Schools need tax conversion now

Monroe County School Board Chairman John Dick plans to be in front of the Monroe Board of County Commissioners next week should they take issue with the school board’s plan to extend a tax.

The school district levies a mandated one mill property tax rate that goes toward capital improvement projects such as new schools, renovations, and accessory uses for the students.

Several years ago, the state Legislature gave individual school districts the option to continue using all of that tax for capital projects, or convert half of it to operational needs. The conversion can be done only with voter approval. Quick to jump on the unexpected pot of money, Monroe Schools asked for, and received the voter’s blessing to move the half mil tax into operations.

It’s now time to renew that voter authorization.

The tax brings about $9 million per year into the school’s coffers to use for teachers, classroom needs, light bills and other day-to-day expenses needed to keep the district afloat. That amount of money is more than 10 percent of the district’s operating budget.

School officials are fearful that the conversion of the tax, routinely approved by voters in the past, might meet with some resistance this time around because of the spate of financial scandals the district has endured over the last few years.

For most of the six years of the tenure of ousted Schools Superintendent Randy Acevedo, many onlookers said that the school board wasted money where it wasn’t needed and attacked the classroom every time voters drew a line in the sand.

Acevedo was removed from his elected office by the Governor for covering up a financial scandal that involved his wife Monique and the theft of some $400,000 in school funds through various means.

Other administrators have since fallen out of grace with the schools for their attachment to that scandal, or their attachment to the scandal involving the building of a concession stand with no authorization, or the payment of 10 times the funding for a technical services contract, or…you get the picture.

And yet it wasn’t until the last two years or so that the school board got the attention of the administration and began answering some critics by beginning to chop expenses at the administrative level.

As long as the superintendent was elected, power in the position was consolidated by repeated rounds of cronyism and nepotism, with little the school board could do to ferret out corruption on a large or small scale since it had no power in employee matters.

Voters approved a measure last year, however, that rids the district of an elected superintendent and allows the board to hire one that works for them, making a “line in the sand” mentality not the best course for a senior administrator anxious to hold onto the job.

Then along comes a state Legislature determined to make Florida spending on education, already pathetic by most state’s standards, even more pathetic, necessitating unpopular cuts in classrooms and classroom support.

What keeps the district now from the need to divest itself of more teachers and classroom support personnel is the half mil tax issue.

It’s something anyone who cares about education can support.

This is not a tax that we will vote to impose on ourselves. The tax is already in place and will remain in place whether we agree to allow the conversion from capital projects to operations or not.

We will continue to pay the tax. We just will have to watch it accumulate in a capital projects budget that has no more new schools on the horizon. Yes, we can pay down existing debt and that will put the school on a better overall financial footing.

But once we’ve paid off the debt, the tax will still be collected.

We need to support the school board, and by doing so support our students, by voting to convert that half mil tax again for operations.

It isn’t the school board that will suffer from the cuts needed to devise an operational budget slashed by another $9 million.

It is our students who will suffer. And that’s putting our anti-tax rhetoric and anger in the wrong place.

The vote is slated to be conducted with the Republican Presidential primary in January. Everyone who is registered can participate.

We all should and we should all allow the tax to be converted to operations again.

1 Comment »

One Response to “Schools need tax conversion now”

Comments

1. Dan Gilroy Nov 26 2011 / 11am

   I must respectfully disagree.
   Why is it that when money is short in a school system it is always the students that are the first to suffer? Shouldn’t a good administration manage the situation to minimize impact to the students by reducing or eliminating the ancillary in lieu of the primary? Administrators are managers, time to stand up and manage… or maybe we should find folks that can. We have to live within our means, all of us.
   The view that this is not a new tax is so 1978(attempt at interjecting humor).
   This money was created to fund new schools.
   We’ve got new schools. Game over, deal is done. This should not be renewed until we need new schools again.
   In today’s economic climate it just makes sense to do the right thing when the right thing needs to be done. When things loosen up a bit and we need new buildings we can vote some more money that way based on the need, we did before. We all have had to tighten our belts, the school system lives in the same country as we do and should be no better.
   I am neither Republican nor Democrat. I am just an American and a resident of this great county of ours speaking his mind.