The USD 500 Kansas City (Kansas) school district wants to increase property taxes by about 20% to avoid making what it described to the Kansas City Star as “notable cuts.” District officials carefully avoided putting a percentage on the tax increase, but the math tells the story. Board members voted 4-3 to propose raising the total local mill rate from 52.778 to 62, which is a 17.5% increase on top of an assessed valuation increase.
Avoiding “notable cuts” seems like code for threatening to cut teachers rather than reducing its bloated administrative staff and other non-teaching positions.
District data reported to the Kansas Department of Education show a 5% increase in enrollment since 2005, but a 104% increase in managers and a 64% increase in other staff who are not teachers.
The board may have thought that nearly doubling the non-teaching staff would improve student outcomes. Regardless of the rationale, outcomes have remained exceptionally low.
USD 500 could save about $20 million by eliminating 136 extra managers, assuming an average cost of $150,000 per manager for pay, benefits, and other costs. That still allows for 5% more managers than it had in 2005 and negates the need for a property tax increase.
Only 22% of students can read proficiently, while 53% struggle to read…and that’s after the State Board of Education reduced proficiency standards to make outcomes look better.
District administration is also deliberately misleading voters about the amount of property tax that benefits USD 500, telling the Star that, of the nearly $80 million in property tax revenues that KCKPS residents will contribute to the school system this year, about $58 million of that will go directly to the school district, and the remainder goes to the state.
That $22 million difference is the 20 mills of property tax that go to the state and are returned to the district as state aid.
USD 500 should devote resources to improving outcomes, not DEI and other political agendas
Unnecessarily raising property taxes will do nothing to improve proficiency levels, largely because the district’s focus is on political agendas.
USD 500’s District Strategic Framework makes that abundantly clear, having been developed by Greenway Strategy Group, which specializes in “social impact strategy development.” It’s loaded with references to diversity, but nary a phrase about ensuring students can read and do math at grade level. Students cannot develop “problem-solving” skills or “critical thinking” if they can’t read.
State law requires school boards to “conduct” annual needs assessments in each school to identify proficiency barriers and the actions needed to overcome them. Unfortunately, most districts, including USD 500, don’t follow that law.
The district also doesn’t follow Title IX discrimination laws, having been found in violation by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Education.
USD 500 doesn’t need a property tax increase. It needs to shift its focus to ensuring students can read and do math at grade level.
