teachers do a pretty good job of preparing us for the finals, but the ridiculous part of the whole ordeal is that by the third week of school the teachers are already preparing us for what is to come at the end of the year. We go from reviewing the basics from the prior year, to learning stuff much more complicated that we haven't even heard of before, and that just doesn't make a bit of sense to me.
So basically the point I am trying to get across here is why are these tests so important? Why do we spend 175 days out of the year studying to pass these tests? One thing that makes my classmates and me very angry is that the state puts trick questions on these tests purposely so that they confuse us and make the tests more difficult than they already are. I know many kids who are smart but when test time rolls around they get worried because although they are passing all of their classes, they aren't sure if they can pass the test, which has a big say in whether you will stay or go on.
In the end I can say that high school has been pretty good to me so far, but I still don't think that it is fair that even if you excel in your classes, that a difficult and tricky test should basically determine whether you graduate or not.
CORY BARTEK
North Jackson