An editorial by G. Moritz
Nobody wants to pay more taxes. That’s the conventional wisdom anyway. But taxes pay for services. They pay for educating your children.
In this case, the tax opt out will pay to keep things as they are at the school.
Are things perfect at the school? Well, no. They never have been, and they never will be. All human institutions, by their very nature, have flaws. Everyone needs to work constantly to address those flaws. That’s what school boards and school board elections are for.
As a parent who’s had two students in the Garretson School District, let me tell you this. I don’t want things to get worse and that’s exactly what’s going to happen if the opt out doesn’t pass. Staff will be cut. Staff that your student will wish they had once they’re gone. We will lose teachers and valuable educators. We should not want that, nor should we let it happen.
Let me be clear. If an opt out comes up for a vote, and the majority vote no, it will directly result in the loss of someone’s job at the school.
I understand people are frustrated. I’m frustrated. But let's put the blame where it is due, on the state legislature. Since they enacted school consolidation policies, going all the way back to the 1950s and 60s, education in the State of South Dakota has not been adequately funded. My mother is an educator and I’ve covered education for decades in this state, so I know all too well this ugly but familiar story. Almost every year the legislature asks our school districts to either “make do” or “make do with less”.
On years like this one, where we have a huge budgetary windfall (and this one hit the record books), precious little is actually allocated toward our schools. Usually it takes the form of “one-time monies” that are a band-aid on the gunshot wound that is the school funding formula as it exists in this state.
This formula is bad, so bad that almost half the districts in the state have chosen to opt out so they can maintain their General Fund. In fact, that’s what the governor, the legislature and the Department of Education tell them to do. They’ve said, this is the way things are, and if you don’t like it, opt out. Way to opt out of responsibility guys.
Is it any wonder there is a teacher shortage in South Dakota? They get paid with as little as the state can get away with and are constantly asked to jump through more hoops, more unfunded mandates, and to make do with less.
The school boards are also hamstrung. People gripe that “the school’s got plenty of money, they don’t need to raise our taxes!” Ah… but if you believe that, then you’ve bought into the shell game the legislature has been playing since my grandma’s time or before. There is some money, sure… but the legislature and the bureaucracy in Pierre have dictated how that money gets raised and how that money gets spent.
The school board’s control over such things has been severely limited. They tie strings of red tape around the school’s power to control their own purse.
This was done, back in the day, to ward off corruption and nepotism and to ensure that allocated monies were actually spent on specific line items. In a way that was good, but now it’s affecting the agency of local school boards and districts to manage their own affairs. Again, we come back to the fact that local government, and frankly all government, is a flawed human system that needs constant improvement and maintenance.
Reasonable solutions exist, except that nobody at the legislature seems interested in fixing these problems. They’ve put it off again and again with the same petty excuses.
If you don’t want the Garretson School District to do a tax opt out, then you should damn well be calling your legislators on the phone and sending them letters and emails. This year, one where South Dakota state government is flush with cash, is the right year to make meaningful reforms to the education system so that schools like Garretson get adequate funding formulas. It works best while there's some cash on hand rather than in a year of scarcity!
This requires action from you the voter and you the Garretson School District constituent.
First, resolve yourself to supporting an opt out, if the School District decides to pass one. Garretson was almost dug out of the hole we were in when circumstances tipped over the wheelbarrow. Board President Shannon Nordstrom has said to me, multiple times, that he doesn’t want another opt out but that he doesn’t see a way forward without one. I feel that. I don’t want to pay more in taxes- who does- but I will do so for the benefit of my son and my GHS alum daughter, and for the friends and teachers they have at the Garretson School District.
And by all means, come to the special meeting about the opt out on Jan. 25th at 6:30, and any subsequent school board and other public meetings, and ask the board serious questions. That’s the right and good thing to do!
Second, hold your legislators’ feet to the fire. Write, email or call them! Now that the session has started you’ll see their columns in this newspaper, along with their contact information. Tell them what the situation is and tell them to actually do something about it instead of twiddling their thumbs every year and kicking the can down the road!
If people directed their anger where it belongs, at the legislature, rather than their local school boards and school administrations, we could actually get several decades worth of problems resolved.
If the people of South Dakota demanded solutions to these problems, loudly and forcefully enough, then we can make the system work better!
