Historical opinion published in April 1976 about that month’s school-tax election.
O.K., this is it! The time to stand up and literally be, counted! We talk about what we are doing in and for our neighborhood and how others have followed our many examples. That’s well and good, but we have a chance, on Tuesday April 27th, to do something for our whole City and for ourselves as well. We have a chance to cast a terrific majority vote for the passage of the school tax increase!
It won’t really cost much—surely most of us just “blow” the 15¢ a day it would cost a homeowner whose house had a market value of $20,000. If you haven’t heard, that’s the going price of a great many houses in the Skinker-De Baliviere area, $20,000 and up. Do you give your kids money to get a pack of gum, some candy, potato chips or a coke? How much? Make them eat an apple or an orange, cut your dental bills, and you’ve found that extra 15¢ a day. Buy a six-pack of beer once a week? Figuring $1.19 a six-pack x 52 weeks = $61.88, that’s more than the school tax increase will cost you (15¢ x 365 days = $54.75 a year). If one person in your home smokes one pack of cigarettes a day, the total spent in a year is about 3 times what the school tax increase will cost your family.
We may not get a chance to save our public schools again. Look at this thing realistically. The quality of the public school system has a great deal to do with whether or not property values keep rising, whether companies recommend an area to employees as a good place to live, and whether or not private and parochial schools have a vital neighborhood in which to exist.
What is good about the public schools? What have they got going for them right now, besides the fact that they’re free? Well, first of all St. Louis has a brand new Superintendent, Dr. Robert Wentz, who has come from other school districts with some new ideas, a fresh way to look at things, and an open mind to see our system as it really is. Most important, he has the strange (to St. Louis in the 10 years I’ve lived here) idea that the citizens should know what’s going on in the school system, and just what their tax dollars buy and what they should buy for the really high quality education we want for all the City’s children. Wentz is not only willing to talk to everyone he can, at any time, he is also willing to listen to everyone he can, at any time. What else is good? Some new, very committed people have joined the Board of Education. And we’ve got some fantastic teachers who are working under hardship conditions at school and on payday. Then there is the real commitment of Civic Progress, whose Auditing Subcommittee verified that there really is no more money to be “pulled out of the hat” as we’ve seen happen so often in the past. The Management Assistance Program of Civic Progress is lending executives of major St. Louis companies to streamline the administration and business functions of the school system. And there is also the Citizens’ Task Force Committee which will soon start to work studying problems of the school system and looking for solutions, getting as much input from just plain people as they possibly can. Even the State Legislature has a special committee to look into the financing problems of the St. Louis Public Schools. Do you really think that such a concerted effort will ever be put forth again, in your lifetime, to get the entire community involved in raising the quality of the public school system?
Forget the possibility of federal aid. IF it comes, lovely. All these committees will be ready with hundreds of ways to use it. But don’t bet on any chance of the U.S. Government putting a cent into a city which won’t lift a finger to help itself!
It doesn’t matter where your children go to school (that’s your business, but the more options you have open to you, the better chance you have of getting for your kids the type of education you really want for them). It does matter where your home is located. Our homes are in our city, and we need good public schools for our city’s children and for all those middle-class families we keep trying to lure into the joys of city living. So call your friends and neighbors. Babysit for a voter. Escort an older voter to the polls–they can vote for the tax increase, then deduct school taxes from their property taxes under the Circuit Breaker Law. Reserve a place to park your kids at Grace Methodist’s STAY AND PLAY from 10:00 to 2:30 on election day, and hustle votes for the school tax.
We only need a simple majority to pass the tax increase because our rate is now so low (105 of Missouri’s 115 counties pay more in school taxes than St. Louis City does). Face it, if the school system fails–and it’s already lost its Triple A rating–we stand a good chance of losing everything that we’ve worked for so long and hard in our neighborhood.
VOTE FOR THE SCHOOL TAX INCREASE ON APRIL 27th!! A VOTE FOR THE SCHOOLS IS A VOTE FOR US ALL!
Originally published in The Paper, April 1976.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1976_04.pdf, printed page(s) 2; PDF page(s) 2.
