Hillsborough schools poised to make another run at tax

What’s changed since Hillsborough County voters rejected the tax-for-teachers referendum two years ago? We’ll likely soon find out. The school district is expected to decide soon whether to place another referendum on the ballot in November. A winning campaign this time will require the usual — money, organization, hustle. But it also requires new openness from the district and a willingness to engage, sharper messaging and a fresher grasp of how the public schools are seen in this fast-evolving educational marketplace.

The Hillsborough County School Board is scheduled to vote April 2 on whether to ask voters to approve an additional property tax for operations. Officials say the surtax is critical to hiring teachers, who often can make more in neighboring counties, and they insist that conditions have improved since county voters narrowly rejected a similar referendum only two years ago.

The additional levy would cost $1 for every $1,000 in taxable property value. The owner of a $375,000 home with a standard $25,000 homestead exemption, for example, would pay $350 a year. Of the $177 million generated annually, the school district would receive about $150 million, while the remaining $27 million would go to privately run charter schools, which are entitled to a share based on enrollment.

The district said it would spend more than 90% of its portion to boost employee pay, providing $6,000 supplements to teachers and administrators and $3,000 to bus drivers, cafeteria workers and other support staff. About 8% of the revenue, or $12 million annually, would go to improving school programs, from college and career counseling to sports.

Officials say Hillsborough needs the increase to attract educators and staff in a competitive labor market. Twenty-five of Florida’s 67 counties levy an additional property tax for school operations (mostly for teacher salaries), encompassing the biggest and wealthiest metro areas in the state. Hillsborough is bordered on three sides by counties (Pasco, Pinellas and Manatee) that collect surtaxes for salaries. Many teachers, bus drivers and other school employees in Hillsborough could earn double-digit pay increases merely by taking their skills across the county line.

These increases would put salaries in Hillsborough above those in Pinellas and Pasco and more in line with Manatee and Sarasota counties. They would come in addition to any annual increases regularly negotiated with the employees’ unions. The added pay could make a big difference over the span of a teaching career, making Hillsborough more competitive not only in Tampa Bay, but with school districts across the state. Hillsborough Schools Superintendent Van Ayres maintains the higher salaries are critical to building a bench of talent that any large organization needs over time.

Then and now

Of course, these are the same arguments proponents made in lobbying for the tax in 2022, which Hillsborough voters narrowly rejected by a margin of 50.1 to 49.9. Supporters dismissed the loss as a victim of timing, blaming ongoing bad press over the district’s hiring and spending, its large inventory of underused school campuses and the difficulty of running a political campaign amid the disruptions of COVID-19.

Officials are right; much has changed. Hillsborough has stabilized its finances by keeping tighter controls on spending, paring hundreds from its workforce (now at 23,384) in recent years in a downsizing effort that had stalled in 2022. More importantly, after months of heated debate, the school board last year approved the phased closure of six heavily underused schools, the first time in its 140-year existence that Hillsborough had closed a campus because of low enrollment.

But even some school system supporters are underwhelmed. Last year’s school closure plan was watered down repeatedly in the face of public pushback; two of the six schools ordered mothballed, for example, are scheduled to reopen. Even now, Hillsborough still has more schools operating at or below 70% capacity (80) than it did in 2021 (77), and only three fewer than it did in 2022 (83), when the district first seriously confronted its institutional bloat.

Some political and civic leaders in Hillsborough believe the school system agonized too much over relatively modest cuts, and they wonder whether voters are convinced barely one year out that the district has adjusted to the times. Enrollment in Hillsborough’s traditional public schools, after all, continues to decline, as more families in the growing county opt for charters, private schools and other educational options.

Enrollment in traditional schools this year (185,350) dropped from the year before (187,356), which dropped from the year before that (189,365). Hillsborough’s traditional schools have fewer students today than they did in 2017 (192,552), and the numbers have generally trended downward for years. To put the loss of 2,000 students annually into perspective, that’s akin to losing one high school every year. It’s a reason that board member Nadia Combs, who has pushed for greater consolidation of school campuses, urged her colleagues in February to continue exploring ways to wring efficiencies from the system. “We can’t keep schools so under-enrolled,” she said.

The 2024 message

If anything, Hillsborough’s failure at the polls in 2022 should prompt some serious soul-searching. What soured the electorate to make Hillsborough such an outlier two years ago? Other school districts, after all, struggled with finances, anti-tax sentiment and the growing popularity of charters, too, and all had to change their methods of campaigning in the pandemic era.

Nineteen Florida school districts put a combined 20 taxing measures on the 2022 ballot; virtually all provided for increasing teacher pay. Of the 20 proposed, 19 passed, with Hillsborough’s referendum the sole loser. Voters passed these measures by margins of up to 84%; most won with 60% or more of the vote. These winning majorities were not only convincing; they reflected the broad support these initiatives have enjoyed statewide, where red (Pinellas, Sarasota) and blue (Broward, Alachua) counties alike have embraced taxing themselves more for public education.

Supporters of Hillsborough’s 2022 referendum note with confidence that it lost by fewer than 600 votes. Proponents also point out that another referendum this November would be held during a general election in a presidential year (as opposed to the 2022 referendum, held in the August primary), which could draw a higher turnout and cross section of support.

But something’s wrong when Hillsborough’s largest employer, which should carry an enormous voting bloc in any election, cannot get a pay hike for its own employees over the top. What’s worse, the loss in 2022 produced something of a shock but not a collective wince in the community. Though local leaders aren’t surprised the schools are trying again, many complain the district has kept its plans to itself and wasted valuable time in building a winning coalition.

Changing outcomes starts with changing tactics, and two things seem critical for winning this time.

First, the district needs to be more open about its finances and operations. The board and top administrators often operate in a bubble, and while they’ve long promised to improve communications, that’s been a talking point, not a priority. The district’s Soviet-era website is one thing. The bigger problem is its repeated failure to keep the community looped in about its plans and challenges. The district reached out in a very public fashion in 2018, and voters supported (by a 56% margin, in that November’s general election) a special tax for school repairs. But those lines of communication have faded.

Taxpayers being asked for more deserve answers in real time and plain English to straightforward questions: What’s working in the schools and what’s not? Does the district need so many campuses, or should it redirect some of those resources to more pressing needs? What is the strategy for improving lagging schools and competing with charters? What’s the fallback if another tax fails?

Second, the referendum needs to be sold through the lens of the classroom. America’s seventh-largest school system has no shortage of faces and life stories to illustrate what a quality education looks like and what it means to a major metro area. Paying teachers more isn’t the goal, but a means for filling hundreds of vacancies and putting better teachers in front of students. Same with bus drivers. Hundreds of vacancies behind the wheel means that bus routes run late, forcing children to come late to first period. That disrupts the entire classroom, bringing the learning environment to a halt. School officials complain they cannot compete for drivers against Amazon. But a $3,000 bump might make a difference as some decide whether to deliver packages or children.

“The campaign has to be focused around students,” Combs underscored last month, during a board workshop to discuss a referendum. “Because at the end of the day, that’s why we’re here.”

John Hill is an editorial writer with the Tampa Bay Times. Contact him at hill@tampabay.com.