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To my friends on the school board:
I read the article in yesterday's paper about the state funding cutback
which is threatened by the phase out of the personal property tax on
businesses. Certainly a $12 million loss in funding would have substantial
impact in our community -- I hope the state legislators figure out how to
soften the blow! We need to motivate our community to put pressure on their
state legislators, or the so-called "wealthy" districts such as ours will
again get the short end of the deal from the state.
You all know that I feel we can and must do more to educate our community on
dynamics of school funding It's a lot of complicated stuff, and many people
take the posture of "don't confuse me with facts, I've made up my mind."
Unfortunately, the conclusion many have come to is that the Administration
and School Board spends their money irresponsibly.
What do you think about a communications strategy that teaches our community
about school funding one layer at a time? These complexities have built up
one layer at a time over the years, and we can't throw everything into the
conversation all at once and expect most people to have the attention span
to absorb everything. I'm thinking that a foundation of this communications
program is a series of articles that are published in the Superintendent's
column in the community newspapers (and kept online in the district's
website). The series would go something like this:
#1 - school funding in Hilliard is a partnership of three groups: a) the
homeowners; b) business; and, c) the state. Each contributes about a third.
Getting the community to understand this point alone is a great start;
#2 - When a new house is built in the school district, we get on average one
(?) new kid in the schools. The first problem is that the taxes generated by
that kid's house don't pay all the costs of educating the kid. The state
kicks in their portion, but unless tax-paying businesses are developed at
the same rate as houses, the funding burden shifts to homeowners. This has
been going on for years. It would be great to show a chart which compares
school population to funding proportions over time. For example, in 1980,
what was the school population, and the fraction of funding contributed by
these three primary sources? How has that changed over time? My guess is
that it would show the continued shift of burden from businesses and the
state to residential sources.
#3 - Talk about how school districts and municipalities are two completely
distinct and independent governing bodies. The School Board does not set nor
administer development policy in the municipalities. If a city government
wants to allow houses be built at many times the rate of business
development, they can and do, regardless of the impact on the school
funding. In a very real way, when a city allows residential development to
proceed at a higher rate than commercial development, they are causing
existing residents to subsidize new residents (and residential developers).
This is the reason I support substantial impact fees -- to make new
residents pay their fair share. We need to motivate our citizens to hold the
city governments accountable for this problem, and quit blaming you guys.
I've attached a copy of Hilliard's Economic Development Plan. Note the
following comment on page 18: "It is clear that the (city) Administration,
City Council and School Board must come to agreement on the use of
incentives. The simple fact is that the municipality cannot pay for the
large capital expenditures and make the (school) District whole at the same
time." The city wants to create jobs even if it means backing out of its
partnership to support the schools. In other words, the city government is
saying "school board: funding is your problem from here on out -- we're not
going to kick in a third going forward."
#4 - The federal government has opened our borders to a new wave of
immigration, and a disproportionate share of immigrants have chosen to make
their new home in Greater Columbus -- many in our school district. Many
live in multi-tenant housing which traditionally house singles and families
without children. The amount of residential real estate tax generated per
tenant by a multi-unit dwelling is much less than a single-family home, but
this is okay when there are few children in the multi-unit complexes.
However, when you have a large number of kids coming from multi-unit
complexes, the cost of educating those kids is underwritten by all the other
residential taxpayers. Adding to our burden is the fact that these kids
require greater educational intensity because of their limited English
language skills, and varying educational experiences. We should be getting
some Federal funding to deal with this. Everyone talks about NCLB being an
unfunded mandate -- what about federal immigration policy? In this case, we
should be teach our community to bring pressure on our Federal legislators
-- notably Deborah Pryce.
#5 - The phase-out of the business personal property tax could mean the
shifting of $12m/yr in funding to basic property taxes. To my knowledge, we
can't get that funding back by increasing the property taxes on businesses
alone. We would have to raise the millage on all property tax payers,
residential and commercial. If each of those two classes pay half the
increased burden, that means $6m/yr in new residential property taxes. If
there are 15,000 residential parcels in the district, this means $400/yr per
parcel needs to be collected. And that assumes the businesses would choose
to stay in our district after they get hit with their share of the millage
increase. If I were a business owner in the district (and I am), I would
have to consider moving to another district where the tax burden is less.
Such a series of articles can only be the beginning of a communication
program. Mailings might be another piece. But I'm think that the most
effective approach is getting out into the community. The community
conversations are a good start, but there haven't been enough yet. However,
I'm thinking that administrators and school board officials should be
looking for opportunities to speak to all kinds of community groups: PTO
meetings, soccer team parent's meetings, Boy/Girl scout meetings -- there's
all kinds of meetings going on in our community that we can take advantage
of.
This is very much a political campaign. If there's going to a levy on the
May ballot, the communications intensity needs to be kicked up right now.
If we allow the community to stay ignorant, or worse yet, misinformed, about
the basic politics and economics in our community, then the resistance to
additional levies is only going to continue to increase until we are in a
true crisis.
As much as anything, I'm encouraging you to seize the political power you
should have in our community. You represent more people than the elected
officials of Hilliard. You may even have a larger budget. You may not have
much direct legal control over specific transactions, but the folks who vote
for you also vote for Mayors, Council Members, County Commissioners, State
Legislators, Governors and Members of Congress. We need to make sure they're
thinking of school issues when they communicate with, and vote for, those
officials as well!
Let me know how I can help.
Paul Lambert
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