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It is well known that children who live in a poverty environment have a high risk of being low-achieving students. This condition requires local taxpayers to fund tutors for students; fund police, courts, and jails for criminals; and pay higher taxes to make up for the low productivity of school dropouts.
One obvious way to improve the academic performance of these "at-risk students" is to pay their parents a living wage. A possible way to verify the overall cost effectiveness of the living-wage approach is to just try it. To this end, the Columbus School Board should become a Good-Example Employer by paying at least a living wage to all of its employees. In other words, the Board's formal policy should be to respect the local labor-market for full-time employee, but never pay less than a living wage. (Labor-market data is now provided to the District by the Columbus Municipal Civil Service Commission.)
Currently, the District does pay a "prevailing wage" on construction contracts. By becoming a Good-Example Employer, the School Board would also require maintenance and service contractors to pay their employees at least a living wage while they are working on a School District contract.
Most parents of students who attend the Columbus City Schools are not employed by the School District. However, by being a Good-Example Employer, the Columbus School Board will lead by example to reduce the number of below-living-wage jobs in the Franklin County area. In practice, this means that farsighted taxpayers, who favor a public policy of always paying a living wage, could refer to the Columbus School Board as a Good-Example Employer.
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Address:
Bill Buckel
1641 Hess Blvd.
Columbus, OH 43212
. .Ph. 614--488-8963
Notice: This web site does not have an e-mail return address.
URL = http://www.billbuckel.com
Up-dated: December 16, 2007