Inside Report for Feb. 1, 2012

While much of the state’s attention is focused on Team Jindal’s project to “reform” public education, at least two school districts in the Baton Rouge area are trying to find the money or right combination of spending cuts to maintain and improve their stellar state rankings.

In today’s economic climate, that’s a challenge that has nothing to do with vouchers; private, parochial and charter schools; or getting rid of bad teachers.

In West Feliciana Parish and the Zachary Community School District, the challenge is in keeping the good teachers they already have.

Zachary is the state’s top-ranked school district, while West Feliciana was in third place in the 2011 rankings.

In the 2010-11 school year, which ended June 30, the Zachary school system ran up a deficit of more than $900,000. The School Board’s auditor said steep retirement increases mandated by state retirement boards accounted for most of the deficit.

In years past, the state routinely increased the Minimum Foundation Program appropriation by about 2.75 percent to help districts cover such cost increases, but the Jindal administration has basically frozen the MFP formula for three straight years.

To get ready for the current school year, the Zachary School Board took major steps to avoid a potential $2.5 million deficit, but managed to avoid a salary freeze.

While the school year has five more months to go, Zachary’s effort to avoid another deficit also may be helped by better-than-expected property tax revenues and sales tax collections so far this year, as well as enrollment increases that raise MFP funding. Zachary also has a big general fund surplus.

The budget picture is not as bright in West Feliciana, which has the same problems of increasing budget and insurance costs, but without Zachary’s growing enrollment and property and sales tax base. Also, West Feliciana lost 36 students between Feb. 1, 2011, and Oct. 1, which further reduces state aid.

West Feliciana Superintendent Hollis G. Milton attributed the decrease to a large graduating class leaving and a smaller kindergarten class entering last year.

In 2010, shortly before Milton came aboard, West Feliciana voters approved a new 11-mill property tax and a new half-cent sales tax, pushing the total school sales tax to 2½ cents on the dollar. Part of the half-cent tax is dedicated to expanding the one-laptop-per-student project begun in 2007 in a pilot program initiated by then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco.

That program is moving to iPads instead of laptops, but the idea is the same. With new national core curriculum standards on the horizon, the electronic devices will soon replace textbooks, Milton said.

But the new money wasn’t enough to overcome the increased retirement costs and other uncontrollable expenses, and the board started the current school year with drastic cuts.

The most drastic of all was closing Tunica Elementary School.

The board also froze salaries and cut administrators’ salaries, but another round of retirement hikes and enrollment losses puts the school system facing another deficit next year, the superintendent said.

Therefore, instead of merely asking voters on April 21 to renew a 3.75-mill tax that adds $3,000 a year to teachers’ salaries, the West Feliciana board also is asking voters to approve another half-cent sales tax estimated to generate $825,000 a year.

Calling for a new tax in today’s anti-tax political climate requires some political courage, but the board members voted unanimously without hesitation.

Soon, the decision will be for the voters.

James Minton covers Baker, Zachary and the Felicianas. His email address is
[e-mail].