I Know, I Know, it's for the Teachers and Children

Over the next few weeks, Manatee County voters will decide whether or not to extend the temporary additional millage point on school property taxes that was passed in 2018 for an additional three years. The decision will be a familiar one, which is to say looking at a district that has not been a good steward of our community’s massive investment in public education and then deciding whether to negatively impact teachers and students in the classroom in an attempt to hold administrators accountable. What’s worse, that lose/lose decision seems to have been engineered to create the desired result.

In a March 2018 special election, voters very narrowly approved adding the additional tax, 51-49 percent. TBT criticized the district for the manipulative tactic of tying a good chunk of the revenue into employee compensation and then using a special election when turnout is always significantly lower to juice the result (with the help of an expensive PAC promoting its passage). The district is the largest employer in the county, so there is an obvious advantage in that employees, along with their friends and families, would have a disproportionate incentive to organize and turnout.

By tying the funding to compensation, we argued that there would be no way the district would position itself to allow the temporary tax increase to expire as advertised and, in three years, we’d be enduring another "do it for the teachers and kids“ campaign, most likely in another expensive special election that would again attempt to manipulate the outcome. Well, here we are. No, we cannot predict the future, the ruse was just that obvious, folks.

Board members and district officials answered those criticisms in recent months with a promise to not use special elections for such issues in the future and by saying it would look into ending the tying in of compensation to a temporary funding source. But those criticisms were present in 2018, and the district has done exactly nothing to change those dynamics, because, as the saying goes, those aren’t bugs, they’re features.

The district has made modest gains in educational outcomes while being the only district in the state to have both the extra millage point on property taxes and the optional half-cent sales tax in place, both of which produced far more revenue than originally estimated. It’s also endured a litany of scandals under its current and previous administration. From the ERP nightmare to the grad-rate inflation scandal, to its horrendous ESE record, and the shameful way it abused "emergency" powers to steal a much-beloved charter school from a low-income, minority community without due process, there are plenty of reasons for taxpayers to question the sanity in continuing to hand the district blank checks, hence the incentive to make it a referendum on supporting our teachers and students.

Taxpayers who’ve paid close attention to the district’s management have been justifiably outraged by the lack of accountability that administrators have faced from the board. Every election cycle, voters have gotten behind some reform candidate who has promised to do just that, angrily echoing the public calls for accountability, while promising to do something about it, only to bend the knee and enable those same administrators once elected.

Scott Hopes was appointed by the governor to fill a vacancy in 2017. Hopes boasted an impressive resume and claimed when he ran for the seat in 2018, that he was uniquely qualified to bring accountability to the administration. Instead, Hopes became Superintendent Cynthia Saunders’ chief cheerleader, standing by the superintendent through each scandal until he was rewarded by being hired as the Manatee County Administrator in 2021.

Dave Miner was elected as a self-proclaimed "watchdog“ in 2012, only to spend two terms as superintendent Diana Greene and then Cynthia Saunders’ biggest champion, failing to hold administrators accountable at every turn in the road. Voters had enough in 2020 and replaced Miner with Mary Foreman, another reform candidate. Whether Foreman will deliver on her promises remain to be seen.

Board members James Golden and Gina Messenger have rivaled Miner and Hopes in terms of standing by the superintendents through thick and thin, though, to be fair, Golden actually ran on the platform that he intended to support the superintendent above all else. For his part, board member Charlie Kennedy has at times shown a willingness to buck the administration, though he’s been unsuccessful at building any sort of consensus when that is the case.

So, what are taxpayers to do if the idea of achieving change at the ballot box has proven all but impossible? I suppose their only option would be to stop enabling the administration by cutting off the never-ending budgetary increases. But that money allows the district to properly compensate employees, fund STEM, art, and other enrichment programs, as well as plugging in the holes opened by fiscal mismanagement without having to stop giving big raises to superintendents and other administrators, and hiring woefully underqualified employees into lucrative executive positions because loyalty to the political machine is prized above all else.

But É what about the teachers and children? Most parents I’ve talked to, quite understandably, look at the issue and say, hey, I can’t do anything about what happens downtown but, it’s only a little bit more per taxpayer and if we don’t pass it, all of these things that help my kid aren’t gonna be there, and their teacher, who I really like, might get a pay cut and, who knows, maybe leave for another district? And that seems to be what the district has been counting on all along. How do we fix our broken school district? Apparently, we don’t.