A win for Jeff. Parish

Seventy-two percent of the voters in normally taxophobic Jefferson Parish voted to hike their property millages by $28 million on May 4, raising the pay of many teachers starting out in troubled schools from $46,000 to more than $52,000.

It was the largest property tax increase in recent memory in that suburban parish, with the strongest support coming from precincts which routinely vote down even the most conventional millage. The very same voters who 18 months ago killed a less well-crafted $27 million property tax hike, albeit narrowly. A conservative electorate who now will increase their household taxes by over $200 a year for teachers and public schools which mostly their children and grandchildren do not attend.

The 11.6 percent turnout on May 4, 2019, tended to skew to upper middle-class super-chronic voters. JazzFest (and a perfect spring day) discouraged most voters from the polls, which makes the end result even more extraordinary. Some could argue that the tax-hike approval came thanks to the renewed confidence in the reforms of Jeff Schools’ Superintendent Cade Brumley, yet most voters don’t understand the internal machinations of the school system.

A better explanation exists; the measure was well written. Rather than across-the-board pay hikes, it aimed to give larger salary increases to teachers who staff failing schools in poor neighborhoods and those who take jobs in the STEM classrooms. With the deficit of physics, chemistry, science and other mathematical educators, aiming the majority of the pay increases to lure educators into these science classrooms made more sense to the voters. To most, it seemed like a reasonable method to raise the Jefferson Parish Public school system from its pathetic position of 47th out of 71 Louisiana school districts. And Jefferson’s poorest, mostly African-American majority public schools will prove the greatest beneficiaries.

The success of the millage stands as a lesson to local politicians. This teacher millage stood as neither too specific nor too broad. It gave certain fiscal flexibility for the School Board to shift resources to where they were needed, and yet did not seem like a blank check to a skeptical public.

This article originally published in the May 13, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.