British Tackeettlaus wrote:My opinion? Need to take some money out the suburbs to get the schools up to standard. Need to end the war on drugs and focus on rehabilitation so that more families are kept together. You need real investment in these communities. You need to give the hopeless hope.
The way public schools are funded needs to be entirely changed nationwide. In most other countries, funding for schools are distributed at the federal or state level. Only in the US are property taxes the primary means of funding schools, meaning that an affluent suburb's high school with 200 students might have more funding than a poor inner city's school of 2000 students. The wealth of one's neighborhood should not determine the quality of a student's education and a rich area shouldn't be able to install a second tennis court at their school while poor families' kids have 10 year old textbooks and half the bathroom stall doors are broken.
The War on Drugs does need to end, not just in these cities but nationwide. Personal possession and personal use should not be a criminal offense regardless of the drug. Cities need to open safe injection sites at which drug users can receive clean paraphernalia, get their drugs tested for adulterants, and where trained staff members are standing by in case of overdose. If we had such places no one would be shooting up in parking garages and McDonald's bathrooms and far fewer people would die. Rehab should be fully covered under a universal health care system.
We also need to give housing to the homeless. When there are far more empty houses and apartments than there are homeless people, something is clearly wrong.