Editorial: Revise Metro School Budget to Share Sacrifice

SEIU Local 205 president Doug Collier wrote this editorial on the MNPS budget, which appeared in Sunday's Tennessean:

The Metro School Board is set to vote on a budget proposed by schools director Jesse Register on Tuesday. Among other things, Register proposes to privatize custodial positions across the district. This was tried back in the early 90’s in Metro and the experiment was an unmitigated disaster. Schools were dirty, turnover was high, and countless thousands of dollars of Metro and private property was stolen out of our schools. This was bound to happen because privatization encourages companies with a profit motive to hire minimum wage workers with no stake in the school system. In the end, Metro ended their experiment in privatization and went back to using city employees who they could hold accountable.

Register’s budget would have a devastating impact on the low-paid, mostly minority workers who rely on these jobs to keep them and their families out of poverty. It is crucial that the School Board ask Register to come back with a revised needs-based budget that uses some common sense solutions. For example, every department in this proposed budget (excluding custodians and groundskeepers) has over $17 million in contracted services. Can any of these services be done using MNPS staff who are already on the payroll?

There are other ways to achieve the results that taxpayers want when it comes to our schools. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that Metro schools are top-heavy. MNPS has more administrators per student than Shelby County’s system. The Board should ask for a revised budget which reforms the organizational structure of MNPS, with an emphasis on teachers and the employees who directly support their work in the classroom, not on paper-pushers. At the very least, the Board should consider enforcing their hiring freeze and asking both teachers and administrators to forgo any raises, incentives, and bonuses while nobody else in Metro is getting a raise this year. It is fair to ask everyone to tighten their belts – not just the city’s lowest-paid workers.

All of our elected officials are going to have to wrestle with a larger problem when it comes to raising money to support the needs our city has, but there is a way out if they have the courage to do the right thing. Just a few years ago, Davidson County voters passed a referendum that laid out a new structure for property tax increases. That structure allows the Mayor to call for a slight increase before having to put the issue before voters. The city has not even come close to reaching that threshold and could raise approximately $100 million without having a referendum vote. Something else that all of our local elected officials could do next year that would really help MNPS to get serious about getting the BEP formula adjusted at the state legislature. Davidson County taxpayers pay more and get less compared to the rural counties who don’t face the transportation and other urban challenges that Metro has.

There are solutions to our short and long-term problems in our schools and it is time for the School Board to show some leadership and ask Dr. Register to come back with a revised budget that meets the needs (not the wants) that our schools have and one which stays within the property tax structure laid out by the voters. Those needs should include shared sacrifice which does not single out minorities and which protects the safety of our schools.