Charters don’t need specific piece of special tax
Rick Christie
It’s all over but the shouting.
The Palm Beach County School Board is set to add a ballot measure that it will put before some wary and weary taxpayers in November.
That measure, if approved by 51 percent of county voters, will add a special $1 of tax per $100,000 of property value. It will replace the 25 cents that has been levied on county taxpayers since 2014 to pay for 650 arts and music teachers, as well as physical education and choice programs.
The special four-year levy, which has been approved twice overwhelmingly — in 2010 and 2014 — by voters, would be replaced by the new one.
There’s also another twist: the School Board doesn’t want charter schools mentioned in the ballot language.
At Wednesday’s lengthy, jam-packed meeting, board members said that they did not want to distribute more taxpayer dollars to charters. Why? Because they couldn’t guarantee — read that, force — charter schools to spend the money as specified in the ballot question.
Though publicly funded, charter schools are privately operated.
The fear is that once the district hands over 10 percent of the estimated $200 million annual haul expected from this property tax hike, many charters would, for example, decline to give their teachers the agreed-upon raise.
“It’s frustrating,” School Board Chairman Chuck Shaw said, observing that many charter schools are well-run. “We’re in a no-win situation with the charter school issue, but I’m not willing to spend money unless I knew it (would be spent properly).”
I have to agree for two reasons. Mainly, because adding the charter schools to the ballot language is not necessary to make sure that they are able to participate in the voters’ hoped-for largess. The other is the more obvious lack of accountability cited by Shaw, himself a former charter school principal.
Board risking it all
This is just what it sounds like: an all-or-nothing proposition for the school district.
Faced with yet another unfunded mandate by the Florida Legislature — this time to pay for increased school security and mental health services — the district has little choice. Board members are also boxed in by teacher pay, which has been lagging behind inflation in recent year and nearing a crisis level in terms of teacher turnover.
A tough sell, for sure, on the heels of a county sales tax increase just two years ago to pay for long-overdue capital improvements to district facilities.
Yet, the most controversial part of the pitch to property owners will fall on the district’s painful decision to exclude charters.
As the Post’s Andrew Marra reported, the
November referendum would quadruple a special tax that property owners pay in addition to regular school property taxes.
The special tax has been in place for decades but has to be re-approved this year.
Currently, it levies $25 per $100,000 of taxable property value. The November referendum would raise the rate to $100 per $100,000 of taxable property value.
For the owner of a home with a $300,000 appraised taxable value and no exemptions, that would mean paying $300 a year, an increase of $225.
The hike would raise the amount collected countywide from roughly $50 million this year to the estimated $200 million next year.
Of that amount, the school district proposes that $100 million would be spent raising teachers salaries; $50 million on school security and men- tal health services; and $50 million to continue paying for more than 650 teaching positions.
The accountability question
Schools Superintendent Donald Fennoy, at the behest of the board, came back with a recommendation that charter schools not be given a percentage of the revenue from the special tax.
Fennoy, to his credit, had earlier suggested that charters should get a designated piece of the pie. The still-fledgling schools chief had read the political and legal tea leaves, and armed with a legal opinion, recommended that it would be easier to include charters than risk a public fight that could torpedo the ballot measure.
But again, his bosses would have none of it. Fennoy returned with another (surprise!) legal opinion that cleared the way for excluding charters from the ballot language.
It’s a little confusing if you’re a voter trying to figure out whether to support the measure. But that’s politics.
Be that as it may, the School Board was correct to send Fennoy back to the drawing board on this one. As I said, his political and legal instincts were good, but this board has a history of playing hard ball with charters over the issue of accountability. And rightly so. There are some well-run, innovative charters in Palm Beach County. But this district has also had its share of poorly run charters that it has carried
— at taxpayer expense — and allowed to continue operating despite the school’s problems. The most recent example being the struggling Eagle Arts Academy of Wellington, and its founder Gregory Blount.
The district must, above all else, be good stewards of taxpayers dollars — especially when you’re going back to the well so soon. That well is not bottomless, after all.
And let’s remember, this doesn’t mean that charters will get nothing for much-needed security and mental health services. Board members said they would consider giving the charters extra money for security pur- poses from some other source.
Learn to share ... or else
They need to do more than “consider.”We’re talking about the health and safety of children. A school district doing anything less than its best to make sure kids are protected is being downright foolish. Thus, county charters should be allocated dollars and resources much the same way as traditional public schools. For example, if you put a resource officer on every traditional public school campus, there should be one on every charter school campus.
But all of that has to be hashed out, and it’s possible that charter school advocates won’t want to wait for the district to show its good faith. I hope that’s not the case, but there is a some history here. Much of it not good.
A very public, legal fight by charters would have many voters on both sides of the issue wondering whether the School Board is making the right call and not vote in favor of the ballot initiative.
That would only punish those students who need and deserve the continued support of arts and music classes, and teachers who deserve to finally receive a decent pay raise.
As School Board member Karen Brill said at Wednesday’s meeting: “For me, the elephant in the room is, what happens if the referendum does not pass?”
The answer seemed to come from district Chief Financial Officer Mike Burke doing his best Mr. T impersonation from “Rocky III”: “The pain that’s felt throughout our schools will be very real.”
This is just what it sounds like: an all-or-nothing proposition for the school district.