Community support for school tax needed

The Bibb County Board of Education wants to raise the local millage rate by 2 mills. While there has been much talk about the raise for school employees promised but not paid for by Gov. Natan Deal, that is only a slice of the reason for the school board to come before the community and ask for more money.

There are several pressures being applied to the district, and Bibb County is not the only district in the state that is having to wrestle with these issues. All stem from the austerity cuts employed by the General Assembly and Gov. Sonny Perdue during the Great Recession. The state, for all intent and purposes, balanced its books on the backs of its public school system.

Deal can rightly take credit for restoring $300 million to the public school budget this pat session. However, the state, over a 10-year period, took more than $8 billion, and the 2017 budget still has about $166 million in ongoing austerity cuts. During this time, the Bibb school system cut and furloughed teachers, ditched programs, expanded class sizes, put off necessary maintenance and closed and combined schools. Now there are new challenges on the horizon: charter schools and the governor’s opportunity school district plan that will be on the November ballot.

First, charter schools. While some think it should be a financial wash with the money that was going to the public school system now fed to the charter school, it doesn’t quite work that way. The lights still have to burn at the old school, and the infrastructure still has to be maintained for the remaining students. There’s just less money to fund those necessities. Combining some schools helps, and closing schools helps more. Each idea is easier said than accomplished. Everyone is in favor of closing a shrinking school until it is in their neighborhood.

Another factor facing the district and others is the governor’s opportunity school system that would not only suck state money from districts but local tax money as well — an idea that’s so fundamentally flawed it takes rigged wording on the ballot to justify sending not more money to those “failing schools” just where the money goes. The state, as witnessed by the latest Milestones fiasco, has not proven it can run its own bureaucracy, much less schools.

The hard fiscal reality of the Bibb system is that the trend line of the district’s finances is headed in the wrong direction. The district is required to have an 8 percent fund balance and that would dip below that level to 5.76 percent in 2017 and to 1.46 percent by 2018 and enter the negative by 2019. That’s with the $4,114,177 needed for a 3-percent pay raise. However, even without the raise the district would enter the negative in 2021.

Certainly some of that could be mitigated by a rise in local property values. As the digest goes up, so does the revenue due the district. Unfortunately, the digest, while it didn’t utterly collapse during the Great Recession, hasn’t come roaring back, either. Other costs are also outside of the board’s control such as the district’s contribution to the Teacher Retirement System for employees going from 14.27 percent to 16.81 percent.

Our community’s most precious asset is in their hands. Personal political considerations have to be put on the sidelines. The members are obviously not in it for the money. With a salary of only $7,200 annually, they are the ones who would need to go back to school if they were. Board member Lester Miller, a self-proclaimed fiscal conservative, proposed the tax increase. None of them wants this decision to be hung around their necks like a millstone. However, why would the system’s best teachers stay in a system that pays less than one that — in reality — is just a few miles away?

The Bibb school system is at a crucial juncture. It has found the right leader in Curtis Jones. He’s identified many of the problems facing the children in the county. One is the ability to read at grade level by the third grade. He’s putting the resources into making that a reality while at the same time improving the reading skills of older students. That takes time — and money. This community, if it truly believes the system can be turned around and has the right person at the helm to do so, should support the increase and hold him and the board accountable for spending the money wisely.

This story was originally published June 11, 2016 at 4:00 PM with the headline "Community support for school tax needed."