Interesting- different town and state but similar issues. Out in the far west, in a ranching community where the population is aging, the only people moving in are retirees from other west coast states hoping to spend their golden years on their little 1-5 acre “ ranch “. Have raised the housing prices and priced out families, cut taxes and voted in a far right school board that hired an incompetent far right lawyer who stole millions from the school district. Any taxes or school bonds fail, the school population has decreased significantly and with the loss of millions from the corrupt school board, the state now has to come in and take over the school district’s finances. This was once the highest ranking school district in the state, it was rural but prided itself on being innovative and paying well but within a decade it’s completely collapsed.
The selfishness of the older retirees can not be overstated.
They have come in and completely destroyed the small town charm that attracted them to this area, by refusing to pay taxes, voting in extremists and jacking up housing with their money.
I am almost glad that people don't realize that the federal government spends three times as much supporting retirees as it does on every other non-defense program COMBINED, because almost nobody knows that, and they would be apocalyptically angry about it they did. I mean, I'm pretty non-violently angry about it.
I want people know the government sends as much money out in the form of Social Security checks to retired (or even still-practicing) lawyers with six-figure annuities as it does to poor families. But I also don't want something like that to cause people to immediately turn on the idea of Social Security, because it's the only real toehold our social safety net has.
hey, Retirees have been paying into the social security system their entire lives. You're an ignorant ageist. thank you for helping to tear the country apart with your ageism instead of looking at who really doesn't pay taxes and takes the biggest handouts - corporations and the wealthy
"hey, Retirees have been paying into the social security system their entire lives."
Please research that just a bit before attempting to deflect.
"You're an ignorant ageist."
No, we're just among many of those who were gleefully trampled on in your Boomer quest to "get everything that we deserve!", even if if bankrupted everyone in the process three or more generations after you're thankfully long gone.
"thank you for helping to tear the country apart with your ageism"
Lol. You do realize that Boomers started this process to protect them from competition, don't you? You started the "tearing apart" process to pad your retirement accounts, and now that the bill has come due before you sailed off into the sunset, with many many folks now starting to realize that it's your generation who have destroyed so many future prospects for them (such as driving up housing prices to insane levels to drive off the riffraff and create utopian neighborhoods and towns), and as you move into assisted-living facilities and nursing homes, the people you shafted with insane expenses will be in charge of your healthcare.
You have zero idea what you've unleashed upon yourselves. But since I've spent nearly a decade in a couple of related medical industries, I do know what's coming for you, and to quote practically any vacuum cleaner salesperson, man, it sucks to be you.
"instead of looking at who really doesn't pay taxes and takes the biggest handouts - corporations and the wealthy"
Uh, who exactly do you think these people are? 15-year-old kids? 30-year-olds?
Nope, that's all you. Shareholders are primarily Boomers.
In the industry I just left, that was the hilariously ironic part of the whole business: Assisted living? It's one set of Boomers stealing money from another set of Boomers, all for laughably inferior medical "care", and they make everyone's lives miserable around them in the process.
The facility I just left as an assistant director? Not even EMS wants to go in there any longer, you guys have trampled everything in your quest to come in first...and blow it all on toys and cruises before your supposedly-terrible offspring can get their supposedly dirty mitts on what is supposed to be entirely your treasure to blow.
I'm sorry, are you under the impression that you're some sort of hero for being an ICU nurse? And was that an RN position, or a CNA?
Here's to hoping that Trump actually follows through with his claim to be dropping nursing back down to being merely a vocation (as it always used to be), the most destructive and terrifying employee in all of healthcare right now is the narcissistic RN who is convinced that they're somehow more powerful than doctors.
Nah, can’t follow you there. That was bad policy and RN’s keep hospitals a float. I’m not saying this lady is a hero or me or any other RN individually. But if you read the article you’ll notice the small excerpt about shuttering rural hospitals. Sink nurses and the whole place collapses. Doctors can move their talent anywhere and are always the more valued hire.
You also murdered a large fraction of the people who were supposed to pay social security. You want to know who doesn’t pay taxes? The sixty million Americans you threw in dumpsters so you could pursue your careers and retirements.
There are conversations to be had about the effects of abortion on US demographics that are interesting and productive, but they don't start like you started this one.
I didn't say "watch your tone," I made a suggestion. You can act however you want. I am not missing out on anything by not talking to an angry guy about abortion.
Yes Liz, but your payment amounts were calculated on the basis you'd all be dying much sooner than you are thanks to modern medicine. If you live long as I hope, you will be taking way, way more than you paid in. The system is broken and for old people to get full benefits they were promised by earlier generations of populists, will bankrupt the nation and steal our youth's future. Eventually the rest of us are going to say enough to you bleeding the country dry.
"Yes Liz, but your payment amounts were calculated on the basis you'd all be dying much sooner than you are thanks to modern medicine."
Listen to them speak for a few minutes and they'll repeatedly tell you that they're owed so much more for simply existing.
"If you live long as I hope, you will be taking way, way more than you paid in."
Once again, to hear them say it, they're owed that and much more.
"The system is broken and for old people to get full benefits they were promised by earlier generations of populists, will bankrupt the nation and steal our youth's future."
They really don't care, any attempt to explain this to their kind results in blank stares or temper tantrums...or both. I've seen some insane things being paid for by Medicaid in the last several years, memory care/dementia patients getting insanely expensive surgeries or dental work, racking up tens of thousands of dollars in expenses, and that's on top of their monthly bill for being in memory care, which in itself is several thousand dollars per month.
And that's on top of the outright fraud they commit before going into these facilities, Medicaid Divorce being one of the top things.
Again, they don't care, they'll bankrupt as many people as possible as long as they get what they perceive as a comfortable retirement (which they think they're entitled do or is owed to them) where they get to take endless cruises, buy gigantic houses, eat luxurious meals every day, and have a garage full of toys.
If retirees were to get what they paid in plus prime rate interest or close to it, current benefits would be only 15 to 20% of what the currently are. Nurses or Physicians are what the Dunning-Kruger observation had to have been based on. Tell others to stay in their lane while swerving all over the road.
Miles: The solution to the problem you mentioned is fairly simple. Means test Social Security benefits. Rich lawyers get zero and the poor get a living income.
Yeah, it seems like the way to go. People (including me) have been resistant to means test social security because its universality helps its popularity. But debt is out of control.
I am a little resistant to means-testing Social Security because I believe it will then just become another “welfare” program that will be easier to eliminate.
As an aside, eliminating the income cap on the Social Security tax would largely solve the problem, at least for the next 50 years.
Then republicans will cut it, social security only has a broad base of support bc it is universal. Much more politically stable to keep pushing retirement age up as life expectancy rises, or just let the system go insolvent so everyone only gets 75% of what they are now.
This sounds quite similar to the small town where we own a house in northern Idaho. It’s what I call an R & R town— recreation and retirement— since there is a ski area, large lake and other outdoor opportunities. I think it’s a little more complicated, and all the retirees are not wealthy people on their ranchettes. The real estate development industry, along with financial outfits that increasingly include private equity companies, have been building or buying up condos, apartments, and older existing homes to market as investments for people who want to get rich from short-term rentals, for example, using Airbnb. None of these folks are interested in preserving the local schools and try to get the public sector to pick up the infrastructure costs necessary for their developments.
We have the opposite problem; Liberal DINKs from the West Coast and NE cesspools move in, raise taxes, vote for radical leftists, destroy our culture and traditions.
I don’t know TJ maybe because you list on your profile we are all doomed but you are fine but then you post shit like this that contradicts that statement, post continual shit on your substack proving your massive lack of empathy for people who don’t look and act like you- and point again to contradicting the statement that “ you are fine “ and we are all doomed. If you were fine, you wouldn’t feel the need to post about how radical leftists are taking over your towns and destroying your traditions. That doesn’t sound like someone who is doing “ fine”
That sounds like someone who is angry. And then you post pictures of overweight white guys implying they are alpha males “ Nick Shirley “ versus just losers who are finally catching up to the journalism that others much more qualified have been covering for several years. Y’all have some how equated being victims of the sin of gluttony as being alpha when it all it displays is greed and a sure sign of a person going straight to hell according to the Bible.
Ah. I see your problem. You suffer from cognitive dissonance.
You see Lucy, it’s possible to be happy (I’m fine), and still have concerns.
You say I have no empathy, but nothing could be further from the truth. I care about my people, and worry about their continued happiness when leftist degenerates move in with their unwholesome, unhealthy habits.
So, I am confused about the gluttonous alphas you say I post about. I am unaware of such a person.
Nick Shirley is the future. Young people see the suffering and degradation the left holds sacred, and the mental instability that comes with it…and they reject it.
TJ do you understand the definition of cognitive dissonance?
I don’t suffer from any discomfort or mental anguish as my thoughts, beliefs and actions are all aligned- nothing is contradictory. It’s really quite lovely. Highly recommend.
As far as your empathy- it only shows
That it is limited, that you believe only certain people “ deserve it” and that you lack imagination.
My memory of Charles City is from about 20 years ago. I was driving through and had stopped to get gas. I accidentally locked my toddler in my car, and immediately realizing this, called the police in town. And they told me, “We don’t do that anymore.”
They don’t help parents get their babies out of locked cars “anymore.” Like it’s a thing they used to do, but don’t.
So I had to call a locksmith.
I don’t have a lot of respect for Charles City. I’m sorry that Charles City doesn’t care about its own children, either.
I’m sure that’s how I felt at the time. Terrified and baffled. Now that said child is 24 years old I’m more just vastly angry at whoever answered the phone in the Charles City police department.
It wasn’t a criminal matter, it was you locking your own vehicle by mistake..which means you needed to call a locksmith, not a police officer.
You may have been nervous and auto-called police for ‘help’, or you may have thought you were clever and would not have to pay a locksmith - either way, it’s kinda sad you blame the town, the police force, and the Reception who took your call….
Not the person who you're responding to but buddy, we used to be able to actually call the cops for help, especially in a rural areas.That's what I grew up with too. When I locked myself out as a latchkey kid I called 911 and a cop drove me to my mother. It's never been the same in every part of the country or for all income groups but it was like that for a great many of us.
I don't know if it changes by town or state, but at least in my area, if there's a child locked in the car they want you to call 911 instead of a locksmith.
Yes, this is what I was told when something similar happened to me. The locksmith was able to come very quickly, but told me that the preference is for police because they can come even faster. Thankfully, they were very kind about it.
I watched a county I spent the summer in Oregon finally decide the Sheriffs retired and were the richest folks in town. They watched teachers bring in San Francsico ideas into school and did not spend that money on repairs. Eventually the big bond showed up and ended just as fast. Private funding by parents with Homeschool Pods with 4H participaton saved the day. Volunteers for police and fire worked better than the dude with the radar gun hitting all the locals with fear.
I’m so sorry, I was replying to Cary Cotterman who was displaying the sort of uncharitable attitude that has given American Christians such a bad name. Apologies if I upset you
I grew up in a conservative community that CONSTANTLY voted down taxes to fund schools, even ones that would mainly be paid by tourists (major tourist town). Sends kids great messages that both they and education don't matter.
In addition, a common complaint in my hometown was that a town less than an hour away always had cleaner and better maintained streets. My folks always got dirty looks for pointing out THAT town paid for the maintenance with property taxes ours kept refusing to allow.
Do you really believe higher school budgets would help.
I come from a part of the country spending $40k per kid per year on schools that are a total failure. Studies show no correlation between school spending and outcomes.
I’m talking more “basic building maintenance” and “afford nurses every day” than anything else. And dealing with that we knew when I wad in elementary school the district needed another high school and when I went to college STILL didn’t have the money.
I mean, sure, past a certain point MAYBE increased funding decreases in effectiveness—but surely there’s no way you think renovating to remove asbestos from a high school and make it accessible to all students is a problem that wouldn’t 100% be solved with the funding to accomplish it??
I know that your average Catholic school manages to operate on a shoestring budget that is usually dramatically lower than the local school district and somehow the kids aren't breathing in asbestos.
We spend 3x inflation adjusted per capita on K-12 then we spent in 1960 and yet somehow you can't build a minimum viable product?
There is no community in the U.S. that spends $40 thousand per kid on schooling.
The community with the highest per capita spending on schools in the U.S. is the Syosset Central School District in Syosset, New York, which spends $32,125 per pupil. New York generally has the highest education spending per student in the county.
By the time my youngest was in school, our largest district was spending over $11K per student, enough to pay tuition for state college, and to this day they are still failing.
Yeah and I think she quoted $30 million??? Yeah absolutely not. If you can’t get it done with like $500k forget it. Feel like only the people who have kids in the school should be responsible for fixing it….and people unaffected by disability should also pay more for disabled? My kid went to public school (partly), I went to public school (partly). I’m glad I could send my kid to public school….so I don’t really know the best answer. I’m not really for social security (saw that convo somewhere on here) but I’m grateful my parent has it…I’ve heard dont complain about problems until you offer solutions but I’m a libertarian and think the way forward would be homeschooling or a bunch more small business schools that could get a building done/improved with like $10k. Which is why I only had one child. And scrap the social security, leave people to save on their own.
Similar thing happened to me and my school district growing up. The result? I got my elite college education and use my skills to better an urban community. I would rather die than in a small town again. They are morally bankrupt places that deserve the brain drain and the actual bankruptcy.
Guess who I married? Someone with a similar experience in rural Iowa. Iowa - minus a few small cities - is a horrible place full of horrible people.
I bet your urban community is so grateful you showed up with your skills, but I bet not 1/2 as happy as that small town when you took your elite skills and troon sideshow down the road.
Could you say more? With schools I can see how people without children might oppose property taxes. With clean streets I just can’t understand the mindset of the people complaining…
I think there’s a big disconnect in a lot of minds that lower taxes=/=less services to them. Obviously a government with more money can fund more services. But they don’t get it.
This is the bit I don’t get. I’m just always nervous of narratives that suggest a group of people is unintelligent.
I can see how someone would be suspicious of taxes to national government, because it’s so far removed from everyday life that you might not trust them to spend money in sensible ways. But with local government in towns, people presumably know their leaders? Is there then the same distrust about how money might be spent?
It's not that they're unintelligent. It's that they trust local government least of all. And that's not irrational either-- local government, especially in small town America, is much more subject to corruption and outright embezzlement. Like the superintendent who embezzles 100K out of the school budget over 3 years, or the police chief who takes a payoff from the local mega-farm to look the other way on what the illegal immigrants they hire get up to.
The smaller and more local a government is, the less oversight there is, and the lower the monetary stakes. So local politicians are bought cheap. Particularly if they have ambition, and want to move up the ladder-- maybe to county government, for example, or state legislature. There's way more money to be made if you're on the take at the county or state level, so even without a payoff the ambitious ones are lining themselves up to take a payoff when they move up the ladder.
So yeah, it's not irrational or unintelligent to have this paranoia. But then also it goes too far-- it becomes a hardline ideological truth, something one has faith and zealotry in. Taxes are bad! Any form of tax is bad! Government, even the local government, with the people they go to church with in office, is always bad!
This is compounded by the fact those farmers ain't really local anymore. They're surrogates for the corporate farming industry to ship goods internationally. They are the winners in the cannibalization of family farms-- the big acreage winners who pull in millions of farm revenue every year, or are trying to hoover up enough family farms by acquisition to become the next multi-million dollar revenue farm in the area. They don't give a fuck about the town or the kids, because they only live in there in the sense they need to file taxes like locals in order to get tax breaks. Their kids go to private schools, if they even live in the same county, or even the same state. They pose as salt of the earth farmers for town halls and old folks, but their luxury trucks are tricked out for looks, not work in a field. The corporate mega-farmers outnumber the local small farmers these days. They're louder at the meetings when there's a tax cut to chase. And they'll spend money to buy anyone they can.
I live in San Diego. We have a huge corrupt government. Our local city officials along with unions never met a tax that they didn't like. I like unions, but when they fund politicians and the union leaders are married to political consultants, the people are the ones who lose out.
Education fails because of the people being educated, not because lack of facilities. Lower IQ, chaotic home life, etc, contributes far more to failure than a broken furnace.
Fewer than 20% of Americans ever need to know anything beyond an 8th grade education. If you doubt this, ask AI.
This comment section went... A bit wild. I did write this with nuance about my specific community, but the rural hollowing out is happening all over the country. It's up to voters to decide if that's okay. My community said that's okay. They said we want to be a bedroom community instead of innovating and investing in ourselves.
While coments here have been overwhelmingly positive (thank you!), the ones that scare me the most are the ones coming from angry white men telling me to homeschool my kids. Kindly, get a life.
School is about so much more than academics. It's learning how to participate in society. Gaining enough emotional intelligence to be strong leaders so they don't end being spineless, miserable internet trolls.
I'm glad this resonated with folks in 2025. Now, as we look toward 2026, what will we do about it?
We made a long cross country drive across the middle of the country this summer.
I used to do this often when I was younger. It’s changed.
If not for the interstate fast food stores, gas stations/convenience stores, a church, bar, a post office, and an occasional roadside hotel, there was often nothing.
We used to like to get off the exits and look for local restaurants or points of interest, but now we see little except run down houses.
I feel safer driving through Baltimore. And that’s a scary thought.
Most kids don’t care in the least. For one thing, in my experience schools are not particularly transparent about their finances. They will ask for levies or say that they need more money but fail to provide any sort of budgeting or accounting as to why that money is needed. Even if the money is for something specific it’s often generic “new building” or “teachers salaries”. There is often little explanation given as to why a new building is needed or why teacher salaries need increased. Without an explanation of exactly what the money is needed for it’s unlikely kids will feel anything at all about a refusal of people to give schools more money.
As a kid you don’t particularly care if you have a new school building, if the classroom is over crowded or how much money your teacher makes. Most kids don’t care if their text books are twenty years old. A failure of communities to fund school will frustrate teachers but kids simply don’t care because most of them don’t care too much about the types of things impacted by budgets.
Kids do know, and do care. They care if the building they spend 6 hours a day in is decrepit, or the books they are given are falling apart. And they definitely get the message that the town doesn't care about them.
When I was in high school, the budget came up for a vote every year. It was a topic of discussion in our classes. It was very obvious whether it passed or not, because the following year we either had school busses or none, sports teams or none. We very much wondered if the townspeople cared about us. I remember my friend being extremely angry with her parents for voting no.
Yup. I left and never came back. I hope the town rots into the ground, but actually, more than that, I hope rich commuters come take it over and price out the white trash.
I would say it very much depends on exactly how bad things are and the age of the kids. I have never seen a school that lacked sports teams or a bus to take kids on field trips or to sporting events, and I have been around some very small and very poor schools. Where I live the school district does not offer bussing to school. The couple of busses are used for extracurriculars.
Nobody thinks anything of it, neither the children nor the parents. Schools where the buildings were in poor shape? Especially that lacked AC? Most of the schools I’ve been in and around and it wasn’t particularly bothersome to the kids. Much whining by everyone the first month of school and then it cools down and nobody worries about it until the next year where the cycle is repeated. One year in middle school one of my classmates had a text book with my dad’s name in it, my dad was almost thirty when I was born, we thought it was funny that our books were so old.
I also wonder how upset you would have been had it not been a topic of discussion in your classes. Was it a discussion led by students or by teachers? When I was in high school we had plenty of complaints but a sit down discussion of the actual issues never would have happened without a teacher guiding and leading the discussion. I know and work with a handful of high school kids today and I would say the same is true. Like anyone they have their complaints but they are short lived and not thought about particularly deeply. I have no doubt that kids can be led to think about and grow concerned about such things, but I’m far from convinced that is an automatic and natural outcome.
I have never seen kids celebrate when school funding was passed and I have never seen them upset when it wasn’t. Are there some extreme cases where the oldest kids feel the lack? I’m sure. But the vast majority of these students just go on about life without second thought. That isn’t an excuse not to fund schools but the idea that vast swaths of kids feel abandoned by their community when a levy or property tax increase fails just simply isn’t true.
Since we are both looking at our own experiences, I don’t think that qualifies us to say “vast swaths of students.” I would be interested in what other people think.
Where I lived, if one year you caught the school bus, and the next year, your parents had to scramble to find you transportation to school, it was very noticeable, even to elementary schoolers. Then, if a kid said, “Why don’t I have a bus?” the answer was, “The budget wasn’t passed.” This in suburban New York.
I think you are not wrong. The other writer was clearly not curious as a pre-teen / teenager. When I was a teenager I came to care about that stuff very much, particularly writing for the school newspaper. But there are also students that clearly didn't value being in school in the first place, who never cared.
The thing is: the kids who care are the best and brightest. The dude who never plans to go to college and wishes he could graduate at 16 and hates having to do an ounce of homework? Those kids don't care. That kid? Is never going to leave town, even if the only job he can get is cashiering at the gas station off the inter-state.
The kids who do care? They can and will leave the town. And then they keep caring about wherever they live after they leave the town.
Problem is-- geographically in a lot of places there's been generations and generations of that cycle, and the only people left are the people who didn't care. And they don't see the problem.
I was aware of the issues. Once I was in high school I was also aware that an outrageous sum of my dad’s income already went to pay income and various other taxes, I was aware of how much his small business had to pay the state in sales tax, I was aware that the value of our home increasing meant he had to pay more property tax and insurance without proposed increases. I was aware that most of the town didn’t have much in the way of spare cash and that all of the schools that surrounded us were in similar shape. I was very aware that none of my classmates were concerned with any of it.
Our school system where I now live (another small town) went to four days a week last year. When it was proposed there was a short lived panic about what to do and how to adjust. We are almost half way through the second year of it and everyone adjusted and it’s no longer a topic of discussion or concern.
Listen, fellow geek, she's right. And in a lot of areas, you know who opposes school levies the loudest? People who were their loudest advocates when they had kids in school.
For what it’s worth I asked the high school kid I work with today what her biggest concern with the school was? What was the biggest thing interfering with her education? Her answer: all the potheads and druggies. I asked my coworkers who have kids in school what the biggest concerns were, about five people. Every single answer was essentially social. A problem teacher that is being mean. A teacher that just isn’t very good. Mean girls. Fights with friends. Out of control classrooms.
This is what a school looks like in a small town when everyone who cares has left. And then you wonder why you have all these social problems. You have the problems because everyone who cares enough to so much as pay a bit more in taxes left. Which is really kind of like basic entry caring. Good teachers move to where they get paid more and the locals care enough to keep the schools up to date; there’s a teacher shortage. Parents who care enough to keep their kids off pot vote with their uhauls and move to communities where other parents and the community cares. Sounds like your community has lost critical mass of enough people to care.
Most of it was the same building my dad was in thirty years before. There was a nice new wing that I was barely in because it housed art, music, and the wrestling practice room. We had a new gymnasium but about half our games were held in the old one, which wasn’t new when my dad played on it. I do remember the election when they voted to increase the tax to build the new gym and I can’t say that it mattered to us students. We actually preferred to play in the old gym over the new gym anyway. The showers in the locker room were disgusting. We never had any A/C in the building. Some parts of the school were nice. Most of it was outdated and the temperature was never particularly comfortable.
About ten years after I graduated they got a massive grant and did a bunch of remodeling especially of the climate control system. They also used grants to build a new shop and ag sciences building. We didn’t even have ag sciences when I was in school.
When my dad went to the school in the 70s the kids whined about the things they didn’t like about mostly accepted things as they were. When I went in the 90s and 00s we whined about we didn’t like but didn’t have any particular gratitude for the new things that we did have. The kids that are in the almost entirely new school that exists today whine about what they don’t like and take for granted the good things they have. Kids tend to accept both the good and the bad as how things are. They almost never celebrate a successful levy and they almost never mourn a failed one. They do not express gratitude for the good things, the new building, the new equipment, the great teachers because they take them for granted. But they also accept the bad as inevitable.
For the most part the things the kids care about in school have very little to do with the things that property taxes pay for. Do I have friends? Do I have fun? (Sometimes kids with older and less playground equipment have more fun than those with the newest and best equipment.) Are my teachers nice to me? Is it fun to learn? Am I scared and unable to focus?
The fact that a third grader isn’t going to particularly care what salary a teacher makes isn’t a reason to not pay teachers better. But it’s also silly to act like children look at these things like some sort of community betrayal. Most of these kids live in homes that aren’t much materially better than the schools. When everyone is poor then poor is normalized and not traumatizing.
They know. I knew. The smart kids know. The kids who might become town doctors and lawyers know. And so the capable leave behind the incapable. Why do you think rural brain drain happens?
My wife is also from a small town, in Iowa even. She’s a civil engineer, using her much coveted skills in our big city.
well, when they get mesothelioma from the asbestos and they're adults, maybe they'll care. Really Doctor - what kind of doctor are you to think kids don't care about these things. I know a lot of kids who care about their teachers - they'd like their teachers to be able to afford to eat and house themselves.
For one thing school age children covers age five to eighteen, there is a wide variation there in ability to understand these issues. Realistically though all of adolescence is marked by both self centeredness and a difficulty in connecting current actions with futures outcomes. Young children generally do not make short term decisions based on long term outcomes. Teens aren’t much better which is why the teen years are marked by self destructive behavior. The kids who want to spend all day in front of a screen eating ice cream and the teens who are vaping, having unprotected sex, experimenting with drugs, drinking, and driving too fast are not thinking about their future health.
If a teacher comes into a room crying because of a financial worry then yes children care. As a general rule children want the best for everyone that’s part of what makes children wonderful. That said they also tend to look at the world based on how and when it directly impacts them. This is perfectly normal and growing out of that is part of the process of maturation. Kids do not go through their day wondering if their teacher and the janitor and the lunch lady and the aide all make enough money. They do not wonder why it is that the administrators make far more money than the janitor when their function is far less vital to the day to day business of the school than that of the janitor. These are just not the things that concern kids, nor should they.
When you ask kids of any age what their biggest problems in school are they are almost always going to be things that impact their individual experience and not a systemic issue. That teacher doesn’t like me. My teacher gives us too much homework. I get beat up by bullies. My best friend is now mean to me. It’s boring.
“My town doesn’t care about me which is why our school doesn’t have any money and why it sucks” will be said by almost no kid of any age when asked what their biggest problems in school are.
I grew up in a shithole small town with several failed school funding referenda. I was top of my class. I moved the fuck out and never came back. It’s clear to smart and capable students that the townspeople suck and they leave. Why do you think rural brain drains happen?
I think much of it comes from financial realities, wages in rural areas are generally far behind urban areas while the cost of living is the same or higher. If as a lawyer or doctor or other professional in a rural area you charge what those in the suburbs charge then either you have trouble finding enough people to keep your doors open, or you do just fine but leave large chunks of your community without the ability to get the services they need. This is just as true in private endeavors as it is in tax payer funded public school. The median household income in my rural town is $60,732. In the nearest big city it’s $75k. In one of the suburbs of that city it’s $167,000. The people in the suburb are able to pay the people who provide their services more than the people in my rural town. That is the reason for the brain drain, it’s not that the people in the suburb value their schools more, often times the percent of their income spent on education is actually less. Economics is the driving factor.
I think the only thing saving the town I grew up in is pure luck. It has two universities in it and both of them are slow but steady growing. While I know for a fact that the town has lost 4 elementary schools and 2 high schools between my mother's and my time growing up there.
I had an amazing american history teacher who explained things plainly to the students and he made me care.. But he also told us all to get out of there when we came of age and means to move.
He explained the levies and what they did, he explained that every vote counted and pointed out that children should ask their parents how they vote and why. And if mom/dad or grandma/grandpa couldn't or wouldn't explain themselves.. To just think on that. He got everyone who wanted to be signed up for voting as they were able to - literally just asking our birthdays and giving us the forms to turn into town hall.
That man is a reason I care about things at all. And without him I know I would have been another careless american teen.
I wish every student had someone like him as a teacher.
I felt the same when a community voted against funding their library. It closed. Stupid, short-sighted, self-defeating. Apparently they eventually learned their lesson- the library is open again, albeit for limited hours and with no budget for new books or services.
To appease Bible beaters who think public schools are godless communist indoctrination centers that will turn their good, white, Christian children into Satanic, gay, trans, multilingual, vegans who want recreational abortions.
So that parents can choose schools that fit their criteria. Spend money to get the school quality desired rather than have to shop school districts with housing. School vouchers are the future, school bond votes like this story are a band-aid.
Gosh this feels relevant to our current home county. We’ve only been here a couple years so we don’t feel like we totally understand the community dynamics yet (we only moved 15 minutes away from the town we had been living in for over a decade, but it’s definitely a different vibe here). But our county has been voting down millages left and right, to the point that 4-H just got shut down county wide, we don’t have animal control services at all, and I think the list of services getting cut is about to start growing quickly.
Iowa Mercury just had an article on farmerless farms coming our way. Ya, taxing farmland is not going over well in the boardroom. And small towns and acreages just get in the way.
Wow! Incredible, heartfelt writing. My hometown, too, is Allison, and my husband’s is Greene. I remember when Clarksville, Allison, and Dumont were trying to combine. I think of the changes in Greene since the elementary school closed. I was happy to see North Butler pass their bond and saddened for Charles City.
It’s a difficult issue. My high school (town of 1100 people) had a running track that desperately needed to be redone. Every time budget increases were suggested, even if approved, the money went elsewhere. Football team always got new equipment (they didn’t win our homecoming game, our girls cross country went to state).
Same as many CA towns passing increased taxes for road improvement. But the roads just got worse and worse.
People need to be able to trust that the additional funding is actually going to needed things, and governments need to be able to show it.
Sorry in your area that people chose to be short sighted. You are right that the next generation is the greatest investment any level of our society can make.
Yeah there is no way it takes $30 million to renovate a single rural school. This was clearly either a vanity project or embezzlement, and the fact that it still almost passed is proof that the community does care deeply about education.
Does depend on the school, I work in construction doing fire sprinklers. General rule of thumb is the fire sprinklers are roughly 1-5% of the cost of a new building. Given that some commercial contracts I’ve been on are over 4 million dollars just for the sprinkler system…
And the small college campus building I did was in the 200,000 ish range.
A remodel of a simple school shouldn’t be 30 million, but by the time you add things like resurfacing a running track like in the case of my high school, that quote came from 50,000-300,000 depending on surface and how through the job was done. If you have lots of things that all need done at once I could definitely see millions.
You can by moving. But they are increasingly not allowing school changes, I’ve even seen people with difficulties changing teachers or classrooms to get out of bad situations like bullying or whatnot.
One of my adult kids lives and works out your way, in one of Iowa’s treasured factories. Not for long though, I hear. The rest of us found lives and work in suburban metroplexes. Where, if I walk down to the end of the cul-de-sac and asked every homeowner, I’d bet that close to 100% had a parent or grandparent that once lived on a farm — maybe in Karelia or Mexico or Oklahoma, to be sure — but some kind of farm somewhere where the youth were squeezed out and the young families found better lives in the suburbs. Schools are a big factor. Child care. Rentals that aren’t full of mice. Jobs, too.
Interesting- different town and state but similar issues. Out in the far west, in a ranching community where the population is aging, the only people moving in are retirees from other west coast states hoping to spend their golden years on their little 1-5 acre “ ranch “. Have raised the housing prices and priced out families, cut taxes and voted in a far right school board that hired an incompetent far right lawyer who stole millions from the school district. Any taxes or school bonds fail, the school population has decreased significantly and with the loss of millions from the corrupt school board, the state now has to come in and take over the school district’s finances. This was once the highest ranking school district in the state, it was rural but prided itself on being innovative and paying well but within a decade it’s completely collapsed.
The selfishness of the older retirees can not be overstated.
They have come in and completely destroyed the small town charm that attracted them to this area, by refusing to pay taxes, voting in extremists and jacking up housing with their money.
I am almost glad that people don't realize that the federal government spends three times as much supporting retirees as it does on every other non-defense program COMBINED, because almost nobody knows that, and they would be apocalyptically angry about it they did. I mean, I'm pretty non-violently angry about it.
I want people know the government sends as much money out in the form of Social Security checks to retired (or even still-practicing) lawyers with six-figure annuities as it does to poor families. But I also don't want something like that to cause people to immediately turn on the idea of Social Security, because it's the only real toehold our social safety net has.
hey, Retirees have been paying into the social security system their entire lives. You're an ignorant ageist. thank you for helping to tear the country apart with your ageism instead of looking at who really doesn't pay taxes and takes the biggest handouts - corporations and the wealthy
Thanks for appreciating the nuance...
"hey, Retirees have been paying into the social security system their entire lives."
Please research that just a bit before attempting to deflect.
"You're an ignorant ageist."
No, we're just among many of those who were gleefully trampled on in your Boomer quest to "get everything that we deserve!", even if if bankrupted everyone in the process three or more generations after you're thankfully long gone.
"thank you for helping to tear the country apart with your ageism"
Lol. You do realize that Boomers started this process to protect them from competition, don't you? You started the "tearing apart" process to pad your retirement accounts, and now that the bill has come due before you sailed off into the sunset, with many many folks now starting to realize that it's your generation who have destroyed so many future prospects for them (such as driving up housing prices to insane levels to drive off the riffraff and create utopian neighborhoods and towns), and as you move into assisted-living facilities and nursing homes, the people you shafted with insane expenses will be in charge of your healthcare.
You have zero idea what you've unleashed upon yourselves. But since I've spent nearly a decade in a couple of related medical industries, I do know what's coming for you, and to quote practically any vacuum cleaner salesperson, man, it sucks to be you.
"instead of looking at who really doesn't pay taxes and takes the biggest handouts - corporations and the wealthy"
Uh, who exactly do you think these people are? 15-year-old kids? 30-year-olds?
Nope, that's all you. Shareholders are primarily Boomers.
In the industry I just left, that was the hilariously ironic part of the whole business: Assisted living? It's one set of Boomers stealing money from another set of Boomers, all for laughably inferior medical "care", and they make everyone's lives miserable around them in the process.
The facility I just left as an assistant director? Not even EMS wants to go in there any longer, you guys have trampled everything in your quest to come in first...and blow it all on toys and cruises before your supposedly-terrible offspring can get their supposedly dirty mitts on what is supposed to be entirely your treasure to blow.
hey ah, Larry Asshole Pants- I was an ICU nurse. So you Can Fuck all the way off.
I'm sorry, are you under the impression that you're some sort of hero for being an ICU nurse? And was that an RN position, or a CNA?
Here's to hoping that Trump actually follows through with his claim to be dropping nursing back down to being merely a vocation (as it always used to be), the most destructive and terrifying employee in all of healthcare right now is the narcissistic RN who is convinced that they're somehow more powerful than doctors.
Nah, can’t follow you there. That was bad policy and RN’s keep hospitals a float. I’m not saying this lady is a hero or me or any other RN individually. But if you read the article you’ll notice the small excerpt about shuttering rural hospitals. Sink nurses and the whole place collapses. Doctors can move their talent anywhere and are always the more valued hire.
In mathematical terms what they paid is not enough to pay for those benefits. Nobody expected people to live that long
You also murdered a large fraction of the people who were supposed to pay social security. You want to know who doesn’t pay taxes? The sixty million Americans you threw in dumpsters so you could pursue your careers and retirements.
There are conversations to be had about the effects of abortion on US demographics that are interesting and productive, but they don't start like you started this one.
“Please watch your tone when discussing how we decimated your entire generation.”
I didn't say "watch your tone," I made a suggestion. You can act however you want. I am not missing out on anything by not talking to an angry guy about abortion.
“The sixty million Americans you threw in dumpsters…”
I thought Planned Infanticide flushed their Americans down the toilet.
You forgot "entitlements".
Yes Liz, but your payment amounts were calculated on the basis you'd all be dying much sooner than you are thanks to modern medicine. If you live long as I hope, you will be taking way, way more than you paid in. The system is broken and for old people to get full benefits they were promised by earlier generations of populists, will bankrupt the nation and steal our youth's future. Eventually the rest of us are going to say enough to you bleeding the country dry.
"Yes Liz, but your payment amounts were calculated on the basis you'd all be dying much sooner than you are thanks to modern medicine."
Listen to them speak for a few minutes and they'll repeatedly tell you that they're owed so much more for simply existing.
"If you live long as I hope, you will be taking way, way more than you paid in."
Once again, to hear them say it, they're owed that and much more.
"The system is broken and for old people to get full benefits they were promised by earlier generations of populists, will bankrupt the nation and steal our youth's future."
They really don't care, any attempt to explain this to their kind results in blank stares or temper tantrums...or both. I've seen some insane things being paid for by Medicaid in the last several years, memory care/dementia patients getting insanely expensive surgeries or dental work, racking up tens of thousands of dollars in expenses, and that's on top of their monthly bill for being in memory care, which in itself is several thousand dollars per month.
And that's on top of the outright fraud they commit before going into these facilities, Medicaid Divorce being one of the top things.
Again, they don't care, they'll bankrupt as many people as possible as long as they get what they perceive as a comfortable retirement (which they think they're entitled do or is owed to them) where they get to take endless cruises, buy gigantic houses, eat luxurious meals every day, and have a garage full of toys.
If retirees were to get what they paid in plus prime rate interest or close to it, current benefits would be only 15 to 20% of what the currently are. Nurses or Physicians are what the Dunning-Kruger observation had to have been based on. Tell others to stay in their lane while swerving all over the road.
Miles: The solution to the problem you mentioned is fairly simple. Means test Social Security benefits. Rich lawyers get zero and the poor get a living income.
Yeah, it seems like the way to go. People (including me) have been resistant to means test social security because its universality helps its popularity. But debt is out of control.
I am a little resistant to means-testing Social Security because I believe it will then just become another “welfare” program that will be easier to eliminate.
As an aside, eliminating the income cap on the Social Security tax would largely solve the problem, at least for the next 50 years.
Then republicans will cut it, social security only has a broad base of support bc it is universal. Much more politically stable to keep pushing retirement age up as life expectancy rises, or just let the system go insolvent so everyone only gets 75% of what they are now.
Taking the income cap off of paying into the system would keep the system going.
Or both get it, but you remove any upper limit to the contributions.
It would’ve been way gayer if I said it with a cock in my mouth
Wow Ive never seen Substack suspend someone……thought this was like a free speech platform. Think they should leave it up to people to block
Hah yeah… I believe it is just the krugman Substack.
I got trolled and my counter troll was a little much. It’s a shame because I think I am a good contributor here.
This sounds quite similar to the small town where we own a house in northern Idaho. It’s what I call an R & R town— recreation and retirement— since there is a ski area, large lake and other outdoor opportunities. I think it’s a little more complicated, and all the retirees are not wealthy people on their ranchettes. The real estate development industry, along with financial outfits that increasingly include private equity companies, have been building or buying up condos, apartments, and older existing homes to market as investments for people who want to get rich from short-term rentals, for example, using Airbnb. None of these folks are interested in preserving the local schools and try to get the public sector to pick up the infrastructure costs necessary for their developments.
That’s sad.
We have the opposite problem; Liberal DINKs from the West Coast and NE cesspools move in, raise taxes, vote for radical leftists, destroy our culture and traditions.
As you said in your profile you are fine- fuck your feelings- am I right?
Well Lucy, not sure how you linked that up with the topic, but sure.👍🏻
I don’t know TJ maybe because you list on your profile we are all doomed but you are fine but then you post shit like this that contradicts that statement, post continual shit on your substack proving your massive lack of empathy for people who don’t look and act like you- and point again to contradicting the statement that “ you are fine “ and we are all doomed. If you were fine, you wouldn’t feel the need to post about how radical leftists are taking over your towns and destroying your traditions. That doesn’t sound like someone who is doing “ fine”
That sounds like someone who is angry. And then you post pictures of overweight white guys implying they are alpha males “ Nick Shirley “ versus just losers who are finally catching up to the journalism that others much more qualified have been covering for several years. Y’all have some how equated being victims of the sin of gluttony as being alpha when it all it displays is greed and a sure sign of a person going straight to hell according to the Bible.
Ah. I see your problem. You suffer from cognitive dissonance.
You see Lucy, it’s possible to be happy (I’m fine), and still have concerns.
You say I have no empathy, but nothing could be further from the truth. I care about my people, and worry about their continued happiness when leftist degenerates move in with their unwholesome, unhealthy habits.
So, I am confused about the gluttonous alphas you say I post about. I am unaware of such a person.
Nick Shirley is the future. Young people see the suffering and degradation the left holds sacred, and the mental instability that comes with it…and they reject it.
You’re a leftist, Lucy; doomed.
I’m fine. 👌🏻
TJ do you understand the definition of cognitive dissonance?
I don’t suffer from any discomfort or mental anguish as my thoughts, beliefs and actions are all aligned- nothing is contradictory. It’s really quite lovely. Highly recommend.
As far as your empathy- it only shows
That it is limited, that you believe only certain people “ deserve it” and that you lack imagination.
You can call me a leftist
Though I prefer socialist.
Ni dieu Ni maître
https://substack.com/@v1per4/note/c-196822337?r=20aan4&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
^white male loser epidemic^, all rolled into one person
Just curious, what culture & what traditions are being destroyed? What unwholesome & unhealthy habits?
"The selfishness of the older retirees can not be overstated"
"voting in extremists"
Who exactly are these extremists?
This is Idaho
My memory of Charles City is from about 20 years ago. I was driving through and had stopped to get gas. I accidentally locked my toddler in my car, and immediately realizing this, called the police in town. And they told me, “We don’t do that anymore.”
They don’t help parents get their babies out of locked cars “anymore.” Like it’s a thing they used to do, but don’t.
So I had to call a locksmith.
I don’t have a lot of respect for Charles City. I’m sorry that Charles City doesn’t care about its own children, either.
Oh gosh, I bet that was terrifying!
I’m sure that’s how I felt at the time. Terrified and baffled. Now that said child is 24 years old I’m more just vastly angry at whoever answered the phone in the Charles City police department.
…why did you call the police?
It wasn’t a criminal matter, it was you locking your own vehicle by mistake..which means you needed to call a locksmith, not a police officer.
You may have been nervous and auto-called police for ‘help’, or you may have thought you were clever and would not have to pay a locksmith - either way, it’s kinda sad you blame the town, the police force, and the Reception who took your call….
….for the last 20 years. 🙄
Because police officers have slim jims and help people with such devices in situations just like this.
Did it make you feel good to type that?
Substack has gotten more ppl that are pointlessly combative
Imagine my surprise to
find out the first thing to do is call 911.
I seriously didn't know that was the rule now.
wow. dude. Calling the police or 911 has been the number to call for emergencies since before you were born and your parents dropped you on your head.
No argue on the police digs, but…obviously you don’t know anything about my past.
Not the person who you're responding to but buddy, we used to be able to actually call the cops for help, especially in a rural areas.That's what I grew up with too. When I locked myself out as a latchkey kid I called 911 and a cop drove me to my mother. It's never been the same in every part of the country or for all income groups but it was like that for a great many of us.
I don't know if it changes by town or state, but at least in my area, if there's a child locked in the car they want you to call 911 instead of a locksmith.
Yes, this is what I was told when something similar happened to me. The locksmith was able to come very quickly, but told me that the preference is for police because they can come even faster. Thankfully, they were very kind about it.
My auto insurance actually covered a locksmith coming and getting the door open.
I believe the subject as some nuance.
I watched a county I spent the summer in Oregon finally decide the Sheriffs retired and were the richest folks in town. They watched teachers bring in San Francsico ideas into school and did not spend that money on repairs. Eventually the big bond showed up and ended just as fast. Private funding by parents with Homeschool Pods with 4H participaton saved the day. Volunteers for police and fire worked better than the dude with the radar gun hitting all the locals with fear.
If you lock your kid in the car, it's your problem. You should have called the locksmith first.
This is the cold hearted attitude that is part of the problem.
Lol Christian
Thanks that’s not an insult.
Jesus really hates people like you
I don’t know what I said that was so wrong but ok I guess. God bless you.
I’m so sorry, I was replying to Cary Cotterman who was displaying the sort of uncharitable attitude that has given American Christians such a bad name. Apologies if I upset you
‼️‼️‼️📢💣👊🏼
I grew up in a conservative community that CONSTANTLY voted down taxes to fund schools, even ones that would mainly be paid by tourists (major tourist town). Sends kids great messages that both they and education don't matter.
In addition, a common complaint in my hometown was that a town less than an hour away always had cleaner and better maintained streets. My folks always got dirty looks for pointing out THAT town paid for the maintenance with property taxes ours kept refusing to allow.
Do you really believe higher school budgets would help.
I come from a part of the country spending $40k per kid per year on schools that are a total failure. Studies show no correlation between school spending and outcomes.
I’m talking more “basic building maintenance” and “afford nurses every day” than anything else. And dealing with that we knew when I wad in elementary school the district needed another high school and when I went to college STILL didn’t have the money.
Which studies are those? Did the Heritage foundation do them?
I mean, sure, past a certain point MAYBE increased funding decreases in effectiveness—but surely there’s no way you think renovating to remove asbestos from a high school and make it accessible to all students is a problem that wouldn’t 100% be solved with the funding to accomplish it??
I know that your average Catholic school manages to operate on a shoestring budget that is usually dramatically lower than the local school district and somehow the kids aren't breathing in asbestos.
We spend 3x inflation adjusted per capita on K-12 then we spent in 1960 and yet somehow you can't build a minimum viable product?
No, I don't think lack of money is the issue.
There is no community in the U.S. that spends $40 thousand per kid on schooling.
The community with the highest per capita spending on schools in the U.S. is the Syosset Central School District in Syosset, New York, which spends $32,125 per pupil. New York generally has the highest education spending per student in the county.
https://nypost.com/2025/08/30/us-news/nyc-doe-projected-to-spend-over-42k-per-student-this-school-year-the-most-in-the-country/#:~:text=NYC%20DOE%20projected%20to%20spend%20$42k%20per%20student%20this,the%20most%20in%20the%20country&text=The%20city%20Department%20of%20Education,declines%20and%20student%20achievement%20stalls.
Color me surprised. NYC needs to get those costs per student under control.
By the time my youngest was in school, our largest district was spending over $11K per student, enough to pay tuition for state college, and to this day they are still failing.
There's a correlation when the buildings are falling down, but you continue to vote no.
Yeah and I think she quoted $30 million??? Yeah absolutely not. If you can’t get it done with like $500k forget it. Feel like only the people who have kids in the school should be responsible for fixing it….and people unaffected by disability should also pay more for disabled? My kid went to public school (partly), I went to public school (partly). I’m glad I could send my kid to public school….so I don’t really know the best answer. I’m not really for social security (saw that convo somewhere on here) but I’m grateful my parent has it…I’ve heard dont complain about problems until you offer solutions but I’m a libertarian and think the way forward would be homeschooling or a bunch more small business schools that could get a building done/improved with like $10k. Which is why I only had one child. And scrap the social security, leave people to save on their own.
Similar thing happened to me and my school district growing up. The result? I got my elite college education and use my skills to better an urban community. I would rather die than in a small town again. They are morally bankrupt places that deserve the brain drain and the actual bankruptcy.
Guess who I married? Someone with a similar experience in rural Iowa. Iowa - minus a few small cities - is a horrible place full of horrible people.
Leave your genes in the grave then? Your ebullience ends with you. The future belongs to those who show up no matter how horrible they are.
I bet your urban community is so grateful you showed up with your skills, but I bet not 1/2 as happy as that small town when you took your elite skills and troon sideshow down the road.
You people, I swear…
Could you say more? With schools I can see how people without children might oppose property taxes. With clean streets I just can’t understand the mindset of the people complaining…
I think there’s a big disconnect in a lot of minds that lower taxes=/=less services to them. Obviously a government with more money can fund more services. But they don’t get it.
This is the bit I don’t get. I’m just always nervous of narratives that suggest a group of people is unintelligent.
I can see how someone would be suspicious of taxes to national government, because it’s so far removed from everyday life that you might not trust them to spend money in sensible ways. But with local government in towns, people presumably know their leaders? Is there then the same distrust about how money might be spent?
It's not that they're unintelligent. It's that they trust local government least of all. And that's not irrational either-- local government, especially in small town America, is much more subject to corruption and outright embezzlement. Like the superintendent who embezzles 100K out of the school budget over 3 years, or the police chief who takes a payoff from the local mega-farm to look the other way on what the illegal immigrants they hire get up to.
The smaller and more local a government is, the less oversight there is, and the lower the monetary stakes. So local politicians are bought cheap. Particularly if they have ambition, and want to move up the ladder-- maybe to county government, for example, or state legislature. There's way more money to be made if you're on the take at the county or state level, so even without a payoff the ambitious ones are lining themselves up to take a payoff when they move up the ladder.
So yeah, it's not irrational or unintelligent to have this paranoia. But then also it goes too far-- it becomes a hardline ideological truth, something one has faith and zealotry in. Taxes are bad! Any form of tax is bad! Government, even the local government, with the people they go to church with in office, is always bad!
This is compounded by the fact those farmers ain't really local anymore. They're surrogates for the corporate farming industry to ship goods internationally. They are the winners in the cannibalization of family farms-- the big acreage winners who pull in millions of farm revenue every year, or are trying to hoover up enough family farms by acquisition to become the next multi-million dollar revenue farm in the area. They don't give a fuck about the town or the kids, because they only live in there in the sense they need to file taxes like locals in order to get tax breaks. Their kids go to private schools, if they even live in the same county, or even the same state. They pose as salt of the earth farmers for town halls and old folks, but their luxury trucks are tricked out for looks, not work in a field. The corporate mega-farmers outnumber the local small farmers these days. They're louder at the meetings when there's a tax cut to chase. And they'll spend money to buy anyone they can.
I live in San Diego. We have a huge corrupt government. Our local city officials along with unions never met a tax that they didn't like. I like unions, but when they fund politicians and the union leaders are married to political consultants, the people are the ones who lose out.
They don't want improvements because some of them might go to Black or Latino people.
Not unintelligent. Seems more a willing disconnect
Education fails because of the people being educated, not because lack of facilities. Lower IQ, chaotic home life, etc, contributes far more to failure than a broken furnace.
Fewer than 20% of Americans ever need to know anything beyond an 8th grade education. If you doubt this, ask AI.
My grandmother only had an 8th grade education and she didn't recommend it.
This comment section went... A bit wild. I did write this with nuance about my specific community, but the rural hollowing out is happening all over the country. It's up to voters to decide if that's okay. My community said that's okay. They said we want to be a bedroom community instead of innovating and investing in ourselves.
While coments here have been overwhelmingly positive (thank you!), the ones that scare me the most are the ones coming from angry white men telling me to homeschool my kids. Kindly, get a life.
School is about so much more than academics. It's learning how to participate in society. Gaining enough emotional intelligence to be strong leaders so they don't end being spineless, miserable internet trolls.
I'm glad this resonated with folks in 2025. Now, as we look toward 2026, what will we do about it?
We made a long cross country drive across the middle of the country this summer.
I used to do this often when I was younger. It’s changed.
If not for the interstate fast food stores, gas stations/convenience stores, a church, bar, a post office, and an occasional roadside hotel, there was often nothing.
We used to like to get off the exits and look for local restaurants or points of interest, but now we see little except run down houses.
I feel safer driving through Baltimore. And that’s a scary thought.
I often think what children in the school district think when their community votes no for schools. What a message that is!
Most kids don’t care in the least. For one thing, in my experience schools are not particularly transparent about their finances. They will ask for levies or say that they need more money but fail to provide any sort of budgeting or accounting as to why that money is needed. Even if the money is for something specific it’s often generic “new building” or “teachers salaries”. There is often little explanation given as to why a new building is needed or why teacher salaries need increased. Without an explanation of exactly what the money is needed for it’s unlikely kids will feel anything at all about a refusal of people to give schools more money.
As a kid you don’t particularly care if you have a new school building, if the classroom is over crowded or how much money your teacher makes. Most kids don’t care if their text books are twenty years old. A failure of communities to fund school will frustrate teachers but kids simply don’t care because most of them don’t care too much about the types of things impacted by budgets.
Kids do know, and do care. They care if the building they spend 6 hours a day in is decrepit, or the books they are given are falling apart. And they definitely get the message that the town doesn't care about them.
When I was in high school, the budget came up for a vote every year. It was a topic of discussion in our classes. It was very obvious whether it passed or not, because the following year we either had school busses or none, sports teams or none. We very much wondered if the townspeople cared about us. I remember my friend being extremely angry with her parents for voting no.
Yup. I left and never came back. I hope the town rots into the ground, but actually, more than that, I hope rich commuters come take it over and price out the white trash.
I would say it very much depends on exactly how bad things are and the age of the kids. I have never seen a school that lacked sports teams or a bus to take kids on field trips or to sporting events, and I have been around some very small and very poor schools. Where I live the school district does not offer bussing to school. The couple of busses are used for extracurriculars.
Nobody thinks anything of it, neither the children nor the parents. Schools where the buildings were in poor shape? Especially that lacked AC? Most of the schools I’ve been in and around and it wasn’t particularly bothersome to the kids. Much whining by everyone the first month of school and then it cools down and nobody worries about it until the next year where the cycle is repeated. One year in middle school one of my classmates had a text book with my dad’s name in it, my dad was almost thirty when I was born, we thought it was funny that our books were so old.
I also wonder how upset you would have been had it not been a topic of discussion in your classes. Was it a discussion led by students or by teachers? When I was in high school we had plenty of complaints but a sit down discussion of the actual issues never would have happened without a teacher guiding and leading the discussion. I know and work with a handful of high school kids today and I would say the same is true. Like anyone they have their complaints but they are short lived and not thought about particularly deeply. I have no doubt that kids can be led to think about and grow concerned about such things, but I’m far from convinced that is an automatic and natural outcome.
I have never seen kids celebrate when school funding was passed and I have never seen them upset when it wasn’t. Are there some extreme cases where the oldest kids feel the lack? I’m sure. But the vast majority of these students just go on about life without second thought. That isn’t an excuse not to fund schools but the idea that vast swaths of kids feel abandoned by their community when a levy or property tax increase fails just simply isn’t true.
Since we are both looking at our own experiences, I don’t think that qualifies us to say “vast swaths of students.” I would be interested in what other people think.
Where I lived, if one year you caught the school bus, and the next year, your parents had to scramble to find you transportation to school, it was very noticeable, even to elementary schoolers. Then, if a kid said, “Why don’t I have a bus?” the answer was, “The budget wasn’t passed.” This in suburban New York.
I think you are not wrong. The other writer was clearly not curious as a pre-teen / teenager. When I was a teenager I came to care about that stuff very much, particularly writing for the school newspaper. But there are also students that clearly didn't value being in school in the first place, who never cared.
The thing is: the kids who care are the best and brightest. The dude who never plans to go to college and wishes he could graduate at 16 and hates having to do an ounce of homework? Those kids don't care. That kid? Is never going to leave town, even if the only job he can get is cashiering at the gas station off the inter-state.
The kids who do care? They can and will leave the town. And then they keep caring about wherever they live after they leave the town.
Problem is-- geographically in a lot of places there's been generations and generations of that cycle, and the only people left are the people who didn't care. And they don't see the problem.
I was aware of the issues. Once I was in high school I was also aware that an outrageous sum of my dad’s income already went to pay income and various other taxes, I was aware of how much his small business had to pay the state in sales tax, I was aware that the value of our home increasing meant he had to pay more property tax and insurance without proposed increases. I was aware that most of the town didn’t have much in the way of spare cash and that all of the schools that surrounded us were in similar shape. I was very aware that none of my classmates were concerned with any of it.
Our school system where I now live (another small town) went to four days a week last year. When it was proposed there was a short lived panic about what to do and how to adjust. We are almost half way through the second year of it and everyone adjusted and it’s no longer a topic of discussion or concern.
Listen, fellow geek, she's right. And in a lot of areas, you know who opposes school levies the loudest? People who were their loudest advocates when they had kids in school.
For what it’s worth I asked the high school kid I work with today what her biggest concern with the school was? What was the biggest thing interfering with her education? Her answer: all the potheads and druggies. I asked my coworkers who have kids in school what the biggest concerns were, about five people. Every single answer was essentially social. A problem teacher that is being mean. A teacher that just isn’t very good. Mean girls. Fights with friends. Out of control classrooms.
This is what a school looks like in a small town when everyone who cares has left. And then you wonder why you have all these social problems. You have the problems because everyone who cares enough to so much as pay a bit more in taxes left. Which is really kind of like basic entry caring. Good teachers move to where they get paid more and the locals care enough to keep the schools up to date; there’s a teacher shortage. Parents who care enough to keep their kids off pot vote with their uhauls and move to communities where other parents and the community cares. Sounds like your community has lost critical mass of enough people to care.
What was your high school like when you attended it?
Most of it was the same building my dad was in thirty years before. There was a nice new wing that I was barely in because it housed art, music, and the wrestling practice room. We had a new gymnasium but about half our games were held in the old one, which wasn’t new when my dad played on it. I do remember the election when they voted to increase the tax to build the new gym and I can’t say that it mattered to us students. We actually preferred to play in the old gym over the new gym anyway. The showers in the locker room were disgusting. We never had any A/C in the building. Some parts of the school were nice. Most of it was outdated and the temperature was never particularly comfortable.
About ten years after I graduated they got a massive grant and did a bunch of remodeling especially of the climate control system. They also used grants to build a new shop and ag sciences building. We didn’t even have ag sciences when I was in school.
When my dad went to the school in the 70s the kids whined about the things they didn’t like about mostly accepted things as they were. When I went in the 90s and 00s we whined about we didn’t like but didn’t have any particular gratitude for the new things that we did have. The kids that are in the almost entirely new school that exists today whine about what they don’t like and take for granted the good things they have. Kids tend to accept both the good and the bad as how things are. They almost never celebrate a successful levy and they almost never mourn a failed one. They do not express gratitude for the good things, the new building, the new equipment, the great teachers because they take them for granted. But they also accept the bad as inevitable.
For the most part the things the kids care about in school have very little to do with the things that property taxes pay for. Do I have friends? Do I have fun? (Sometimes kids with older and less playground equipment have more fun than those with the newest and best equipment.) Are my teachers nice to me? Is it fun to learn? Am I scared and unable to focus?
The fact that a third grader isn’t going to particularly care what salary a teacher makes isn’t a reason to not pay teachers better. But it’s also silly to act like children look at these things like some sort of community betrayal. Most of these kids live in homes that aren’t much materially better than the schools. When everyone is poor then poor is normalized and not traumatizing.
But even if they don't know about it, poor ventilation will affect school performance.
“When I was in high school, the budget came up for a vote every year. It was a topic of discussion in our class.”
“…and then everyone on the bus gave me a standing ovation”
🤣
They know. They may not yet understand. But they know.
They know. I knew. The smart kids know. The kids who might become town doctors and lawyers know. And so the capable leave behind the incapable. Why do you think rural brain drain happens?
My wife is also from a small town, in Iowa even. She’s a civil engineer, using her much coveted skills in our big city.
well, when they get mesothelioma from the asbestos and they're adults, maybe they'll care. Really Doctor - what kind of doctor are you to think kids don't care about these things. I know a lot of kids who care about their teachers - they'd like their teachers to be able to afford to eat and house themselves.
For one thing school age children covers age five to eighteen, there is a wide variation there in ability to understand these issues. Realistically though all of adolescence is marked by both self centeredness and a difficulty in connecting current actions with futures outcomes. Young children generally do not make short term decisions based on long term outcomes. Teens aren’t much better which is why the teen years are marked by self destructive behavior. The kids who want to spend all day in front of a screen eating ice cream and the teens who are vaping, having unprotected sex, experimenting with drugs, drinking, and driving too fast are not thinking about their future health.
If a teacher comes into a room crying because of a financial worry then yes children care. As a general rule children want the best for everyone that’s part of what makes children wonderful. That said they also tend to look at the world based on how and when it directly impacts them. This is perfectly normal and growing out of that is part of the process of maturation. Kids do not go through their day wondering if their teacher and the janitor and the lunch lady and the aide all make enough money. They do not wonder why it is that the administrators make far more money than the janitor when their function is far less vital to the day to day business of the school than that of the janitor. These are just not the things that concern kids, nor should they.
When you ask kids of any age what their biggest problems in school are they are almost always going to be things that impact their individual experience and not a systemic issue. That teacher doesn’t like me. My teacher gives us too much homework. I get beat up by bullies. My best friend is now mean to me. It’s boring.
“My town doesn’t care about me which is why our school doesn’t have any money and why it sucks” will be said by almost no kid of any age when asked what their biggest problems in school are.
Don't all public school districts get audited?
I grew up in a shithole small town with several failed school funding referenda. I was top of my class. I moved the fuck out and never came back. It’s clear to smart and capable students that the townspeople suck and they leave. Why do you think rural brain drains happen?
I think much of it comes from financial realities, wages in rural areas are generally far behind urban areas while the cost of living is the same or higher. If as a lawyer or doctor or other professional in a rural area you charge what those in the suburbs charge then either you have trouble finding enough people to keep your doors open, or you do just fine but leave large chunks of your community without the ability to get the services they need. This is just as true in private endeavors as it is in tax payer funded public school. The median household income in my rural town is $60,732. In the nearest big city it’s $75k. In one of the suburbs of that city it’s $167,000. The people in the suburb are able to pay the people who provide their services more than the people in my rural town. That is the reason for the brain drain, it’s not that the people in the suburb value their schools more, often times the percent of their income spent on education is actually less. Economics is the driving factor.
“Myopic” is the word that comes to my mind. Thanks, Mallory, for articulating this sad, and far too common, situation so well.
Completely agree. Myopic at its finest.
I think the only thing saving the town I grew up in is pure luck. It has two universities in it and both of them are slow but steady growing. While I know for a fact that the town has lost 4 elementary schools and 2 high schools between my mother's and my time growing up there.
I had an amazing american history teacher who explained things plainly to the students and he made me care.. But he also told us all to get out of there when we came of age and means to move.
He explained the levies and what they did, he explained that every vote counted and pointed out that children should ask their parents how they vote and why. And if mom/dad or grandma/grandpa couldn't or wouldn't explain themselves.. To just think on that. He got everyone who wanted to be signed up for voting as they were able to - literally just asking our birthdays and giving us the forms to turn into town hall.
That man is a reason I care about things at all. And without him I know I would have been another careless american teen.
I wish every student had someone like him as a teacher.
I felt the same when a community voted against funding their library. It closed. Stupid, short-sighted, self-defeating. Apparently they eventually learned their lesson- the library is open again, albeit for limited hours and with no budget for new books or services.
Exactly the current regime wants to voucher out and starve public education- for what???
To appease Bible beaters who think public schools are godless communist indoctrination centers that will turn their good, white, Christian children into Satanic, gay, trans, multilingual, vegans who want recreational abortions.
Yeah, pretty much nailed the public school system on that one. I wouldn't want that either.
So that parents can choose schools that fit their criteria. Spend money to get the school quality desired rather than have to shop school districts with housing. School vouchers are the future, school bond votes like this story are a band-aid.
Gosh this feels relevant to our current home county. We’ve only been here a couple years so we don’t feel like we totally understand the community dynamics yet (we only moved 15 minutes away from the town we had been living in for over a decade, but it’s definitely a different vibe here). But our county has been voting down millages left and right, to the point that 4-H just got shut down county wide, we don’t have animal control services at all, and I think the list of services getting cut is about to start growing quickly.
Iowa Mercury just had an article on farmerless farms coming our way. Ya, taxing farmland is not going over well in the boardroom. And small towns and acreages just get in the way.
I attended a school board meeting where a farmer said he should get to vote in all 3 counties that he owns farmland in. It was greed on his part.
Wow! Incredible, heartfelt writing. My hometown, too, is Allison, and my husband’s is Greene. I remember when Clarksville, Allison, and Dumont were trying to combine. I think of the changes in Greene since the elementary school closed. I was happy to see North Butler pass their bond and saddened for Charles City.
It’s a difficult issue. My high school (town of 1100 people) had a running track that desperately needed to be redone. Every time budget increases were suggested, even if approved, the money went elsewhere. Football team always got new equipment (they didn’t win our homecoming game, our girls cross country went to state).
Same as many CA towns passing increased taxes for road improvement. But the roads just got worse and worse.
People need to be able to trust that the additional funding is actually going to needed things, and governments need to be able to show it.
Sorry in your area that people chose to be short sighted. You are right that the next generation is the greatest investment any level of our society can make.
This exactly. In our area the school systems practically launder money at the top, so no one wants the funding going that direction anymore.
Mismanagement hurts everyone, but don’t blame the voters that get sick of it.
Yeah there is no way it takes $30 million to renovate a single rural school. This was clearly either a vanity project or embezzlement, and the fact that it still almost passed is proof that the community does care deeply about education.
Does depend on the school, I work in construction doing fire sprinklers. General rule of thumb is the fire sprinklers are roughly 1-5% of the cost of a new building. Given that some commercial contracts I’ve been on are over 4 million dollars just for the sprinkler system…
And the small college campus building I did was in the 200,000 ish range.
A remodel of a simple school shouldn’t be 30 million, but by the time you add things like resurfacing a running track like in the case of my high school, that quote came from 50,000-300,000 depending on surface and how through the job was done. If you have lots of things that all need done at once I could definitely see millions.
Yeah millions as in $1-3 is believable $30 is obviously insane though.
Kinda depends on how many students and how you define rural. 30 mil is pretty ridiculous for most though.
The total population is 7k people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_City,_Iowa?wprov=sfti1
Y’all can’t change the school systems? I’m genuinely curious.
You can by moving. But they are increasingly not allowing school changes, I’ve even seen people with difficulties changing teachers or classrooms to get out of bad situations like bullying or whatnot.
School systems are not very accommodating.
One of my adult kids lives and works out your way, in one of Iowa’s treasured factories. Not for long though, I hear. The rest of us found lives and work in suburban metroplexes. Where, if I walk down to the end of the cul-de-sac and asked every homeowner, I’d bet that close to 100% had a parent or grandparent that once lived on a farm — maybe in Karelia or Mexico or Oklahoma, to be sure — but some kind of farm somewhere where the youth were squeezed out and the young families found better lives in the suburbs. Schools are a big factor. Child care. Rentals that aren’t full of mice. Jobs, too.