St. Paul Public Schools parents and educators breathed a collective sigh of relief last week when voters passed a referendum to raise roughly $37 million more in property taxes each year to support the district.
The levy was introduced in an effort to prevent potential cuts to arts and music, college readiness and language support programs. St. Paul’s median homeowner, with a home valued at $289,200, will pay an extra $309 per year, subject to increase in line with inflation.
“Everything was on the table,” said Quentin Wathum-Ocama, a kindergarten teacher at Maxfield Elementary and the chair of an independent campaign that supported the referendum.
While many educators were cautiously optimistic about the referendum’s passage, they were surprised it garnered nearly two-thirds of voters’ support.
“It was a big ask,” Wathum-Ocama said.
For Wathum-Ocama, passing the referendum showed that even in times of financial difficulty, St. Paul residents see the district as a valuable community asset. “We knew this was going to be very important for us at St. Paul Public Schools,” he said.
St. Paul Public Schools expected to face a $37 million deficit next year that officials said would force the district to cut and consolidate some of its programs. But with the referendum’s additional $1,073 in revenue per student, the district expects to continue in its current capacity.
“I feel like the fact that it passed means that there’s some trust there that people say, ‘Hey, we want you to be funded to do your job,’” said Ross Mau, a science and engineering teacher at Washington Technology Magnet High School on the city’s north side.
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Mau, who also has two children enrolled in the district, said the residents he talked to, including many who do not have children, saw value in the referendum. “It’s one of the most important duties we have as a society, [to] do a good job educating our kids,” he said.
While his day-to-day work as a science teacher was less likely to be cut if the referendum had not passed, he said, support roles for more vulnerable students would likely have been in danger. From a budgetary perspective, paraprofessional roles serving students in need of extra support, like special education or English language instruction, are often seen as less essential.
Addressing inequities
Had the district faced cuts, Wathum-Ocama said, schools in communities made up primarily of people of color and immigrant families would have had a much harder time filling the deficit than primarily white communities. He worried, too, that they would have had less influence over which programs stayed and which ones were cut.
“Who’s got the social and the political capital to be the loudest?” he said.
Around 77% of St. Paul Public Schools’ roughly 33,500 students identify as students of color, making Minnesota’s second-largest district also one of its most diverse. Its students – about 28% of whom are English language learners – also speak more than 115 languages, according to the district.
“There are always communities that are either feeling left out or that our data shows are being left out of academic success,” said Cherise Ayers, principal of Central High School, home to the district’s largest enrollment.
Ayers, who has worked in education for 23 years, said passing this referendum gives the district greater opportunity to right the systemic wrongs in education. “We’re aware of all the disproportionalities, but we’re not OK with it,” she said.
Kristi Herman Hill, an English Language Learner teacher at Washington Tech, said that if the referendum had failed, the threatened cuts to programs like reading support classes, art and music would have hit immigrant students hardest.
“If you’re in a new country where you’re not able to express yourself very well in the new language, being able to be in a class like music or art … where you can express yourself and have an outlet in other ways – it’s really important for them,” she said.
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Funding concerns are not entirely mitigated and the levy is not sustainable over the long term, she added. The district needs more funding from the state and federal government.
“It’s still hard, and I think we’re still underfunded from the state and then from what’s going on with the federal government,” Herman Hill said. “It’s still a scary time for sure, but I feel like this referendum gives us a little bit more security that we’re going to be able to operate as we had been.”
She added: “Things just really need to change in our system overall to make education a priority.”
A referendum on public education
For many educators, the referendum also sends a message that St. Paul is prioritizing education at a time when schools are facing pressure and funding cuts across the country.
“I think there’s this overall sense that with the cuts and near-dismantling of the Department of Education, that [public education] is under attack,” Mau said. “And in some ways, I think this vote is a referendum on that – like, ‘No, we support public education.’”
He added that residents’ support at a time of economic uncertainty was particularly meaningful.
For Ayers, too, this referendum was about more than just voicing support for public education.
“It’s nice to know that in St. Paul, we’re saying – our voters are saying – that we care about children,” Ayers said. “And we don’t just say that we care, but we show that we care with our dollars.”
Wren Warne-Jacobsen is a University of Minnesota journalism student on assignment for MinnPost this semester.
The post St. Paul voters delivered on school district’s ‘big ask’ appeared first on MinnPost.
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