By LINDA CHION KENNEY
Hillsborough school board members said they want to dig deeper before voting to approve or squash a property tax referendum that would raise money for teacher and staff salaries.
Interim Superintendent Van Ayres, at the board’s Oct. 17 board meeting, said a 1-mil increase in ad valorem tax is about “leveling the playing field” so that school officials can “attain and recruit the best employees to Hillsborough County public schools.” The tax as proposed would be in place July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2029.
If approved as a referendum, and then by voters at the polls in November 2024, the measure would raise real estate taxes by $1 for every $1,000 in assessed value.
For a $250,000 home minus the $50,000 homestead exemption, that would amount to $200.
But that’s still a big “if,” as board members on Oct. 17 voted 7-0 to hear more about Ayres’ plans for a tax referendum, at their workshop in January.
Board member Stacy Hahn raised concerns about the ballot language, which school board attorney Jim Porter said should not be confused with the legally required summaries attached. “The critical language is the official ballot language,” Porter said.
The crux of that language is that funds collected would be for a “quality public education system for Hillsborough children by providing competitive salaries to attract and retain qualified teachers and staff, sharing funds with charter schools proportionate with student enrollment as required by law.”
A similar referendum, put to voters in August 2022, failed by less than 600 ballots. It called for a 1-mil increase to retain and recruit teachers and staff, as well as to expand art, music and physical education, and to expand workforce development and workforce education programs.
School officials at the time said they would be back with another measure this year, which is what Ayres proposed at the Oct. 17 meeting.
Ayres said Hillsborough is the only district in Florida’s top-five largest school districts that does not collect an additional property tax for education. Likewise, “we need a level playing field to compete with surrounding school districts,” Ayres said.
With more time to flesh out a concrete plan for bringing the measure back to voters, Ayres is likely to address board sentiments raised at the Oct. 17 meeting.
Board member Stacy Hahn stressed the timing of the ask, asking people for their “hard-earned dollars” in difficult economic times. She said she “would love that [Hillsborough] were not 48th [lowest in the nation] in teacher salaries,” but that she needs greater insight into how a property tax increase would alleviate that situation.
Counting the District of Columbia, which ranks fourth on the list for top-salary states, Florida ranks 48th on the list, ahead of West Virginia, South Dakota and Mississippi. The report, from the National Education Association, accounts for average teacher salaries for the 2021-22 school year.
Board member Jessica Vaughan said it is “unfortunate that we have to ask our community to pay an additional tax,” noting the sentiments raised by certain speakers at the Oct. 17 meeting. They represent families struggling with rising rents, utility bills, housing costs and more, Vaughn recounted. But likewise, too, she added, inflationary pressures are born by the district itself and by the employees being driven out of the system to find more pay elsewhere.
“We are losing teachers left and right,” said school board chair Nadia Combs. “We lost two administrators in the past two weeks to neighboring districts. If you ask them why they left, it was because of compensation, because they can go across the bay and make about $20,000 more.”
Board member Lynn Gray made the case as well for struggling educators. “How can any district survive when more than 50 percent of our teachers are on food stamps, some living out of their cars,” Gray said. “I travel the entire county. This is no lie.”
Notwithstanding, whether her facts stand up to greater review, “It is an expensive world,” as Gray put it. It’s time, she added, “to draw a line in the sand.”
“You can’t have [a] school with [substitute] teachers, or having a teacher that is there for some of the months and then have another sub or long-term sub [fill in],” Gray said. “That is not quality education.”
School board member Patti Rendon said she wants to take a deeper look at options to save money as a district, to ensure the district is putting “its best foot forward” in making hard decisions. Advancing a tax referendum, “is a bigger picture than just throwing it out there,” Rendon said, “because many members of our community have already said we don’t want more taxes.”
Linda Chion Kenney Photo
Hillsborough County School District Interim Superintendent Van Ayres
School board member Karen Perez asked for a “salary study, so we can compare and contrast what’s happening around us with different districts.” School board member Henry “Shake” Washington said he hopes that when the board takes a vote on the referendum, that it stands together as one voice.
Ayres said he wants to be clear.
“This mil is not about us, it’s not about our budget and trying to create a budget that helps us,” Ayres said. “This is about [what it takes] to be competitive and to attract teachers, top employees, into Hillsborough County, and leveling the playing field.”