Press
Public Roped Into School Funding Debate
BILL DRIES | The Daily News
May 20, 2009
Citizens will get a chance today to weigh in on a discussion about public education that has been overshadowed by the funding battle between the Memphis City Council and the city school system.
The hearing at 6:30 p.m. in the Memphis School Board auditorium is the first by the Ad Hoc Committee on Public Education Funding Solutions.
Shelby County Commission Chairwoman Deidre Malone formed the group of elected city and county leaders almost six months ago. Its goal was to present a consensus plan by now for single-source funding of the Memphis and Shelby County public school systems.
It hasn’t worked out that way, even with a later goal of having two funding plans – one long-term and one short-term.
Never that easy
The long-term plan, called Plan A, involves state legislation that would have given both school boards, meeting jointly, the power to set a tax rate for local education.
The short-term or interim plan, called Plan B, simply would make Shelby County government the single source of local funding for both school systems.
County government is already the only local funder of county schools and the major local funder of Memphis schools. Under Plan B there would be a phase-out of required city government funding of the city school system.
Plan A was backed strongly by the Shelby County school board and more tenuously by the city school board. City schools superintendent Dr. Kriner Cash initially backed it and then withdrew his support because he said it didn’t have enough political backing.
County school board Chairman David Pickler presented legislation for the taxing authority to state legislators as the ad hoc group was still getting its political head together on the issue. The ad hoc group has never taken a vote on Plan A despite an informal consensus in favor of it, as well as acknowledging it faced long odds at the state Capitol.
The legislation failed in committee in Nashville this month and is dead at least for this year. Even before that, at its most recent meeting last month, Pickler told the ad hoc group he didn’t know if he could support Plan B.
“The question again would be what are the benefits to someone who lives outside the city of Memphis?” he said. “We’re told that we need (tax) equity. … All Shelby County taxpayers are paying at the same rate.”
Us and them
As the county becomes the sole funder of both school systems, everyone on the committee concedes the city property tax rate would be reduced. The county tax rate – paid by Memphians as well as Shelby Countians who live outside the city – would probably go up.
“If in fact the Shelby County School Board, and if in fact the taxpayers … are asked to be partners in this process … then I ask the question again, what is in it for us?” Pickler said.
County Commissioner Steve Mulroy responded by telling Pickler to “cut to the chase.”
“So what do you want? How would we change the plan? There are certain things that are just inherent in this whole procedure,” Mulroy said.
Later, some changes were made to Plan B that included agreeing to work out a different average daily attendance formula, which ultimately determines funding.
But Pickler’s first response to Mulroy was “a little bit more support for Plan A.”
Malone said Pickler wasn’t being fair.
“We supported it. … I think that if we had not been supportive of it, you would have heard it early on when you moved it to Nashville,” she said.
Malone and other committee members were surprised when they learned legislators had amended the legislation to do away with the requirement for a public referendum on Plan A.
The strongest reaction came from County Commissioner Mike Ritz, who said the remarks by Pickler about a disparity in local as well as federal stimulus funding between the two school systems were “disgusting.”
“I don’t think there’s any circumstance under which anyone in the county should hold the kids of the city of Memphis school system hostage because they get money from the city of Memphis,” Ritz told The Daily News later. “Who could object to that? I found it beyond the pale. Frankly, I found it disgusting.”
County Commissioner Henri Brooks agreed.
“I thought it was all of us,” she told Pickler. “The comments raise some serious concerns about the real issues that are foremost in someone else’s mind. … I don’t believe we are talking about what we really want to talk about.”
The opposition
Pickler said the funding disparity caused him to “look at the motivation of the players here.”
The committee is made up of city and county school board members, county commissioners, City Council members and teachers union leaders.
Ritz is among those opposed to Plan A “because I don’t think under the circumstances the community is going to be better off giving those two school boards the power to tax.”
Ritz estimates the tax rate of the two school systems would be as large as the county’s tax rate. “That’s a mind-boggling number,” he said.
Plan B probably would involve a referendum. It would require approval by the Tennessee Legislature as Plan A does.
“Quite frankly, the politics kind of dictate a compromise situation,” he told The Daily News when asked if Plan A could move forward without support from the county school system leaders. “I think a great deal can be done without their support. I don’t think that’s what we ought to do.”
