Education Week - August 7, 2013 - 11

EDUCATION WEEK AUGUST 7, 2013 www.edweek.org
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Tamara Hanson,
the principal of
John Eager Howard
Elementary School,
looks in on a class
in session last
spring.
on how much districts can raise
and spend on operating expenses
may have encouraged a growth
in bond measures—which have
fewer restrictions—as a means for
parents to bring more money into
local schools, said Mark Tallman,
an associate executive director at
the Kansas Association of School
Boards. However, the trend has
generated concerns about equity,
since wealthier districts can leverage
more funding given their
higher property-tax bases.
Washington state has responded
to that concern by providing additional
“levy equalization assistance”
to districts where property values
are lower than the state average.
Three years ago, 220 districts received
$261 million in matching
funds for tax-levy measures.
States’ rules, as well as their circumstances,
have also influenced
the number of measures pushed
and passed by parents. Changes
more than a decade ago to the
way Minnesota finances public
education meant significant cuts
to school districts that communities
have tried to buffer by passing
levy measures, said Mary Cecconi,
the executive director of Parents
United, a state advocacy group
based in St. Paul that has helped
parents get tax measures passed
for districts.
“Minnesota has spawned a cottage
industry around local levy
campaigns: If you’re not running
a levy campaign here, you’re planning
on running one the next year,”
said Ms. Cecconi, who estimates
that more than 90 percent of the
state’s districts have at least one
levy in place. “The psyche of the
taxpayer is that districts keep going
out for more and more money; most
everyone in Minnesota is now suffering
from levy fatigue.”
In the past decade-plus, parents
there have also developed finely
tuned and pricey campaign strategies
that can cost $125,000 or
even more, she added.
Although the measures can net
upwards of $700 in additional
funds per student per year in Minnesota,
districts frequently use
them to patch budget holes, rather
than provide additions or improvements.
Even with a good campaign,
the use of the money can make it
challenging to get voters to pass
measures and to renew them, as is
required every 10 years.
Fiscal Pressures
According to Jared Boigon, a
partner with TBWB Strategies, a
San Francisco-based politicalconsulting
firm that focuses on
public-finance measures, the state
cuts that many districts have
faced in recent years have made
it much harder to fulfill the campaign
promises for programs and
new facilities when the money is
needed to cover basic school needs.
Strategic campaigning—such as
showing how modern buildings
could save money in energy costs
over time—are essential in helping
the measures pass, he said.
The failure to pass a levy can
often make the budget holes grow
bigger. In Minnesota’s Osseo Area
school system, last year’s levy measure
lost by 124 votes (out of 69,000
cast), resulting in $3 million in cuts
for the 20,000-student district, said
parent and campaign leader Mary
Ellen DeBois. She and other parents
are already in the midst of
ramping up the campaign strategy
for another levy, on the ballot this
fall; projections show its failure
would bring another $8 million in
cuts within two years.
“The most difficult part of the
campaign is building an immense
number of relationships across a
diverse community, one conversation
at a time,” Ms. DeBois said.
“Our message to our volunteers
is: We don’t need people to take on
huge tasks, we need many people
to take on small pieces of the puzzle.
We know we don’t have the
time or the resources to change
everyone’s mind [to support the
levy].”
Districts tend to take varied
approaches to campaign strategies
and style, said W. Kyle Ingle,
an associate professor of educational
administration at Bowling
Green State University in Ohio,
who has researched tax-measure
campaigns. In general, campaigns
that more readily involve
the community and disseminate
varied and targeted messages to
different groups tend to be more
“I was challenged and inspired by the
high level of intellectual discourse and
relevance of course content. I highly
recommend this program to instructional
leaders who want to add depth to their
practice.”
Sharon M. Biggs, Ed.D. ’11
Executive Director
Principal Coaching and Evaluation
Paterson, NJ, Public Schools
successful at the polls, he said.
Restrictions governing measures
and pushback from naysayers
have inspired progressive ideas
in many communities, like those
in Minnesota, in how to craft campaigns,
and in others, how to pay
for the bond and tax measures
themselves.
Analysts determined the level
of repairs needed to put all Baltimore
schools in adequate condition
would cost at least $2.4
billion, an amount that would be
nearly impossible for the district
to borrow and pay off alone with
the city’s limited property-tax
base. At the urging of parents,
the community at large, and advocacy
groups like the American
Civil Liberties Union and the Baltimore
Education Coalition, the
state, city, and district agreed to
share responsibility for paying off
a portion of the bond each year,
supported by the state legislation
approved this past spring.
Other places have also been cre-
ative. Board members in Greenville,
S.C., voted to create a nonprofit
organization, governed by
former school board members,
that borrowed $1 billion to build
nearly 80 new schools within five
years—impossible for the district
to do given state laws and the
local voter climate.
Level of Support
Since tax and bond measures
differ considerably among districts
and states, common features
of successful measures are
hard to discern, said Alex Bowers,
an associate professor at Teachers
College, Columbia University.
Mr. Bowers has found, however,
that one omnibus bond financing
several projects, rather than
smaller bonds broken down to
pay for specific projects like a new
track or library, tend to do better
at the polls. In addition, repackaging
and refloating bond measures
that have failed usually doesn’t
produce a different result.
Still, he said, the overall success
of bond measures largely depends
on community support for local
schools, or the support parents
and the district are able to drum
up—components that are hard to
measure statistically.
While the campaign in Baltimore
was successful, the community’s efforts
are far from over for the project,
which will take 10 to 15 years
to complete and require additional
funding mechanisms to support it.
Local advocacy groups and parent
leaders like Ms. Savage, a
member of the education coalition,
hope that parent involvement continues
past the campaign stage to
implementation of the project itself.
Some parents already went
back to the drawing board this
summer to help hash out the specifics
and timetable for the first
set of schools in line to be built,
renovated, or closed.
“Parents are often relegated to
the back seat, but this time,” Ms.
Savage said, “parents have recognized
that they have the power to
have their voices heard and move
things to change in the schools our
children attend and in our city.”
Coverage of parent-empowerment
issues is supported by a grant from
the Walton Family Foundation, at
www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org.
Education Week retains sole editorial
control over the content of this coverage.
> > The PARENTS AND THE
PUBLIC blog tracks news and
trends on this issue.
www.edweek.org/go/
parentsandthepublic
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Education Week - August 7, 2013

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