Extended Summer Break

As some of you know, I am a high school teacher. Wednesday was suppose to be the first full day of school. I did not have to work. We are $1.2 million in the hole and can't balance a budget.  You see, I teach in a very rural town in upper east Tennessee (bring on the hillbilly jokes). We rank second or third from the bottom in the state on spending per pupil. We also have the third lowest property tax in the state. We pay $1.5069 and people want it lowered.  The people of this town bitch and moan because "they are over taxed". Industries will not locate here. We have one of the highest unemployment rates in the state. The good ole boys run everything and they like it the way it is. One of the problems is that we have two school systems. City and county. City gets all the money because of all the business. I work for the county. We get squat.  We have roughly 7500 kids in the county with 18 schools while the city has about 2700 kids and 7 schools.

Here is my question to you with kids, are you willing to pay higher taxes if it means the money will go to your kids school? What if you are in an area like mine where we pay almost nothing for property taxes?  How much do you pay for property taxes? Should I just STFU?