Gov. Fallin Places Education Property Tax Measure on November Ballot

Governor Mary Fallin Places Public School Funding Measure on November Ballot

OKLAHOMA CITY – Governor Mary Fallin today issued an election proclamation that places on the November ballot a state question approved by legislators that would allow school districts to use property tax revenue, now used primarily for building funds, for operational costs such as teacher pay.

State Question 801 would give local school board the flexibility and options to use existing property tax funds for use in the classroom, such as teacher pay and textbooks, without raising taxes. Like all state questions, it requires a simple majority by voters to be approved.

Lawmakers this year approved Senate Joint Resolution 70, which sends to a vote of the people an amendment to the state constitution that would allow ad valorem taxes collected for a school building fund to be used for expenses associated with the general operations of a school district. Currently, a school district can levy up to five mills for a building fund.

The deadline for the governor to sign election proclamations for state questions to be placed on the Nov. 6 general election ballot is Aug. 27.

OCPA column: Look closer at Texas on teacher pay

Look closely at Texas on teacher pay

by Jonathan Small, president of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA)

The Fort Worth Independent School District has rented ten billboards around Norman, Oklahoma City, Stillwater, and Tulsa advertising starting teacher salaries of $52,000 a year. Instructive.

If we truly care about teachers, students, and student outcomes, then we must be willing to look at how Texas schools approach teacher compensation and especially how that state funds K-12 education.

We must ask, how is it possible that Texas, particularly its large metropolitan areas, can offer such higher teacher salaries? Why doesn’t that state struggle to the degree that Oklahoma does during economic declines, especially during energy sector slumps?

The predominant source of funding for schools in Texas is the property tax. Economic research shows that by far the property tax is the most stable and transparent tax. It is also probably the most accountable revenue source.

Advocates for increased education funding in Oklahoma have repeatedly used Texas’ salaries and spending as their shining example, but they have failed to explain, or even to understand, the Texas system, the property tax and economic growth. Why?

Why aren’t unions, administrators, parent-teacher associations, business leaders, and others advocating for changes to the Oklahoma Constitution to allow local voters to increase the millage levies for their school districts to have more stable funding, or to adopt Texas-style pro-growth tax reform to increase the number of taxpayers, so we can pay teachers more and have more classroom funding?

Think about this. Fort Worth can offer starting salaries of $52,000 a year and Texas has no income tax at all. In fact, former Oklahoma teacher of the year Shawn Sheehan noted the lack of an income tax as a boon after he left to teach in Texas last year.

Texas’ economy is booming. Texas borders Oklahoma’s entire southern border and sandwiches us in between other states with lower personal income taxes.

If we truly care about teachers, students, the most vulnerable, and Oklahoma’s future, then we will work to modernize our property taxes as a part of pro-growth tax reform. Thankfully this session, the Legislature took a positive step forward when it adopted Senate Joint Resolution 70. If passed by voters, this bill will provide greater accountability in how local property tax dollars are spent and allow schools to choose teacher salaries and classroom needs over expensive football turf and exorbitant facility expansions. Although not a cure-all, SJR 70 is surely a step in the right direction.

If we really want to compete with Texas in K-12 funding, then we are going to have to learn from them and implement some of their best practices.

Jonathan Small serves as president of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.

Oklahoman Editorial Board: Textbook complaints indict local school boards

Textbook complaints indict local OK school boards

by The Oklahoman Editorial Board

AT this week's teacher protests, many participants demanded that lawmakers attach more strings to state school funding. Teachers didn't use those exact words, of course, but the underlying message was the same, and it's an implicit indictment of local school boards' management.

Many teachers complained that their classes have outdated or worn-out textbooks. One teacher said, “I don't have one textbook in my classroom.” Some protesters held aloft battered copies of textbooks as visual props.

It's true Oklahoma lawmakers haven't provided a line-item appropriation for textbooks for several years. The reason for that change is worth noting. Fortunately, legislative leaders explicitly addressed the issue in 2016.

That year, former House Speaker Jeff Hickman, R-Fairview, and Senate Appropriations & Budget Committee Chairman Clark Jolley, R-Edmond, issued a release on elimination of a line-item appropriation for textbooks.

“The Legislature put $33 million previously line-itemed for textbooks into the state-aid funding formula so schools can make spending decisions at the local level based on their own unique needs,” Hickman said. “Education leaders, including Superintendent (Joy) Hofmeister, made it clear to us this session that schools wanted more money directed through the funding formula so schools will have more discretion and flexibility. The funds didn't go away. Schools are still receiving the money that would have been line-itemed for textbooks, but now they have greater discretion to use those dollars for more pressing needs at the local level or to buy new textbooks.”

Jolley noted that schools "have been crying out for more money to be placed in the formula for several years in a row. When I asked the leadership of the Oklahoma State School Boards Association if it would be more important for these funds to be in textbooks or the formula, I was told the formula gave the greatest flexibility to districts.”

In short, state textbook funding has not been eliminated. Instead, local schools have been given the chance to use that money elsewhere if desired. With a line-item appropriation, schools could spend the money only on textbooks.

So it's worth asking: If schools haven't used any of that money on textbooks since then, what did districts do with those millions? Based on the teachers' protests, the cash apparently didn't go to teacher pay. And if this is a problem, why aren't teacher union members protesting local school boards that diverted textbook funds to other uses?

On a similar note, the Senate has advanced a measure, Senate Joint Resolution 70, that would allow voters to amend the Oklahoma Constitution to give schools the flexibility to use local property tax for some operational costs, such as teacher pay. Currently, that money can be used only for buildings. Yet education groups opposed SJR 70.

If a good teacher is the most important expenditure in a school's budget, then why should the state make it illegal for schools to direct available money to teacher pay? The textbook issue suggests an answer.

Teachers often decry state “micromanagement.” Yet when it comes to textbook funds and use of schools' property taxes, it seems many educators have more faith in state-level dictates than in the financial oversight of their local school boards.