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Show School book money diverted, ABS says Classrooms are short on supplies and up-to-date textbooks simply because the administrators of the school programs divert the money that could be used for those purposes pur-poses to other items, said Elmer Barlow during a recent meeting of concerned citizens in Bountiful. Barlow is a former mayor of Bountiful. He heads "Taxpayers Against Bureaucratic Squandering" Squander-ing" (TABS), a Davis County organization orga-nization which is in favor of tax limitation. "In the last ten years, funds for the schools have more than doubled, dou-bled, Barlow stated. "With that kind of an increase, there is no excuse ex-cuse for classrooms to be in need of books and supplies." He said that organizations and others who are opposed to tax limitation limi-tation argue that there is a shortage of classroom supplies and that schools lack new textbooks. "According to the opponents of tax limitation," Barlow said, "tax limitation would be a disaster for classroom supplies and up-to-date textbooks." Barlow stated that he does not go along with that kind of thinking. He said that funds for schools have increased in-creased rapidly in the past seve years but have not been used fOK books and teaching supplies. Instead, In-stead, he said, administrators spent the money for other things. "They did not use the money for basic educational books and supplies," sup-plies," Barlow stated. "They spent it on frills and things that schools could easily get along without." Making more and more money available for schools by continually continual-ly increasing taxes, Barlow said, has not resulted in keeping adequate adequ-ate classroom supplies and new textbooks in schools. The increasing funds have only continued to make it possible for administrators to dream up and finance fi-nance frills and other things that have little impact on the education of the children, Barlow said. He stated that TABS is not opposed to education and does not advocate the elimination of essential essen-tial educational needs. TABS, he said, is in favor of bringing about administrative and financial reforms re-forms in the educational system so that the funds provided by taxes will be used productively and efficiently effi-ciently in the education of students. stu-dents. Experience has shown, Barlow ' said, that continually increasing the amount of money for the operation opera-tion of schools has encouraged waste and inefficiency. He stated that a limitation on the amount available will require that the administrators find ways to become be-come more cost effective in school operations and classrooms. That, he said, is the main goal of the tax limitation initiatives and of the organizations, such as TABS, that favor tax limitation. |