County mayor offers more cooperation with schools
Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger doesn’t want to wait until next year to reignite conversations around the school district’s budget and the need for additional revenue.
After presenting a county budget for 2018 that doesn’t include a tax increase for schools, Coppinger
said Friday the county and school system should start working together now to change the community’s perception and work to secure more funding for schools in future years.
He hopes the two bodies will work together to develop specific goals for the district and prove to the public that more money invested in public education will boost outcomes.
“And it’s important to know how much that’s going to cost,” Coppinger said. “So that, again, the public is informed and trusts that the money is going to be well spent.”
Coppinger sent a letter to school board chairman Steve Highlander on Friday, asking for work to begin as soon as a permanent superintendent is in place. The plan needs to show the school district’s efficiencies and exactly how it will use additional revenue, he said.
“Our planning process would be clear on goals, outcomes and cost, with an emphasis on understanding how to evaluate progress and return on investment,” Coppinger states in the letter. “Together we can form the basis for new investment in public education, because neither the county nor the school system can do this work singlehandedly.”
It’s the school district’s responsibility to improve operations, Coppinger notes in the letter, but the county is responsible for providing the necessary funding for those steps.
“Our best chance at success is by working together with a common agenda and corresponding plans,” Coppinger continued in the letter.
Historically the school board begins budget discussions in February, and the county receives a final version of the school system’s budget by May. The mayor incorporates the schools budget in the overall spending plan presented to the county commission, which will vote this month.
Highlander said Friday he’s open to working with the mayor and plans to asks board members how they want to proceed.
“I appreciate [the county’s] willingness to work, and I want to work with them,” Highlander said. “But we still need to see exactly how to do it. But sure, they are our funding agent and we’d be horribly remiss if we didn’t try to work with them.”
He noted the board has “extended a couple olive branches” to the county in recent months, which did not result in more money for schools.
Highlander said the district depleted its reserve funds to repair school roofs, keeping back enough for only one month of operating expenses. The district also presented a balanced budget this year, as many commissioners said they wanted, along with a list of $24 million in additional requests.
Coppinger’s letter also references the independent review of the school district’s finances a group of 11 prominent business and community leaders undertook late last year at his request. The group’s 70-page report details strategies for long-term savings and boosting student outcomes. It makes the case for increasing county funding for schools, and recommends the district:
› Reduce the number of schools and teachers to boost efficiency and student outcomes.
› Use savings from consolidation to increase teacher and principal salaries and align teacher compensation to quality.
› Improve accountability by hiring a chief information officer, chief operating officer and a chief talent officer in the schools and two full-time performance auditors in the county.
› Establish a new tax dedicated to schools infrastructure, tech and innovation.
› Make the district part of the planning commission approval process.
In the letter, Coppinger says he doesn’t agree with every recommendation but concurs with the report’s overall approach to use tax dollars more efficiently and make investments to enhance the quality of the school system.
“I realize that we will need new funding to put these steps into action, and I believe the majority of the commission would eventually be in support of this if they, along with the public, can be shown how beneficial these funds would be in an effort to tackle these needs,” Coppinger writes.
By starting these discussions in coming weeks, Coppinger hopes the public will accurately understand the schools system’s financial constraints.
“The perception of the community is important, but the reality and perception are at different ends right now,” he said.