Pre-K cuts likely in wake of referendum

Sales tax hike rejected, federal funds to end

With voters’ rejection of Thursday’s referendum to fund a citywide prekindergarten program with a half- cent sales-tax increase, Memphians should brace for a reduction in the number of children receiving high-quality pre-K.

Pointing to the expiration of $68 million in federal Race to the Top money and a looming second round of federal sequestration cuts, Shelby County Schools Supt. Dorsey Hopson said Friday it will be difficult to find revenue needed to prevent significant pre-K cuts.

Last spring, responding to the federal sequestration cuts, SCS initially eliminated 82 pre-K classrooms for the 2013-14 school year, but was able to find money to restore 40 of them

“There will continue to be reductions in federal dollars we have been able to use for pre-K, but it is hard to say exactly how much,” Hopson said. “We have federal money that is going to (end), I know that. We are going to have to do more with less. The community needs to have a discussion about how we want to address this.”

Those opposed to the referendum said Friday that it failed because they couldn’t get straight answers from public officials, not because they don’t believe every 4-year-old deserves a running start.

“In debates, the group that was appointed by the mayor to oversee it, there was no direction where they were headed or how they would administer the funds,” said Rev. Ralph White. “When we look at the facts about how impoverished we are, and now there are more cuts to food stamps, the timing was not good.”

The half-penny i ncrease in sales tax would have raised Memphis’ total sales tax to 9.75 percent. That’s where it now stands in Shelby County’s six other municipalities, which last year voted in favor of a half-penny sales tax increase to fund education.

Proponents said the initiative would raise $30 million for a citywide preK program and another $17 for reductions in property taxes.

“We are already the poorest group of AfricanAmericans,” White said. “The people said enough is enough. There is no room for another tax.”

Hopson did say that if SCS wins its bid for the federal Head Start contract, the district will be reimbursed for 120 pre-K teacher aide positions. But it won’t offset the cuts he expects elsewhere.

“Everyone I speak to is in favor of pre-K, and everyone seems to start with the premise that in a city like Memphis, it’s vital,” Hopson said. But he said, if there is distrust, it may stem from the fact that the city has yet to make a payment of the $57 million two courts ordered it to pay the school district.

“If the city would pay what it owes, that could go a very long way toward pre-K,” Hopson said.

If some voters were pinning hopes on proposed federal pre-K bills to provide funding, Memphis City Council member Shea Flinn sees little chance that a bill filed in Washington last month will survive a thicket of national and state politics.

This is the second year in a row voters have soundly defeated a halfcent sales tax hike to fund pre-K. This year, the spread was 60 percent to 40 percent. Last year, in a vote that included Memphis and unincorporated Shelby County voters, the divide was even larger.

Based on unofficial results, the question “bombed” in Frayser and Cordova, according Richard Holden, Shelby County Election Commission administrator, but was positive in Downtown precincts.

“In precinct 20-1, which is Downtown, we have roughly 375 for and 160 against,” Holden said. “South of Mud Island, roughly McLemore and I-55, 60 percent were for, 40 percent were against. But when you get to Cordova, Highway 64 and Oak Grove, 90 percent were against. In Frayser, it’s 85 against.”

This time, the tax was to be administered by city government. City Council members Jim Strickland and Flinn thought that would be more palatable to voters than having the school board manage the funds.

“As long as we continue to have this level of mistrust, our problems are unfixable,” Flinn said. “The council has no appetite to retackle the sales tax thing again. I don’t see anywhere out there where the money can come from despite peoples’ fantasies that the money is there.”

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton was surprised by the margin of loss, and based on what he heard on the campaign trail, attributes it to a deep-seated distrust of government.

He mentioned frustration with the Obama administration’s botched implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and said “in Memphis there’s always that lingering historical distrust of ‘What happened to the wheel tax?’ ”

White agreed, but he also said the campaign was sold as “all about preK,” but said the component reducing property taxes didn’t play well in poor neighborhoods where people don’t own property.

“We are for pre-K, but not in favor of how they tried to get these funds. ... Hopefully, we can sit down with the administration and talk about other ways to fund pre-K,” he said. Flinn is not optimistic. “While we keep talking, other cities are doing things,” he said. “While we keep having conversations, they are taking action.” Daniel Connolly contributed to this report.