Back in April, I noted that the Foundry Art Centre in St. Charles exercised “good fiscal planning” by asking the city (which the head of the Foundry’s board referred to as “daddy”) to give the Centre $100,000 to help them meet their budget of $645,000. It seems that this effort paid off, at least to an extent, as seven members of the City Council have advanced legislation that would donate $30,000 to the centre. This payment would be on top of the $2 million of taxpayers’ money that the city has already dedicated to the development of this organization. The city government is also planning to pay up to $10,000 to hire a consulting firm that would “recommend ways to improve the 4-year-old artist studio and exhibition facility’s operations.”

St. Charles has about 63,000 residents. Assuming that the city approves the $30,000 subsidy and the $10,000 consultation fee, it would mean that, on average, the city government has forced local taxpayers to contribute more than $32 for every man, woman, and child in the city in order to subsidize the Foundry’s presence in their community. In the meantime, the Foundry claims to draw more than 90,000 visitors per year, charging an admission fee of $2 per adult and $1 per student or senior citizen. It also hosts events, for which it charges rental and use fees. The rest of its operating budget seems to be drawn from private donations.

To be sure, I am all in favor of the fine arts. But it is exceedingly poor policy for a local government to force taxpayers to support businesses — even non-profit businesses — that otherwise could not support themselves. If an organization’s presence in the community is truly valuable, the market will provide the means for it to sustain itself. If the visitors to the centre are really impressed with what the Foundry has to offer, they should be willing to pay an additional dollar each in order to make sure that the organization can meet its budget.

Similarly, if the 90,000 annual visitors to the Foundry bring additional customers to nearby businesses, the benefited businesses should be willing to make donations that will keep the centre viable. But if the Foundry’s presence isn’t valuable enough to patrons or nearby businesses to warrant an additional dollar in admission price or additional donations, why in the world should taxpayers be forced to pick up the slack?

It has been a little more than two months since Pine Lawn Police Chief Rickey Collins began enforcing the anti-sagging ordinance that the municipality’s aldermen passed. According to the Post-Dispatch, “The ordinance calls for fines of up to $100 for those 17 and older who wear pants below the waist that expose underwear or skin. [...] Parents of those 16 and under face up to a $500 fine or 90 days in jail if they knowingly allow their children to wear pants in such a manner.”

Personally, I think sagging is uncongenial, representing the antithesis of a gentleman. Despite my views, I believe that government does not have the right to enforce family values by acting like the fashion police. Besides being difficult to implement and patrol, this policy is also unconstitutional. There are many forms of expression that are not protected by the First Amendment, such as fighting words, libel, commercial speech, and obscenity. While some try to place sagging under the umbrella of obscenity, it would be relevant to put it through the “Miller Test,” which is the standard for determining whether material is obscene. In the 1973 case of Miller v. California, the Supreme Court ruled that material is legally obscene if:

1. The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would conclude that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interests.
2. It depicts sexually explicit conduct, specifically defined by law, in a patently offensive manner.
3. It lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

I believe tha sagging passes the ‘Miller Test’ with flying colors. For young people who are part of our country’s inner-city hip hop culture, it is a form of rebellion and identity. To some, it is just plain fashionable. This ordinance in Pine Lawn is just another example of how our liberty and freedom of expression are in danger today.

Other cities around the country, most recently Flint, Mich., are also taking stride to incorporate the same ordinance in their efforts to restore family values and ethics. I do applaud the importance of ethics in American society, but how ethical is it for government to deny our freedom of expression?

The Commission that was charged with reviewing the capital needs of the county and recommending solutions has issued its final report. (My testimony about it begins on page 226.) The recommendations are a little long on tax increases, but I also recognize that, in the end, it is up to the voters of the county to decide. I like the commission’s recommendations to consider resources outside of central Clayton in certain situations (nobody wants to move the bulk of county facilities from Clayton), and, of course, I really like the support for public-private partnerships to meet some of these needs.

The list of final recommendations on page 14 is the key part of the report (aside from page 226, obviously). It is interesting that the County Council acted against the recommendations of the commission, and placed this use tax on the November, 2008, ballot instead of waiting for April 2009. No further comments — it’s just interesting.

As of right now, it appears that county voters will get to vote on three tax/bond issues this Novermber. As it stands right now, I am in favor of the bond issue, against the use tax, and undecided (leaning in favor) on the Metro tax increase. I live near MetroLink and use it, so a very careful cost-benefit analysis of the service probably benefits me. I have to doubt it would work out that way for most people.

Briefly back to the commission report: Every member of the volunteer commission deserves thanks for dedicating their time to it. Especially Skip Mange, the chairman, who took time away from his grandkids to once again serve the people of the county.

Not content with the Missouri Municipal League putting the good of government over the good of the people by trying to block much-needed reforms to our eminent domain laws (yeah, yeah, I know that the “government” is “us” — would somebody please tell the muny league that?), the St. Louis County Municipal League is attempting to pass a use tax on county citizens and businesses. From the article in the Post-Dispatch:

Dooley said he was acting on behalf of the St. Louis County Municipal League, which wrote to Dooley last week seeking his support of the tax.

Here is my testimony on the subject, which I gave in June to the county commission considering these issues. The imposition of a use tax on county businesses will wipe out one of the competitive advantages that St. Louis County has, and just add incentives for businesses to move to St. Charles. Perhaps I shouldn’t care. The county (and, even more so, the cities within it) can always just give away more tax breaks to favored businesses once they pass the higher taxes on to all of them. That certainly sounds like the basis for good policy …

Hi, all:

Cynthia and I have been writing about education and voting issues nearly daily for the past few months — and we wanted to let you know that we’ll be taking a break.

We’ve reached a time-intensive point in our research. We do intend to pick up here again as soon as possible, to write more about the same. And, of course, about the conclusions that we come to after mulling over 524 superintendent contracts and hundreds of school election results.

Thank you for your comments, emails and readership. We’ve learned a lot from your responses.

— Audrey and Cynthia

P.S.: Even though we won’t be posting regularly for a while, we’re still interested in your comments, questions, or input. Feel free to email Cynthia or myself any time.

Tuesday, the Columbia Public Schools superintendent announced that she was retiring.

The timing was off. The shuffle of superintendents, either into retirement or among school districts, already happened this year. Most made the transition July 1.

According to the city’s two newspapers, at least a few school board members had no idea Superintendent Phyllis Chase was considering retirement until the board’s closed meeting with Chase. That’s strange, too, though allowable. Chase’s contract with the district lets her terminate the contract upon retirement at any time — no notice period was specified. Her retirement is effective Aug. 31.

Within minutes of her announcement yesterday, online comments sprang up on newspaper message boards and blogs, blaming the exiting superintendent for budget and curriculum problems, low MAP scores, and a total lack of community trust in the operation of the school district. In the past, Chase has been criticized for receiving a much-too-high salary — $200,340 — as well as a large car allowance of $7,200 per year.

A major part of my research this summer has been to request and collect the contracts of every single Missouri superintendent (as of today, we have 335). After reading many of those, and speaking with a few superintendents about the difficulties they and their districts face, I think one of the main hazards of being superintendent is the risk of public blame and accusations.

I spent a year reporting on this school district for the Columbia Missourian, so I have mixed feelings about Chase leaving. On one hand, she did seem to control public information tightly, and yes, she was slow to admit mistakes and make fixes. Blame for that rests squarely on her shoulders. However, this retirement looks like she is taking a fall for the district and its other administrators. And it’s a graceful one.

Continue reading "Responsibility" »

We have a desk stacked with 324 superintendent contracts. Quite a few superintendents have asked Audrey and me just what we’re doing with those contracts. It’s a fair question, and one we haven’t completely addressed for our readers.

We’ve said that we’re looking beyond salary, and that our purpose is research, not advocacy. Now, let’s talk about what our research includes.

I can’t speak for Audrey, but for me, at least, sketching out superintendent compensation for Missouri citizens is important not because it allows me or the Show-Me Institute to say we should change this or that to improve public education, but because it allows Missourians to see where their tax dollars are going. And it allows them to make judgments about how their money is being spent, apart from what I or SMI might think.

We’ve requested contracts from every Missouri superintendent, and we’ve received more than half. While we’re waiting for the remaining 200, we’ve begun entering the contract information into a spreadsheet. In all honesty, it’s a judgment call — what gets coded, what doesn’t, or how to compare benefits across contracts when they’re often not entirely comparable.

For the sake of increasing public information, I’d rather be more thorough than overlook something important.

Continue reading "It’s a Judgment Call" »

There are wide gaps in pay and benefits between superintendents at rich and poor districts — even for those with seemingly equal qualifications. I suspect that a large reason several superintendents have been so wary of providing their contracts is that they know how big the range in compensation is.

For teachers, pay is pretty simple. Missouri public school districts have “teacher salary schedules” to determine each teacher’s salary. Generally, there are two factors: relevant experience and education. Think of each level of education as a ladder, with years of experience as rungs. When a teacher comes into the district, he’s placed on a ladder rung, and moves up in pay each year he stays with the district. For example, at Waynesville School District (linked above), a teacher with a Master’s degree and three years of experience earns $40,634, while someone with four years of experience earns $41,164.

Those salary schedules are hyper-public. Many districts, such as Lee’s Summit, also post online salary schedules for other employees, such as custodians.

Notably absent is a superintendent salary schedule. Unlike teacher pay, those figures aren’t standardized within a district. Instead, salaries are negotiated when a superintendent is first hired, and usually amended each year at school board meetings. The contracts vary widely. Sure, superintendents tend to earn more at larger districts than at smaller ones. Other things, like whether a superintendent has an advanced degree, and the number of years he has worked at the district, play a role.

But, sometimes, the district just might have more money to spread around.

Continue reading "What You Pay For" »

Two superintendents recently asked me to disclose a list of donors to the Show-Me Institute, as well as the amount of their donations. This came after my request for their employment contracts with their respective school districts. I asked how their school districts paid them; they asked who paid for my research.

But there’s a crucial difference. Their districts pay them with taxpayer dollars. The Show-Me Institute pays me with private ones. The two situations just aren’t comparable.

Classifying superintendent compensation as part of public record isn’t arbitrary. Missouri citizens fund superintendents, and they have a right to know where their tax dollars are going.

When denying our request to waive research and copying fees, one superintendent wrote that this research wouldn’t serve the public good, but rather personal agendas.

While I understand asking about compensation can be a touchy subject, superintendents signed up for this. They made themselves public figures the moment they took a job with a public entity. But the knee-jerk protectionist tendency is still there. Even when superintendents comply with my requests and send their contracts, the information sometimes come with comments.

“I understand it is your intent to lobby against public schools with this information,” wrote one superintendent on a cover page sent with his contract. “What a shame, the focus continues to be on anything but the students.”

I am not writing this post because I feel the need to defend or justify my research. I would hardly be working for the education branch of an organization if my intent were to fight against public education. I am a product of public education, from elementary school clear through to the public university I attended. But I do want to address, again, the purpose of what Audrey and I are doing.

Continue reading "Where Is the Focus?" »

Paul, Bill, David, Steve, Michael. It’s not an exhaustive list, but those are some of the most common superintendent names. “Mary” shows up much less often.

In fact, nearly 79 percent* of Missouri superintendents are male.

Though it’s getting better, it’s a sad fact that men tend to earn higher salaries than equally qualified women. It’s a sad fact that there are more men in leadership positions than women.

But in school districts, where superintendents tend to come from the ranks of teachers and administrators, this is shocking. It’s not just that a large majority of Missouri superintendents are male. It’s that a large majority of superintendents are male while a large majority of school district employees are female. According to the National Center of Education Information, 82 percent of all teachers in the United States were female in 2005.

Continue reading "For the Ladies (All 105 of Them)" »

As a link from this website has previously shown, Missouri Citizens for Property Rights gathered more than 400,000 signatures in its effort to give Missourians the opportunity to end eminent domain abuse this November by passing two proposed amendments.

Concerned that the amendments’ adoption would cut off their ability to give away their citizens’ homes and businesses to commercial developers, some cities are now setting aside taxpayer dollars to try to prevent the vote from happening. This is every bit as outrageous as school districts gambling millions of dollars in taxpayer funds in an effort to get billions of dollars in taxpayer funds. You should consider doing a little research to find out whether your local officials are using your money against you in a similar way.

According to the Post-Dispatch, St. Louis County is considering a $120 million bond issue to address infrastructure needs. This comes as the county’s Blue Ribbon Capitol Investment Commission is supposed to wrap up its findings and issue a report shortly. My main question is whether or not another shoe will drop. Sure, it is a big bond issue, but St. Louis County has a great deal of bond capacity capable of being used — it is currently just using about 3 percent of its allowable bonding. If this bond issue is the primary way they are going to address these infrastructure issues — like a new Family Courts building, for instance — then this should be a good plan. If an additional tax hike proposal comes down the chute in a few months (on top of the Metro tax proposal), I won’t necessarily feel this way.

For your reading pleasure, here is a copy of the testimony I provided to the Blue Ribbon Commission about these issues last month (ignore the date on the page, that’s just when we finally got around to putting it online).

Help America Vote Act. It sounds pretty innocuous, even appealing. But even the most well-intentioned laws can have unintended consequences.

“It started with HAVA,” Kristy Urich, Grundy County’s clerk, said. “We had to have very expensive electronic equipment, and it forced us into having fewer polling places.”

Grundy County underwent precinct consolidation in the wake of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, meaning it reduced the number of polling places available to voters. Why? To save money.

HAVA requires that federal money be given to states: “to replace punch card voting systems or lever voting systems (as the case may be) in qualifying precincts within that State with a voting system (by purchase, lease, or such other arrangement as may be appropriate) [...]”

But even though federal funds were available, there was only so much money to go around.

“They allocated X amount of dollars per location,” Urich said. “And they don’t pay for ongoing maintenance. Although they paid for most of the original setup costs, they don’t continue to pay.”

Without enough federal funds, changing over to more high-tech voting systems was cost prohibitive. And, just like that, places to vote disappeared from Grundy County.

Continue reading "Helping Missourians Vote?" »

In 2004, the Plato R-V School District held financial elections in April, August, and November. Two years later, the bond that district officials hoped to pass showed up again on the November ballot.

“We were trying to pass a bond issue two or three years in a row,” said Superintendent Victor Slape. “Trying to pass it whenever we could, really. … More people vote in November, and we wanted to make sure people got the opportunity to vote.”

Turns out that Cynthia’s suspicion, that school districts will sometimes continue to put a financial issue up for vote until it passes, is true. And that’s a primary reason school districts occasionally add elections to the November ballot, despite the higher cost.

Superintendent of the Albany School District Ted Spessard said the costs of any school election in his district are “in the thousands.” He estimated that the district pays about two to three thousand dollars in order to put an issue on the ballot.

Continue reading "Explanation" »

November elections garner higher turnout. But they cost more, too. So, if a school district puts a finanical issue on the ballot in November, they’ll get more voters to the polls than they would in April — but boosting the voter count will cost them. It’s not a question of just typing a few more lines on the ballot.

How much does the cost increase?

“It varies,” said Darryl Kempf, Cooper County’s clerk. “There is no magic number.”

Political subdivisions — school, fire, and hospital districts, to name a few — help split the election tab.

“Missouri law requires that election costs be shared proportionally,” Betsy Byers, elections outreach and education coordinator for the Missouri Secretary of State, said. When determining how much each subdivision pays, the county charges based on the number of registered voters.

Continue reading "Their Fair Share?" »

In 1982, the state of Missouri decided to give more money to schools, and to lower each school district’s property tax levy.

The first part, giving more money to schools, is working well enough. For the 2005–06 school year, the state handed out about $839.5 million from the designated-for-schools one-cent sales tax. That’s up from the $634 million it gave to schools in 1983–84 (both figures adjusted for inflation to 2008 dollars).

But school districts have, through local elections, bypassed the state’s effort to keep property taxes down. While local property taxes are lower than they were before 1982, they have crept up from a little more than $2 to about $4.

To give schools more money, the state levied a one-cent sales tax, in legislation known as Propsition C. Each year, revenues from that tax are collected and divvied up among each public school student.* Very roughly, that comes to about $845 per student, according to Roger Dorson, director of finance for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The money is then sent out to schools, but it comes with strings. Half of the Prop. C money is new money for schools — a gift, if you will. But the other half is more complicated.

When a school district takes the second half of the Prop. C money, it must “roll back” the local school property tax levy. By how much? Well, enough to lower its tax revenues by the amount that the state gave it. For example, if a school district were given $1 million from the state, it would have to lower its levy so that it took in $500,000 less in property tax revenues.

Effectively, the state was trying to move some of the burden of funding schools from property owners to the people who spend more.

But school districts have gone to the ballot box to get more money, on top of what the state began to give them in 1982. Since Prop. C took effect, school districts have been asking voters give up the state-mandated reduction in local property taxes.

Voters have said yes. As of this year, 430 school districts (of 524) have full waivers, according to Dorson. That means those districts do not — and, unless their voters asked for it, will never — have to reduce their property taxes because of Prop. C revenues.

I won’t say that Prop. C rollbacks are unfair. After all, district voters are the ones who approve them (though which voters vote is something to watch out for). But it is apparent that the state’s goal to keep local property taxes low is slowly eroding. And that a statewide sales tax now helps foot the ever-growing cost for schools.

* In determining state aid, each school calculates its average daily attendance. Students are weighted differently if they come from low-income families, are not native English speakers, or are special needs students. After those factors are taken into account, the state awards aid based on each school district’s “Weighted Average Daily Attendance.”

Sixty-five percent. If you get it on a test, you’re barely scraping by. If you get it as turnout in a presidential election, you’re thrilled.

In fact, Missouri’s average county turnout in the 2004 presidential election was just about that — 65.12 percent. But that’s in the highest-profile election in the United States. So, what happens in local school board elections? Well, obviously, turnout dips. Or plummets.

In a June 2008 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, 83 percent of Americans said that education was either ‘extremely important’ or ‘very important’ to them in making their decision on who to vote for this November.

If education is so important to so many people, selecting the president is just step one, right? We should expect to see high turnout in local elections, too, because it’s those elections in which voters ostensibly have the most direct influence on their own local education policy.

In Missouri school districts, at least, the exact opposite is true.

Continue reading "Extremely Important?" »

This is a continuation of my prior post about the history of school finance in the United States.

The adage holds: Nothing is free. When states began to pay school districts to educate children, the money came with regulations — and those regulations drove the system of attendance reports, standardized testing, and school administrators that we have today.

After school districts began taxing their communities to pay for schools, states started to step in, according to Elwood Cubberly in his book Public Education in the United States. And the moment a district began to depend on state money, it had to cope with the threat of the state taking that support away.

What began as a small effort by states to funnel land — as well as revenues from liquor and marriage licenses — to schools has expanded enormously. The state pays out more than $3 billion per year to Missouri school districts alone, according to numbers from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Continue reading "Strings (or, With State Dollars Come Bureaucracies)" »

The Kansas City Star has a story on the failures of the planning process in Kansas City’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. I encourage you to read it carefully. Now, I have never, to my knowledge, been to Beacon Hill. But this entire story is a perfect example of the failures that come when the government steps in to plan things that should be left to the free market and individual choice.

The historically revitalized neighborhoods in Saint Louis, such as Soulard and Lafayette Square, did not come about because of a government plan. They happened because free people made choices and put time, money, and effort into their neighborhoods. The government did not “plan” for Lafayette Square becoming what it has become, and it certainly did not mandate its development with legal contracts, etc. (I am certain that there are similar neighborhoods in Kansas City that have been revitalized in the same way as Soulard.) I will admit that the government does provide historic tax credits that encourage much of the revitalization, and they should continue to do that in historic parts of Missouri.

But the city should not get to “choose” who is allowed to buy property. From the Star article:

He and two other buyers were chosen to purchase and fix up the homes.

Even if the city had owned the homes by then, they should have taken the best offer. Somebody who wants to “mothball and flip it” might be doing just as much for the economy as someone who gets a lot of government tax money to subsidize revitalization. The Kansas City planners have no way of knowing what the best long-term plan is, and they have apparently not been making cost-effective decisions (emphasis added):

Beacon Hill so far is known mostly for exorbitant spending of federal dollars on two bungalows in the 2500 block of Tracy Avenue.

Government should stick to governing, rather than trying to predict the future and take risks with public money. That should be left to the private sector.

School board members negotiate how much school district employees earn. They’re the ones who determine salary raises for teachers, and they’re the ones who choose a district’s superintendent and how much he makes.

So, who chooses the school board members?

Voters. But some of them have more on the line than others. A school district is one of the few places where employees have some say in choosing the people who will ultimately affect the size of their paychecks.

Continue reading "How Much Say Do They Have?" »

After 38 ½ years of service, Barbara Trzeszkowski reported for her last day of work on Monday at the Keansburg Board of Education. If her contract with the district withstands a number of legal and governmental challenges, the superintendent will ease into retirement with a $740,876 severance package that the state’s top education official compared to the “golden parachute” awarded to retiring Fortune 500 executives.

That’s the first paragraph (emphasis added, in all of this post’s quotations) from a New York Times article about superintendent pay in New York. After hearing more about Trzeszkowski’s contract, according to the article, New York politicians were outraged at the taxpayer expense involved in such an enormous retirement package.

Trzeszkowski’s benefit package is plump, to say the least:

In the next few weeks, Ms. Trzeszkowski, 60, was scheduled to receive $14,449 for unused vacation days, the first third of the $170,137 she had amassed in unused sick days, and the first 20 percent of $556,290 in severance pay. This was in addition to the $103,889 annual pension she was to collect from the district for the rest of her life.

To put this into perspective, many Missouri contracts I’ve seen have caps on the number of unused vacation or sick days for which a superintendent can collect pay. But some don’t. Several Missouri superintendents earn more than the $170,137 Trzeszkowski collects. However, the factor sending her benefits sky-high is the 38 and a half years she spent with her district, about 10 of which were as superintendent, the others as a teacher.

What can I say? The numbers speak for themselves. She is set to receive a great deal of money for the rest of her life in exchange for working for a single school district for more than 38 years.

Is it a fair trade? After all, Trzeszkowski certainly was loyal to her district. Was it her job to draw attention to the size of her benefit package? Well, at the very least, her school district’s board of education should have known better when negotiating her contract. At least one of them didn’t, according to the article:

Although he seconded the motion to approve Ms. Trzeszkowski’s five-year contract in February 2004, James Cocuzza, a former board member who is now a borough councilman in Keansburg, said he did not remember it.

“For 15 years, I always fought for zero increases in taxes,” he said. “I don’t see myself giving away three quarters of a million dollars.”

While Mr. Cocuzza said he regrets not paying more attention, he added that he was probably not alone in allowing such contracts to slip through.

“Let’s be honest,” he said. “We’re not professionals. That’s what we have the attorneys and negotiators for. But wait until the state checks out all the other districts and sees the contracts that got through. I bet they all got nice packages.”

After you hear it the fifth or sixth time, you start to believe it.

All this time, I’ve been thinking I had the short end of the stick in filing Sunshine Law requests for school district election results with Missouri county clerks. But, as it turns out, they may be just as frustrated as I am.

“I am covered up right now,” said Don Firebaugh, Madison County’s clerk, when I called to ask for some additional information.

Well, August is fast approaching, so it occurred to me there might be some truth in that statement. But, at the time, I brushed it off as one more attempt to keep from doing the work. Of course these clerks are busy, but how difficult could it be to look up a couple of numbers? And how many requests for public information do they really get?

Well, the answer might be more than you would suspect.

Continue reading "Is It Just Too Much?" »

The Post-Dispatch ran an editorial today rehashing the continuing problems facing St. Louis’s public school system. The Special Administrative Board appointed by the state when the school district lost its accreditation is facing an enormous budget deficit. The board’s answer (thus far) seems to be to closing some facilities, cutting back on bus routes, and eliminating support staff from the district’s schools. The author notes that while school officials are struggling to come up with a plan, “parents are voting with their feet” and heading to parochial, charter, or suburban public schools.

In the editorial, the author poses several questions: “If a centrally administered urban district full of troubled students, entrenched political interests and an aging infrastructure can’t be maintained, and if the district doesn’t improve its academic performance within three years, what is Plan B? [...] What are the best and quickest options for creating a new system? Would a new model create genuine value or just make problems worse?”

In fact, I think the author has inadvertently answered his or her own question. As the column pointed out, parents are coming up with their own solutions by seeking out schools that are already prepared to meet the needs of their children, as opposed to waiting years for St. Louis’ public schools to come up with a fix for their woes. While the editorial author worries that this exodus away from the public schools “reduces the amount of money the state provides to the district for the expensive process of urban education,” three points ought to be understood regarding that concern:

1. More than half of the funding for the St. Louis public schools (roughly $6,000 per student) comes from local tax revenues;
2. When a student leaves the public schools, the schools retain all of the local funds that would have otherwise been used to educate that student;
3. Thus, when parents choose to pull their children out of the public schools, the schools actually have more money per student to use in educating those that remain in the public school system.

Even though student departures will leave the public schools with more per-student funding, this alone is unlikely to improve the performance of the city’s schools. As we have pointed out elsewhere, increases to per-pupil spending make no difference in students’ academic achievement. As the parents moving their children out of the St. Louis public schools realize, real gains in education come when students are matched with schools and teachers that suit their academic needs.

So, the biggest problem is that many parents in St. Louis (and other failing school districts) can’t afford to send their children to the schools best suited to their educational needs. Fortunately, this is an issue that Missourians can do something about. For the past several years, the General Assembly has considered (but rejected) plans that would offer tax credits to individuals and corporations who donate to scholarship organizations established to help disadvantaged students attend the schools that fit them best. Such a plan would both increase the overall level of educational spending statewide and create educational freedom for families whose only option today is to attend the schools to which they are assigned by the local district’s bureaucrats.

An effective solution to the educational crisis is at our fingertips. All we have to do is grasp it.

When school districts need more money, they ask their voters, right?

Well, that’s the idea. But, in some instances, it might be more of a demand. If a school district fails to pass a proposed tax levy, it can go back on the ballot in the next election. So, if a district is persistent, odds are it’ll get passed eventually.

According to Kelli Hopkins, an attorney and director of education policy for the Missouri School Boards Association, there are no limits on how many times a bond issue or tax levy proposal can be put on the ballot, though they do require different majorities to pass in different months.

So, is it a common tactic to wear down voters and use brute force to pass financial issues?

Continue reading "If at First You Don’t Succeed …" »

In April 2000, the Warren County School District asked its voters for a 54-cent property tax levy increase. More than 1,900 people showed up to vote, and the majority said no. Later that year, in November, the school district asked again. This time, about 5,800 people showed up and, once again, the vote was no.

Last week, Cynthia asked whether November elections would get more people to vote on school issues. We looked at Missouri school district tax levy elections from 2000 through 2003, and, not surprisingly, the answer is yes.

It’s a strong yes. Like Warren County, four out of the five remaining school districts that held both an April and November tax levy election during that period, saw nearly twice as many voters show up in November, if not more. If you want more voters, November is the month to put a tax increase on the ballot.

But if you want a school district’s proposed tax increase to pass, you have a better shot in April. And, whatever the reason, that’s the month most school districts put financial proposals on the ballot.

Continue reading "The Odds" »

This morning, I randomly selected a stack of superintendent contracts from Audrey’s files, in addition to a sampling she had already given to me. She’s talked about some specific cases and oddities (like the $50,000 bond St. Louis requires its superintendents to post) and she’s laid out the basic format of superintendent contracts.

Some contracts are sparing with benefits, others chock full of them. But how big is the benefit boost?

Continue reading "From Frugal to Flush: The Benefit Boost" »

A little while ago, a Cole County judge ruled that Missouri gives enough money to public school districts. A main argument was that more money spent in a school district doesn’t itself increase student achievement, and that Missouri’s education spending was growing too fast.

The goal has always been to spend money to help students. The court ruled that Missouri was spending enough. Based on the ruling, what we would expect to see over the course of the next few years is a leveling of total spending on public education in Missouri. If the state was the only one handing out money for education, we would see just that.

But schools don’t receive state funds alone. Though state spending is not growing as fast as before, school districts can always ask their communities for more money.

As I’ve been looking over election results for school financial issues, occasionally I’ll stumble across a recent news article about a district’s election. When I do, superintendents are often quoted as saying that a property tax increase is needed because the state just isn’t providing as much money as the school district had counted on. In the lawsuit, more than 240 Missouri school districts had joined together to charge that they weren’t getting enough from the state.

And, while the court ruled otherwise, school districts have proven that they can get money in other ways. It’s not just the state that controls the public education finance spigot.

Continue reading "Control" »

Partisanship has long been divorced from most school elections in the United States.

In fact, all school board elections in Missouri are nonpartisan, according to Kelli Hopkins, a director of education policy for the Missouri School Boards Association. Board candidates don’t run as Republicans or Democrats.

Theoretical papers argue that nonpartisan school board members are beholden to all citizens, not just those of a particular party, and that without partisanship there’s a wide variety of candidate choice — not just Republicans and Democrats.

To even further divorce all school elections from partisanship, districts rarely hold elections in November. Many elections run in February, April, June, or August, but most often in April — a month least linked with partisan elections.

“The separation of school board elections from general elections was a deliberate attempt by Progressive-era reformers to reduce partisan influence in the school election process,” write Ann Allen and David Plank in a 2005 paper for the Politics of Education Association.

Still, there is controversy surrounding both the timing of school elections and school board candidate partisanship. Some have argued that partisan school board elections would bring up lagging turnout. Others, that holding school elections in November would do the same. The question is, is it worth it?

These arguments have some serious implications for school district governance. But would partisanship or November school elections do what advocates say? Would turnout increase dramatically?

Continue reading "Remarriage?" »

… is the perfect excuse for me to link the Post’s article with my case study about pharmacy privatization from last year. The Post-Dispatch article primarily details how neighborhood pharmacies are struggling in competition against corporate pharmacies, despite the increasing demand for prescription drugs from our aging population.

One thing that could help is for more governments to do what St. Louis County did in 2003 and privatize the pharmacy portions of the local public health care system. All of the local pharmacies in St. Louis County are able to participate in the public health system because LDI, a pharmacy benefits company, has the county contract (won through competitive bidding), and neighborhood pharmacies all accept the LDI card. If more local governments did this, it would save taxpayers money, improve options for citizens using the public health case system, and benefit local businesses. There is absolutely no downside to this, as my case study demonstrated. (The only potential downside could be government pharmacists losing their jobs, but because the article emphasizes the incredible demand for pharmacists, I don’t need to point out they wouldn’t be out of work for long.)

It is legal for government employees fulfilling Sunshine Law requests to reasonably charge for research time, copying costs, and postage. When Cynthia and I file requests, we state the maximum a clerk or school district can charge without letting us know before beginning the work.

If they reasonably charge below our maximum and provide the information, we have to pay.

At first, we began with a $100 maximum. But when Cynthia hit $717.38 in total charges, with more than 25 county clerks left to contact, we panicked. She had a $1,000 budget, and the Show-Me Institute is a non-profit organization. I didn’t have an explicit budget, because school districts big and small rarely charge to fill Sunshine Law requests — but I wasn’t eager to run up a large bill either.

So we lowered the maximum. Her new maximum was $50, stated as: “If you determine not to waive these fees, please notify me of any cost that exceeds $50 before fulfilling this request.”

I lowered my maximum to $30. All other wording in our requests stayed the same.

Yesterday afternoon, it dawned on me that we had accidentally tested the integrity of county clerks and superintendents. If they were less than honest, they would charge just below the maximum we stated, to collect the most cash without scrutiny.

Continue reading "Honesty" »