The Franklin (TN) Special School District (FSSD) is a K-8 school system with approximately 3,850 students enrolled. Students are served by seven schools: four elementary schools, one intermediate school, one middle school, and a balanced calendar K-8 school.
This comment on the Commercial Appeal website caught our eye:
The citizens of Germantown better be careful what they ask for or they just might get it (or might not depending on how you look at it). I am a former Germantown resident.
A 42 cents per $100 assessment is roughly 1/3 of the actual property tax assessment placed on Franklin, TN residents who live in the frozen 9th Civil District boundary. We pay an extra $1.14 per $100 to the County Trustee each year to fund a land-locked 3,600 student K-8 special school district. Even worse, there are subdivisions in Franklin where each side of the same street is in a different school district. Williamson County School buses pass empty FSSD buses in those same subdivisions on a daily basis. FSSD leads the state in average expenditure per child of $11,923 compared to the state average of $8,773 which is 66% locally funded. The Central Office payroll for administrators alone is over $3 million. All for a school district that has fewer students than some larger public high schools.
If you give taxing authority to insider school boards padded with former educators and parents who have zero fiscal responsibility then you will be sorry. You will constantly be questioning the validity of residency requirement verifications because the foxes are the ones watching the hen house. ADA numbers drive funding, funding pays principals’ salaries. Do you think principals are going to be very receptive to reporting their numbers being down? Just this past year, the FSSD Director of Schools was forced to sue a Columbia, TN (Maury County) parent and resident who was caught bringing her special needs child to Johnson Elementary in downtown Franklin. Williamson County froze the Franklin Special School District boundaries for good reason and the taxpayers are still paying dearly just to keep FSSD afloat. Right now, FSSD gets a pro-rata share of approximately 10 cents of the county school fund assessment.
So I ask the good citizens and property owners of Germantown…where do you think a newly created and elected special school district board in Germantown will look to make up the shortfall? I can drive 1/4 mile up the road from my house and my tax rate would be @2.63 per $100 of assessed value compared to my current rate of $3.60.
You guys are in for a real mess.
I think G-town would be better served to combine with Collierville for school district but that is their choice.
Even with a SSD, the county will still fund the school district to the same level of the rest of the county based on the number of students. I don’t have a problem with that.
But this is what needs to happen across the county. Smaller districts based on neighborhoods that want to join together for their kids. Perhaps a Frayser-Northhaven district?
It sure will be interesting to see if it’s practical for Germantown to form their own district and if they can afford it. I don’t think it’s such a slam dunk as some Germantown residents are making it out to be.
Deluded people cling desperately to dying days.