ASBSD and school board members across the state support and continue to advocate in favor of Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s proposed half cent sales tax increase, as noted in this release yesterday from the Associated School Boards group.
“Our school board members are committed to supporting the half cent sales tax increase that will help them recruit and retain our teachers,” ASBSD President Eric Stroeder said. “The bill not only helps public schools, but benefits our local tax payers, who have seen an increased funding burden placed on them.”
The recently introduced House Bill 1182 proposes the half cent increase to the state’s sales tax, which hasn’t been permanently raised since 1969. In addition, the bill will reduce property taxes across all classes of property by 12 percent with agricultural levy tax payers seeing a tax decrease of $7 million, owner-occupied tax payers saving $13.9 million and commercial tax payers recovering $19.1 million.
The half cent sales tax increase would commit more than $60 million in new funding for public schools to distribute to teachers and staff for the upcoming school year and would establish the new, ongoing revenue source our schools desperately need to quell the state’s teacher shortage.
Data from schools and the Blue Ribbon Task Force have illustrated how shallow the state’s teacher pool has become and with no practical alternative funding plan presented, the passage of House Bill 1182 is vital.
“There is no viable second option for improving teacher pay in our state or funding our public education system at the level needed,” ASBSD Executive Director Wade Pogany said.
“School board members and community leaders must let our legislators know that our public schools need this new, ongoing revenue source to recruit and retain our teachers and maintain South Dakota’s excellent public education system.”
This comes several weeks after an earlier notation of support for the Daugaard plan:
“Gov. Daugaard has listened to our pleas for help with the teacher shortage and, along with input from the education community through the work of the Blue Ribbon Task Force, developed a plan we believe will help us solve this growing problem,” ASBSD Executive Director Wade Pogany said.
and…
The education community stands on a united front in support of Gov. Daugaard’s proposal as ASBSD, School Administrators of South Dakota (SASD), South Dakota Education Association (SDEA), the Large School Group and the South Dakota United School Association all endorsed the plan.
Take specific note of the language that the ASBSD uses – “No Viable Second Option,” as it coincidentally comes at the same time that South Dakota Democrats release their plan, Senate Bill 151.
Considering the timing, I suspect they knew exactly what they were doing when they made that statement.
And this support is supposed to be a big surprise???
I know what an attorney employed by the state in a certain position earns per year. And I know what a certain school teacher in SF earns per year. And the school teacher actually earns more per year if her salary is configured for the same number of working days per year. And this does not include the teacher benefits. And the school teachers earn more than many four year degree state employees even with them working 9 months and the others working 50 weeks a year.
As for lowering property taxes by that given amount above. We all know how promises like that really turn out. Pass the tax increase and we will lower the other later; yeah, right.
I am not so sure that a teacher shouldn’t be making more than an attorney. We have put more pressure on teachers within the last 10-15 years than any other profession in my mind and told them to do it with out any extra benefits, time, or professional development. This profession should be held to the highest standards but you need to give them what they need to succeed. I know throwing money at the issue is not the only answer, but hopefully this will in the end provide more opportunities for professional development and time to do the outside work needed to keep detailed lesson plans, grading, and planning.
You completely missed my point. The average teacher salary is not bad compared to others in SD. If the beginning teacher salary is the problem, then maybe adjust the pay schedules so that the pay scale is more fair for beginning teachers than the overpaid administrators, athletic directors, etc. Put the focus of the money back on academics.
Adjusting or modifying the pay scale is the sole purview of each collective bargaining unit in each district (the local teacher’s “union”).
I don’t think that a statute can change that.
So, if beginning salaries are out of whack vis a vis experienced teachers, then the only folks to blame are the teachers, and the only folks to change that are the teachers’ union..
The Governor needed a plan
The Governor put together a panel/task force to develop the plan
The Blue Ribbon task force help public meetings, spoke with school boards and did their homework.
The Blue Ribbon task develop a plan based input from school board and public meetings
The Blue Ribbon task force gave their plan to the Governor,
The Governor gave the plan to the legislature.
Of course they are going to support it, it is their plan.
The Blue Ribbon task force had a preconceived outcome to all of these “public” meetings and made sure the results were steered to reflect that.
And this morning on KELO news a school superintendent was interviewed and said that he in all likelihood could not reach the target salary of $48,500 because that would mean he would have to fire some teachers. The one size fits all student to teacher ratio is just another thing wrong with this bill if passed; it’s a government mandate vs local control. Will it pit teachers against each other in order to get a higher salary?
First, I am a teacher in this state. I work at Aberdeen, the third largest school district in the state of SD. Should this actually happen, I will have a significant increase in salary. Please keep in mind I have NEVER complained about my salary and am not doing so now. When I chose this profession, I knew what kind of salary to expect. If this passes, I will not turn down any salary increase. If this does not pass, I will not be looking to greener pastures.
The problem we are dealing with is there is a teacher shortage in this state. The states around South Dakota have significantly higher salaries than those in our state. Teachers are seeing the possibilities and moving to other states. We have to decide if we want to offer a salary that will attract good teachers or if we want to continue to be like the Minnesota Twins and find talent only to lose it.
People have often complained about how low the average salary in the state is, but until nobody has offered any solutions. Perhaps you believe there is no problem and no need to address it. I believe most people in SD believe there is a problem and it needs to be addressed.
You can complain all you want about the quality of the teachers, but most of the people complaining have not tried it themselves. Personally, I show up most days almost an hour before I need to. I often spend as much as an hour after school if I need to help a student. I know some teachers who spend a significant more amount of time than I do. BTW, there is no extra pay for when we do the extra hours. It is just part of the job.
Thank you Dugger. You have stated what every school board has known for some time. I served on 44-1’s board for 12 years and pushing the base salary was always our focus point. I have asked the question for some time ; “Is South Dakota’s tax revenue enough to be competitive with our surrounding States?” Ag property taxes have become an actual expected income tax so that public revenue stream is out in my book leaving a consumption tax the only route to consider. A summer one cent tax is paid 50/50 resident/non-resident; yearlong is 70/30.
What would a year round hotel/motel tax of one cent generate? It would seem to me that would be paid mostly by non-residents and reciprocate the tax every time I go to Minneapolis or Omaha.
The statement that the sales tax hasn’t increased permanently since 1969 is a poor argument when you are talking about percentage increases. I make 100% of my income every year-no more, no less. An increase on the percentage of purchases I make is a decrease on the money I have to spend. Should we have been increasing the sales tax by percentages all along from 1969 on? When it hit 100% it can still go higher, but the 100% of my income each year is 100%.
I think they need to get rid of tenure and incentivize good teaching. Just because you stay at a job for a certain length of time should you be guaranteed that job even if you start doing a lousy job? (I’m sure there are those that will take this wrong but so be it).
How about consolidation? I know that communities like to hold on to their schools but a lot of times that is inefficient and every town isn’t going to be able to have everything available.
How does the salary of teachers and cost of living in South Dakota compare with other states? You might make $85k in downtown New York City (who would want to live there anyway?), but it wouldn’t go as far as $40k here. I know that only a haybilly would want to live in South Dakota instead of New York City, according to Porter Lansing, but his opinion matters about as much to me as a year’s worth of belly lint.
Just a few opinions.
The people getting tax money remind the people they still want our tax money.
ASBSD does what Tony tells them to do. Nothing more, nothing less.
Raising sales taxes is just a small part of what can be done.
Text books are expensive, just ask any college student. Having text books sit on the self, for ‘just in case’ is wasting money. Most students today are issued a laptop or tablet. Electronic text books are just as easy to use, they can include videos and they can be updated without replacing the entire series. Set up central server to manage electron versions of common text books.
We can also set up a distance learning network. The DDN is okay, but not enough. Some courses lend themselves well to distance learning and some do not It also mean that more than one school district can go in together to hire one teacher
Combine services with other state, county and local entities like printing services or building and grounds.
We could reopen the prison farms. It would give the prisoners marketable job skills, at the same time they could be growing food that could be used in school lunches. Or open the shops to repair school equipment.
Homeschoolers have turned out some amazing students, Maybe we should look what they are doing and not doing and find ways to integrate those techniques into the public schools.
We can’t just raise taxes and throw money at the problem and call it done. We have to do more.
Excellent ideas, especially the first one regarding textbooks. But to do this would be to go up against the textbook lobby, which I expect is quite powerful especially given that certain people are making a lot of money both developing and promoting Common Core and the associated textbooks.
I like the idea of using prisoners to learn skills through growing food, repairing equipment, including IT skills repairing computers.
It’s time to think outside the box and make better use of technology.