School Choice, School Spending, and Property Tax "Relief"

School choice, public school spending, and property tax relief continue to be “hot topics” around Nebraska so I thought I would weigh in on these important issues from my perspective as the superintendent of schools in York, Nebraska.

School Choice and Accountability
School Choice is already alive and well in Nebraska and has been for decades. We have folks that already choose home schooling all across the state. We also have outstanding parochial schools to choose from in numerous communities. Many of our public schools, in fact, help support our parochial colleagues and students in numerous ways, to include student services, specialized course offerings, staff development, inclusion at assemblies and within community initiatives, and transportation to name a few. Nebraska also already offers option enrollment opportunities for families to pick and choose what public school district they want to attend.

One “choice” we don’t currently offer as a state would be charter schools. Charter schools are NOT public schools. Their chief source of funding is the same as public schools but they are not held to the same standards. While the state department of education often has some oversight, their day-to-day operations are governed by a private board instead of publicly elected officials like the boards of education that serve public schools. Having privately run schools supported by public funds is concerning to many.

Charter school supporters use the same playbook across the country. First, they embed the message that public schools are failing. Next, they work to further starve public schools of funding through vouchers and tax credits. Well, Nebraska’s public schools aren’t failing. We have right at a 90% graduation rate, which is one of the highest in the nation, and the highest average ACT score in the nation for the 17 states that have 80% or more of their kids taking it.

Critics of public schools will say that we as school leaders don’t want school choice. Of course we do, that’s why school choice has been present for decades in this state. It helps ratchet up accountability and if anything is for sure, it is that public school districts, with our annual financial audits, open meetings, high-stakes testing, and unfunded mandates, already deal with more public accountability than any other organizations I’m aware of.

Public School Spending
Every now and again, we are the subject of “scare tactics” from organizations that want you to believe that public schools spend, spend, and spend with very little return on investment. Well, here are some “facts” for your review.
• Total school district disbursements of all funds only grew by an annual average of just 3.5% from 2003-04 through 2013-14 according to data obtained from the legislative fiscal office’s report from August 2015.
• During the same 2003-04 through 2013-14 time span, the number of students educated in Nebraska’s public schools increased 8.16% from 284,181 to 307,398.
• The percentage of children living in poverty statewide increased from 33.93% to 44.93% during that same decade and this resulted in many school districts adding extra expenses of before/after school programming as well as expanded summer offerings.

Property Tax “Relief”
School spending is not the cause of high property taxes; the way we fund public education is the culprit. Legislative Bill 958 is being pushed for tax relief as it would limit spending by schools, cities, counties, and community colleges. It would cap aggregate statewide growth of agricultural land to 3% and would require many decisions about spending to be taken to a vote of the people. Sounds great, right? However, let’s look at the whole story thanks to some important data made available by the Open Sky Policy Institute.

If LB 958 was in place this current fiscal year, it would cause a massive revenue shortfall between $99-144 million just for K-12 schools. Since there is no mechanism in place to replace the lost revenue, school districts that had levy authority left would be forced to simply raise their levies to recoup the lost dollars, which would severely negate any “property tax relief.” However, dozens of districts that are already operating at the $1.05 levy maximum would have no ability to make up their lost revenue and they’d have to consider cutting programs. When all is said and done, LB 958 would not cause widespread property tax relief in numerous areas but it could severely damage school offerings in many districts. Is that what we want or are those unintended consequences?

A better approach to true property tax relief would be to address how Nebraska funds schools so we can improve upon our rank of 49th in the nation for the percent of K-12 education funded by the state. In closing, I hope those that read this will educate themselves on charter schools, real public school spending data, and proposed property tax relief.