By Gretchen Garrity
When it comes to spending taxpayer dollars, school districts have the winning refrain: It's for the children!
This mantra is so common it deserves to be examined. Variations on the theme include: Do it for the kids! You can never do enough for the children! The children deserve the best we can do for them! I would do anything for the children!
These common "arguments" have been used for many years to browbeat and gaslight overburdened taxpayers into agreeing yet again to another raid on their pocketbooks. School personnel and elected officials often use this mantra as they push a bond for yet another project that must be funded because...the children!
Has anyone ever asked these questions: Why can't the school district plan and budget for improvements? Why do they have to go into debt to big financial organizations to do repairs and maintenance, or even add classrooms?
Isn't there an ongoing maintenance plan for the school districts? Aren't they making sure the infrastructure is inspected and maintained? When they see a problem, why don't they make provision for it? Is it reported to the school board before it becomes a big problem? Is the school board even aware of how the buildings are being maintained and on what kind of schedule?
Why doesn't the district use the tax revenue they receive from the citizens to fund improvements? By continuing to borrow millions of dollars from big financial organizations to fund improvements, renovations, and capital projects, the school district keeps taxpayers on the hook for ever-increasing loans and interest to bankers.
To
add insult to injury some school districts, like the Clever School District, take their internal bond debt (otherwise known as Lease
Purchase Debt) that is paid from the Capitol Projects account. This
account can have a portion of the property tax levy associated with a
school, especially if it is a large amount of debt. This is generally
PAID BACK through the base levy for Operations--the permanent tax you
pay to the school through property taxes.
Lease Purchase Debt does not require the approval or
vote of the community. So in asking voters to take on all or a portion of this
debt if the $16 million bond is approved, the school district gets to loosen their belt, while asking the
community to continue to tighten theirs. It allows them a get-out-of-debt
free card to just do it all over again in time for the next
generation.
This is not living within one's means. It is the proverbial "borrowing your way out of debt," only it is the taxpayer who ends up paying for the fiscal irresponsibility of the school district.
The school district should be looking at the whole community when thinking about bonds. We are all in this together, and taxing the elderly out of their homes, burdening homeowners with ever-increasing property taxes actually harms children in the long run. The 20-year bond debt that gets rolled over will affect students as they move into home ownership, careers and families.
And what are taxpayers getting for their constant "investment" in more and better school buildings? How are academic scores in your school? In Clever, academic scores are declining. According to Missouri School Rankings, the Clever School District is ranked 316/535. It has an overall GPA of 1.50/4.0.
Read it and weep. In 2018-2019, Clever ranked 301/516. In 2020-2021, Clever ranked 138/516. In 2021-2022 they ranked 238/552. Now they are ranked 316/535. What accounts for these numbers--the sudden rise and then the steep decline?
Clever currently has a student to teacher ratio of 15:1. This is ideal. Why are academic scores so terribly low?
The question must be asked: How is a $16 million school bond going to bring up the academic scores in Clever? How will it benefit the children's minds and reasoning skills?
You know who really benefits by keeping school districts in a perpetual debt cycle? The financial institutions that parasitically feed off the community by loaning school districts millions of dollars, and the associated companies that are standing by to design and construct the plans for new weight rooms, covered walkways, and so on.
They are the MAJOR beneficiaries. The lender stands to make over $8 million in interest alone. It's for the children!
No, it's for the lenders and the companies that are hired to do the design and construction.
Parents and taxpayers, it would be one thing if our students were succeeding academically. In fact, new science labs are a good thing, as well as needed renovations. But it doesn't take $16 million to build five new classrooms. A reasoned, well-thought out plan that takes into account the needs of the whole community is requisite. It's time to go back to the drawing board, to come together in a way that holds our schools accountable for the mission they are tasked with--to turn out educated individuals.
If the school district is failing to turn out students who can read well, write well, do math well, and reason well, then the focus should be on academics and not weight rooms or performing arts centers.
Are citizens aware that the organizations who are helping the school district to sell these bonds to the voter are associate or business members with state trade organizations like the Missouri School Boards Association or the Missouri Association of School Administrators? In Clever, it is Raymond James who desires to be the lender to the school district. They are a business member of MASA.
The plan designer is Buxton Kubik Dodd Design Collective who are members of the Missouri School Boards Association Business Connections. These professional trade connections help drive the school bond issues that plague communities all over our nation.
School districts lose sight of the fact that they serve the taxpaying citizens as a whole--families, elderly, homeowners--and must keep in mind their first mission is to adequately EDUCATE the children entrusted to them and to properly and morally steward the money they are provided by the taxpayer.
It's for all of us. We're all in this together.
