If Roger Damrow’s theory is correct, about the only way to pass a school tax increase these days is to run hard-on the basketball court.
Damrow, superintendent of tiny Alden-Hebron Unit District 19 in McHenry County, said voters approved two school tax increases Tuesday partly because of strong community pride traceable to 1952, when tiny Hebron High School won the state basketball championship.
While that may be an overstatement, some school administrators probably feel like they have to kick 60-yard field goals to get their ballot measures passed. That’s how frustrated they are with the results of Tuesday’s election, in which only two of nine northwest suburban districts saw voters approve tax increases in referendums.
Noting the failures, administrators and newly elected board members in districts planning on referendums next spring are already planning voter surveys and strategizing about what it will take to pass their proposals. It won’t get any easier.
“This is a difficult time to try to pass referendums,” said Joseph Hentges, superintendent of Woodstock Unit District 200, where three ballot measures failed. “Property taxes are too high, and this is one of the few times citizens can get an opportunity to vote and say no to tax increases.”
The defeats were especially tough to take because administrators said they felt they had done a good job of communicating some compelling issues to voters: With state funds declining and school-age populations growing, the suburban school systems need local property-tax money to fund bonds for new classrooms and cover widening budget gaps.
In several cases, school districts were coming back at voters for the second or third time in a few years with similar ballot measures.
In Mt. Prospect District 57, voters rejected the second referendum proposal in seven months asking to sell $13.5 million in bonds to replace crowded, aging elementary schools with two new buildings.
That was even after the district took a lesson from the first defeat and pursued a more aggressive marketing campaign complete with models and sketch displays of the new schools.
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But anti-tax sentiment proved too strong.
“We tried to explain the three problems of growing enrollment, declining facilities and a changing educational curriculum for the future,” said Supt. Thomas Many. “The district offered the community a chance to improve its educational facilities and lower operating costs, which I felt was a positive approach to solving problems.”
This was Woodstock 200’s third try since 1990 at bond money to build a new elementary school in its rapidly growing northeastern section, and for renovations of the high school. Hentges said the district is gaining at least 200 new students a year and is already using 13 mobile classrooms. “We thought we had the support of parents,” he said. But the proposal was rejected.
In Crystal Lake District 47, school board member Howard Knight said bond and tax measures failed because the financial crisis there hadn’t peaked.
“In 1985, it wasn’t until we had to make cuts that the people agreed to the tax increase,” said Knight, who was re-elected this week. “If we go to split shifts next year, the people will stop and see we can’t keep doing this, and we’ll come up with a solution.”
Indeed, skepticism among voters seemed rampant. Robert Anderson, a former McHenry High School District 156 board member who is president of a McHenry County anti-tax group, said school tax-increase proposals in the county were rejected because property taxes are too high and school systems are mismanaging their funds. He believes widespread reforms, including a voucher system, are needed.
“In a good share of districts, the financial situation is brought on by too many administrators and too high a pay scale for administrators and teachers,” he said. “I don’t think the districts can afford it.”
Educators looking to buck the anti-tax trend may look for campaign suggestions from the few districts that passed their measures. Like those in several other school systems, Alden-Hebron officials said funding cuts, including the tax cap, had delivered body blows to the budget that threatened its future.
“We really had our backs against the wall,” said Supt. Damrow. “We fully intended to have no extracurricular activities next year and pretty severe curriculum cuts the second year.”
Damrow said that education and operations tax funds proposals passed because the school system was able to whip up citizen support. Students got involved, including mounting a letter-writing campaign.
And there was that extra sentiment that comes from being a small district that claims a little basketball history. “There was a pride that goes back to ’52,” he said.
Many administrators whose ballots lost aren’t sure what comes next. Without voter help, they say, classrooms will grow more overcrowded, and many districts say they will continue to make budget cuts that will limit and in some cases eliminate school programs.
Administrators say they will continue to lobby the state for more funding, arguing that too much funding responsibility has been placed at the feet of local school districts, while at the same time collar-county tax caps have limited the ability of many districts to tap those local funds.
“We’ve made the lobbying effort with local legislators,” said Norbert Wolter, assistant superintendent of McHenry 156, where an education tax fund increase was defeated. “Whether they feel they can or want to do anything is the question.”
The more likely scenario, though, is that educators will simply try again to win support for their proposals.