Pinellas public schools, like those throughout Florida, have suffered financial setbacks in recent years. The money they receive from the state hasn't kept pace with enrollment growth or inflation, and the results are painfully obvious: layoffs of teaching assistants, curriculum specialists, guidance counselors, assistant principals and janitors; reductions in instructional periods in middle and high schools and the loss of most summer courses; cutbacks in music, arts, foreign language and physical education programs; teacher salaries that are no longer competitive even with neighboring states.
Given those dire circumstances and the political indifference in the state capital, the Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association is making an inviting pitch. Why, the teachers ask, don't we simply help ourselves? Why not ask voters to give a little more so that Pinellas schoolchildren can get more?
This is not how Florida's constitutionally guaranteed system of state-funded education is supposed to work, but the Legislature's continued budgetary neglect has left school districts with few good options. That's why, to date, voters in 35 counties have raised either sales or property taxes to help pay for their schools. That's why conservative Sarasota and Walton counties voted, by margins of greater than 2-to-1, to increase their own property taxes.
The Pinellas School Board is scheduled on Jan. 27 to review the results of a union-commissioned poll that suggests voters would be willing to pay a little more in property taxes to keep top-notch teachers, provide up-to-date textbooks and technology and restore reading, music and arts programs. In short, the people in Pinellas want the best for their schools.
Those poll findings are not surprising, in part because the case for more money is so compelling. Florida ranks 49th in per capita spending on public education, and its teachers are paid roughly $5,000 a year less than the national average at a time when the demand for teachers exceeds the supply. This school year, Pinellas was given only $4.5-million in new state money to run a $1.1-billion school system with 112,000 students and 13,000 employees.
The need is obvious, but the poll numbers and budgetary shortfalls do not alone make the case for a Nov. 2 referendum. Tax referendums are never an easy sell, nor should they be, and the one that Pinellas is contemplating would require voter approval every four years in order to maintain the programs and benefits. To ask voters to approve an increased tax, the school system will need to offer a detailed plan for spending, an oversight committee and a unified voice. Any successful campaign will require truly broad-based community and business support and a type of political leadership that neither the board nor superintendent Howard Hinesley has shown to date.
"At some point, somebody has to pay for it," says board chairwoman Jane Gallucci, who has been a vocal advocate for increased state funding of schools. "And we're talking about kids' lives. We're talking about students' futures."
Students are not getting all they deserve in Florida's system of discount education, which leaves Pinellas with the same uneasy choice now confronting other school districts that aspire to do more: If lawmakers won't do right by schoolchildren, then maybe voters will. To call for a referendum, though, School Board members will need more than an affirmative vote. They will need to show they are ready to stand and lead.
