By Uncle Irvin

Please bear with me as I explain the correlation of these two headlines.

Property taxes, which are 80 percent school taxes, are driving senior residents in southern Chester County to abandon their homes at a record clip. If you live on a fixed income, you cannot afford to live in your house when property taxes are rising 2 percent a year compounded. By the way, 2 percent is more than you can get from a CD or money market. And there appears to be no end to the 2 percent (or more) increases in the future.

Now let's examine where school property tax revenue goes in our school districts. At least 70 percent of school district expenses are for compensation, of which teacher salary and benefits is 90 percent. So school teachers, not cafeteria workers or janitors, are eating 90 percent of the pie.

Ever-rising school teacher pay extracted from week-kneed school boards by ruthless teachers unions, with unchallenged tenure and no merit review, is by far the greatest contribution to increased property taxes. A recent study by the National Council on Teacher Quality finds

“educational universities are an 'industry of mediocrity,' churning out teachers ill prepared to work as teachers.”

This means that school boards have no criteria in selecting teachers and are unable to review teachers for performance, which is a recipe for mediocrity in teaching, and it's taxing seniors out of their homes.