A locally elected school board should be the body making decisions about school tax rates in the Little Rock School District, leaders of a campaign against a proposed tax extension said Thursday.
"Give us back local control. Let those we have elected -- not appointed -- but those we've elected make a decision as to whether we need a millage or not," Pulaski County Justice of the Peace Donna Massey said at a news conference to initiate the No Taxation Without Representation campaign.
The Little Rock district has operated under state control without an elected school board since January 2015 because six of its 48 schools were labeled as academically distressed. Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key acts in place of the board in the district, which is asking voters to approve at a special May 9 election the extension of 12.4 property tax mills.
If the plan is approved, the 12.4 mills of the district's total 46.4 mill tax rate would be extended by 14 years, from 2033 when they are due to expire, to 2047. The extended mills would enable the district to finance a $160 million capital improvement program that would include the construction of a new high school to replace McClellan and J.A. Fair high schools and make improvements --including roof, window, lighting and heating/air conditioning replacements -- at most other campuses.
"Normally we support our millages. We love our kids," Massey said. "But this is a particular election that we just cannot support. We cannot trust this current administration."
Little Rock Superintendent Mike Poore said earlier this week at an announcement of the Rebuild Our Schools Now! campaign for the tax extension that he has been open and transparent to the public about the issues and the reasons for his decisions in the operation of the district. He also said that he wants the school district to be returned to local control and is working toward that at the direction of Key. As for the construction of a new high school, Poore said it has been promised and will be done.
Massey said the first order of business for the district should be restoring academic excellence to the three schools that have yet to be relieved of the academic distress label. Those are Cloverdale and Henderson middle schools and Hall High. The other three schools that were labeled as in distress -- Baseline Elementary and J.A. Fair and McClellan high schools -- have raised student achievement to the degree needed to be cleared of the label.
She discounted the plans of district leaders and campaigners for "new shiny buildings and refurbished old buildings" in light of the fact that in her part of the city the district is closing schools. The district is shutting three schools and repurposing a fourth in the upcoming 2017-18 school year to cut future operating expenses. The affected schools -- Woodruff Early Childhood Center, Franklin Elementary, Wilson Elementary and Hamilton Learning Academy -- were selected in part because there are so many empty elementary school seats in the areas in which the four schools are located.
Massey warned that new and renovated schools could become under-enrolled in the future as the result of charter school enrollment growth in Pulaski County. Senate Bill 308, now Act 542, would cause the distinct to turn over under-used schools -- built with property tax dollars -- to charter school organizations for their use, she said. Charter schools are taxpayer-supported schools that are operated independently of the traditional school district.
The act says that a district must make the unused or under-used schools available to charter schools at no more than the fair market value of the property.
Jim Lynch, a longtime community activist, argued against calling the May 9 proposal a tax "extension."
"This is a new tax," Lynch said. "If you were paying a current tax and you were told you would have to pay it for five years or even 10 years but at a date certain it would go off the books and you would no longer pay the tax. But at some point later on, someone changes their mind and says we are going to add 5 years or 10 years or 15 years. That's a new tax and that is exactly what is going to happen on May 9 if voters don't resist the bamboozle effort and don't resist the hoodwink effort and vote no on May 9."
Lynch said he believed there is a better way to finance school projects by using the money that is generated by the debt service mills that is over and above what is needed for debt payments. School districts, Little Rock included, typically transfer those surplus debt service funds into the operating budgets to pay employee salaries, utilities and other costs.
Lynch said that surplus, which is several million dollars a year, could be paired with $37.3 million in state desegregation aid to the district and used for building the new high school. A high school is planned for 55 acres between Mabelvale Pike and Mann Road.
"We can do a pay-as-you-go plan with $25 million to $30 million a year," he said, adding that the building and repair plans made by the district "have some merit" but they don't all have to be built in one year. "We don't need bond issues and we don't need attorneys and accountants taking their fees."
He asked how much the district will have to pay in interest on the money it borrows, saying that the interest could be money that goes to students instead of bondholders.
The Rev. Maxine Allen, president of the Christian Ministerial Alliance, was among the dozen people at the news conference held in front of Cloverdale Middle School.
A sixth-generation property owner whose parents, she said, paid a poll tax for the right to vote, Allen said the district is in the hands of people who do not represent the best interest of students and the district.
"The folks who pay taxes in this district want persons who are duly elected to represent us," Allen said in urging the public to vote against the tax proposal.
"We need a proper school board before we give them one single dime," Allen said.
Metro on 03/31/2017