Ga. District Might Hike Taxes to Pay for Officers After Shooting
The Georgia school district where four people were killed in a September shooting at Apalachee High School is considering a property tax increase to pay for school-based police officers.
Barrow County Superintendent Dallas LeDuff said June 3 that the tax increase would be necessary because county government has informed the school district it will no longer pay for sheriff’s deputies.
The school district and Barrow County Commission have split the price of school resource officers since 2017. That number was originally 12 and rose to 24 after the shooting.
County commissioners sent a letter to LeDuff last month saying county government will for now pay for only 12 salaries, and eventually stop paying any of the costs.
“What they would like to see happen is that we as a school system be responsible for funding 100% of all direct and indirect costs for all 24 officers that we are staffing now, along with future officers we might add,” LeDuff said.
The superintendent said the district will cover whatever the officers cost, calling it “nonnegotiable.” The district has been under intense local pressure since the shooting to improve security, agreeing to install weapons detectors at its high schools and middle schools this year after months of community outcry.
Officials have said they believe a quick response by officers at Apalachee prevented more victims. The Sept. 4 shooting killed teachers Richard “Ricky” Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14. Another teacher and eight more students were wounded, seven of them hit by gunfire. A student who was then a 14-year-old freshman has been indicted as an adult for murder and other crimes.
Barrow County commissioners wrote in their letter that voters had approved a plan to exempt some senior citizens from paying school property taxes and that the county therefore believes it is inappropriate to use property taxes collected for county government to subsidize school expenses.
Paying the expenses for the school-based officers next year would cost the school district more than $1 million.
North Carolina Joins a Growing List of States Where Vouchers Now Go to Wealthier Students
It’s becoming a pattern. In states with broad voucher eligibility, the majority of those vouchers aren’t going to the students for whom programs were originally intended. North Carolina now joins those ranks.
Most of the state’s students who received new private school vouchers this school year were already attending private schools, according to a report unveiled last week. It says only 6,710 of the 80,325 new Opportunity Scholarship students attended public schools the previous school year.
Just shy of 5,955 scholarships awarded in the fall semester accounted for $34.4 million in taxpayer-funded vouchers. If those students hadn’t left for private schools, the state would have awarded $44.5 million to public schools.
The state education department said its figure of former public school students is a rough estimate.
North Carolina has been giving the scholarships to help families cover private school costs since 2014. Back then, Republican lawmakers promoted the program as a way to help low-income families pay for private schools to escape low-performing public schools.
But over the past decade, the income-eligibility rules were relaxed, and this school year marked the first time there were no income limits.
The new eligibility rules fueled a record expansion. The number of students currently receiving a voucher is more than double the total of 32,549 recipients last school year.
A family of four making $259,750 or more a year would not have been eligible for a voucher before.
The new report is also in line with results from other states showing that private school voucher expansion largely benefits existing private school families instead of families leaving public schools.
Private schools across the state have encouraged their families to apply for vouchers.
Democratic lawmakers called voucher expansion “welfare for the wealthy.” But Republican lawmakers argued that the wealthiest families have the right to decide how their taxpayer dollars are used to educate their children.
New York State Bucks Trump Administration Over Native American Mascots, Logos
Despite a threat of investigations and the loss of funds, New York state isn’t backing down over its spat with the Trump administration over Native American mascots in schools.
The state won’t rescind its ban on such mascots and team names. Instead, New York officials suggested in a letter to the U.S. Department of Education on Thursday that they could broaden the state ban to include names and mascots derived from other racial or ethnic groups that the department deems offensive.
The federal agency last week determined New York violated Title VI of the federal civil rights law by issuing a statewide ban on the use of Native American mascots and logos. Its office of civil rights found the state ban is discriminatory because names and mascots that are still permitted are also derived from other racial or ethnic groups, such as the “Dutchmen” and the “Huguenots.”
Daniel Morton-Bentley, legal counsel for the state education department, said in a letter to the federal agency that its current stance in support of keeping Native American team names and mascots runs counter to the agency’s previous stance on the issue — not to mention those of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, tribal leaders, state governments, and professional organizations that have long deemed them harmful and offensive.
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon last week visited Massapequa, a Long Island town that refuses to get rid of its Native American chief mascot, and was among the local districts that unsuccessfully challenged the state in federal court.
McMahon said she would give New York 10 days to sign an agreement rescinding the ban and apologizing to Native Americans for having discriminated against them and attempting to “erase” their history.
New York school districts have until June 30 to commit to replacing offensive Native American mascots or team names, or risk losing state funding. They can be exempt from the mandate, however, if they reach an agreement with a local Native American tribe. As of June 5, three districts have sought and received extensions as they work to comply with the mandate. Massapequa was not among them.
