Unenthusiastic Reaction To School Taxes Stems From Reality

Someone needs to pass Memphis City Schools Superintendent Kriner Cash a note in poly sci class.

The reluctance of this community to embrace the idea of taxing authority for our dual – and dueling – school systems has nothing to do with our inability to grasp the concept, as he suggested to the Shelby County Board of Commissioners Budget Committee.

More to the point, it has all to do with the district’s inability to prove that it has the capacity to improve student performance if given this power. There’s nothing in our experience that suggests that taxpayers see the educational bureaucracy of both districts as the answers to all that ails both systems.

Big Bucks

After all, between 2003 and 2007, the enrollment of Memphis City Schools fell 11% but the budget rose 19%. On the surface, it would seem that the drop in pupils would allow the district to reduce expenses that more than offset the controversial cut in funding by Memphis City Schools.

The district’s expenditures – which don’t even include the bond payments for school construction made by city and county governments – climbed from $764 million in 2004-2005 to $910 million in the proposed budget for this year. As for Shelby County Schools, its expenditures have increased from $270.6 million in 2005-06 to $324.5 million in 2007-2008.

From the beginning, the school districts’ proposal for taxing authority was fatally flawed and more directed at moving the local legislative bodies out of the checks and balances than establishing a real system of educational accountability. That was self-evidence since the proposal called for the approval of tax hikes by the state legislature, which effectively was an example of legislative shopping by the districts.

Nothing But The Facts

In the end, the concern by the public is if the districts can’t produce excellence with $1.3 billion a year, why should they be trusted with the power to set their own tax rates for public education? And the fact that the verdict is out on one superintendent and the second one appears willing to be a rubber stamp for a politician’s personal agenda certainly doesn’t contribute to a growing sense of confidence.

While Superintendent Cash appears to be doing many things right, the tendency of the district to white wash its problems as simply the inventions of a negative media continues to sap energy and attention needed for more productive things. Most of all, everyone at Memphis City Schools needs to abandon the idea that it has marketing deficits rather than performance deficits.

While there is much to celebrate within the district, most of it is about small pockets of motivated teachers producing remarkable results or an inspired principal changing the culture of a single school. There is precious little about systemic, systemwide change in the culture so that innovation takes root and Memphis City Schools becomes a model urban district.

LOL

We were thinking of this as we read the district’s applications for its own charter schools. If anyone outside of the district had filed such a flimsy description and program for a charter school, that person would have been laughed out of the board of commissioners meeting.

The document was about one-tenth of the size of a regular charter application, and the thought behind it seems to be about one-tenth of what should be expected for these “laboratories of innovative urban education.” And yet, the façade of a program got approval in short order.

In its own way, the charter schools plan by Memphis City Schools mirrored some of the concerns about the district. It continues to be long on broad educational objectives and short on specifics, results and change.

OJT

Even Cash supporters acknowledge that the period of “on the job training” is challenging and difficult, and off the record, few are willing to predict whether the Cash Administration will in the end be a success or become the transition to a more seasoned reformer of the single most expensive public service in this community.

There is one thing that all sides can agree on: Memphis City Schools remains a long way from the Cash team’s motto of “Breakthrough Leadership, Breakthrough Results.” Here’s hoping that it can get there.