Herald recommends: Miami-Dade should say ‘Yes’ to school-tax referendum, despite any reservations
Miami-Dade County voters will be asked to raise their own property taxes to pay for higher teacher salaries and police officers on school campuses.
It’s a tough ask in times of historic inflation. But the Herald Editorial Board recommends voters say Yes to the referendum on the Nov. 8 ballot. Like many taxpayers, we aren’t thrilled about paying more. But after looking at what could happen if voters say “No,” we concluded that we cannot risk an exodus of teachers and the threat of cuts to student programs.
Voters have been backed into a corner thanks to how Florida has mistreated, and poorly funded, public education. The state ranks 44th in the nation in perstudent spending, according to a report by the National Education Association.
The teacher shortage has gotten so bad the state is now inviting military veterans with no teaching experience into classrooms. Pay might not be the only reason why it’s hard to find educators — add burnout and low morale to the mix — but it’s an important one in an expensive county like MiamiDade.
WHAT DOES THE REFERENDUM DO?
In 2018, Miami-Dade voters approved hiking their taxes through a referendum that expires next year. In November, the school district is asking voters to renew the referendum with an increase. A portion of a homeowner’s property-tax rate for schools would jump from .75 to 1.0 — or $100 for every $100,000 in assessed taxable property value — for the next four years.
A typical homeowner’s annual tax bill for schools would be $240, up from $168, based on a Miami-Dade home assessed at $265,682 (the assessed value of your primary residence is what you pay taxes on and it’s lower than the market value). The median assessed value of homes in Miami-Dade ranges from $250,000 to $275,000, MiamiDade County Public Schools CFO Ron Steiger told the Editorial Board.
WHY THE INCREASE?
The district needs an additional $100 million in tax revenue because it’s been forced by the state to share the proceeds of a referendum with charter schools, which account for about a quarter of Miami-Dade County Public Schools students. Charter schools are public schools that are run by private organizations instead of the school district.
WHAT IS THE MONEY FOR?
The $400 million that’s expected to be generated would be divided as follows:
● 88% to maintain teachers’ “supplemental pay” funded through the 2018 referendum. Without the supplement, the district’s average teacher salary would be $53,900, schools Superintendent Jose Dotres told the Editorial Board. With the referendum, it rises to $63,600, closer to the national average of $65,300.
● 12% toward school safety and paying for the salaries of 290 resource officers the district has hired since 2018. They make up more than half of the district police department’s 468-officer force.
WHAT HAPPENS IF THE REFERENDUM FAILS?
Our recommendation hinges on this question. The simple answer, according to Dotres, is: “I can only really come up with one word: catastrophic.”
Now the more complicated answer.
Let’s tackle teacher pay first.
If voters reject the referendum, the school district would be left with few options. No matter how you slice it, students and parents would suffer.
The district could simply eliminate those teacher-pay supplements, essentially cutting salaries by up to 20%, according to Steiger. Many teachers likely would quit or move to neighboring districts like in Broward County where voters have approved tax increases for teachers. Recruiting new teachers would become even harder as Miami-Dade competes with Florida districts facing a shortage of 5,208 teachers as of the beginning of this school year, according to state figures.
To fund the pay supplements on its own, the district would look at draconian cuts in areas that affect students. There’s not a lot of fat left in the district’s budget, Steiger said. To put that into perspective, Steiger said he could cut the district’s entire administration building staff and IT department and he wouldn’t “get half the way there.” The Great Recession already forced districts to become smaller. In 2007, there were 2,000 non-school site employees at Miami-Dade County Public Schools. That number has shrunk to 900 today.
“If there were easy places to go to find reductions then we would’ve gone there. . . . The only thing left to have these difficult conversations are our programs at schools,” Steiger said.
Let’s tackle school security. The district could not simply fire those 290 officers hired since 2018. The state mandates that every school campus have a police officer or armed presence. If the money source to pay those employees is gone, the district would have to look elsewhere for cuts. The cheaper option offered by the state are “school guardians,” non-law enforcement, but armed, school
WHAT ABOUT THOSE FEDERAL STIMULUS DOLLARS?
Miami-Dade County Public Schools received about $1.2 billion in federal COVID-19 stimulus funding. That money came with strings attached and could only be used for expenses limited to the pandemic, meaning it couldn’t be used for school security. The funds could potentially go toward teacher pay, but they are non-recurring and therefore will dry up in September 2024 at the latest, Steiger said. Meanwhile, salaries are a recurring expense that must be funded far beyond 2024.
WHO’S TO BLAME?
Miami-Dade County is not the only school district caught in this squeeze. School districts across the state have asked voters to raise taxes in blue counties like Broward, Palm Beach and Orange as well as red ones like Martin and Sarasota. That says a lot about the state of education funding in Florida.
Gov. Ron DeSantis and lawmakers have poured millions toward the goal of raising the minimum teacher salary to $47,500. But that leaves out more-experienced teachers. Florida’s average teacher salary ranks 48th in the nation, according to the National Education Association.
Funding for public education is set by the state Legislature, not individual school boards, through a complicated formula. Historically, that formula gave counties with higher population and cost of living like MiamiDade more money. But in 2004, lawmakers changed it to increase funding for less populated, rural regions of the state. That happened with support from now-U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, then a West Miami House representative who was vying to become speaker of the Florida House. Many considered that a betrayal by a hometown guy.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools lost big. It went from getting the eighth-largest funding per student in Florida in the early 2000s to 29th today, Steiger said. It’s no coincidence that other expensive counties are among those asking voters for help.
Then came Great Recession cuts. When inflation is taken into consideration, funding has not returned to pre-recession levels, Steiger added. While education funding has gone up substantially in recent years in Florida, a growing share of it is going to charter and private schools through the expansion of Florida’s voucher program.
Taxpayers are now left holding the bag. They either make up for these discrepancies by raising their own taxes, or they allow public schools to flounder, teachers to flee and students to suffer.
This is unfair. But a community commitment to providing quality education, well-paid educators and school security should prevail.
The Miami Herald Editorial Board recommends voting
YES on the Miami-Dade County School Board referendum.