The school districts and most mayoral candidates oppose Sly’s pre-K sales tax, but the mayor won’t back down
In a week, Kansas City voters will decide if the city should impose a 3/8-cent sales tax to help fund high-quality education for Kansas City children the year before they enter kindergarten.
Mayor Sly James is behind this pre-K tax proposal, and he’s been out stumping hard for it.
Only problem is: the mayor’s having a tough time getting anybody to publicly support his plan.
The tax has drawn support from just one of the 11 current mayoral candidates — and, notably, that one person is Councilwoman Jolie Justus, who James recently endorsed.
None of the 15 school districts that lie with Kansas City limits are on board, either. Ditto the Urban League. Its main supporters, besides the mayor, are charter school advocates and large local business interests.
Few disagree that more pre-K would be good for KC. Only 34 percent of the city’s four-year-olds are enrolled in what the city defines as quality pre-K programs, which studies have shown increase chances of high school graduation and career success in students. High-quality early education is expensive, and the pre-K program would cover up to $12,000 tuition for families on a sliding scale based on household income. The $30 million per year generated by the sales tax would also be used to make improvements to programs, classrooms, and teacher quality, as well as increase the availability of seats for high-quality pre-K.
A sticking point in the debate is the plan’s inclusion of private schools. As James envisions the program, both public and private pre-K providers would be able to access the pot of money generated by the sales tax. Eligible schools would be determined by a 23-member board of school district and school board members, businesspeople, parents, and other various local stakeholders selected to oversee the program and hand down recommendations to a nonprofit organization that would be contracted as the administrator of the program. The current proposal calls for the Mid-America Regional Council to be that nonprofit.
The school districts don’t like this governing structure because it would cut out certain local school district representatives and allow for public money to be spent at private and parochial schools. They also point out that this sales tax is regressive — it will take a larger percentage of income from the lower class than it does from everybody else.
Last Thursday, James hosted the third out of four town hall meetings focused on the initiative. He quickly dispensed with the pleasantries.
“The school districts are more interested in getting the money for themselves and in controlling the money,” James told the crowd. “They also told us they would not share the money with anything that was a private entity. If they aren’t going to share the money with a private entity, then we’re not going to get to all of the kids, because most of the kids are not in school-based programs — they are in private programs.”
But it’s not quite that simple, as Dr. Dan Clemons, the superintendent of the North Kansas City School District, told KCUR’s Central Standard back in January.
“This isn’t us trying to capture all the four-year-olds and put them in our program,” Clemons said. “We are willing to work with the private providers because those students are ultimately going to be in our school district, and we want them to be as prepared as possible.”
Clemons’ concern with the mayor’s plan is the unconstitutionality of using public funds to support private and parochial institutions. The Missouri Constitution restricts public funding for any “institution of learning controlled by any religious creed, church or sectarian denomination.”
But James argued on Thursday that the fact that an early childhood education institution is located inside of a faith-based building does not mean the program inside of the building is faith-based. He explained that only programs that 1. operate independently, 2. teach a high-quality, secular curriculum, and 3. are licensed by the state of Missouri will receive funds generated from the sales tax.
Leaders from area school districts and civic engagement groups expressed concern in the sales tax method of funding the program at a press conference held by the Pre-K Community Coalition on February 25.
“The funding mechanism is fundamentally flawed,” said Gwen Grant. “The sales tax is regressive. If passed it will have disproportionate and negative impacts on families living below the poverty line.”
Gwen Grant, president and CEO of the Urban League, said last month that a property tax, rather than a sales tax, is the way to go.
“The funding mechanism is fundamentally flawed,” Grant said. “If passed, it will have disproportionate and negative impacts on families living below the poverty line.”
But, James countered on Thursday, a property tax can only be dedicated to a cause (such as pre-K) if it’s approved by the Missouri Legislature. That would require the schools to agree on a plan, and James says they haven’t been able to make that happen.
“About six years ago, KCPS put together a group looking at this, and that [a property tax levy] is exactly what they tried to do,” James said. “It failed, and failed twice. And after that, it warped into a different approach — this [the sales tax] is the approach that it warped into. There is no other tax available to us on the city level to do it.”
But Grant said the school districts, as well as community groups like hers, still share a desire to pursue a targeted property tax levy for advancing early education. She said that, while they understand a levy might be difficult to achieve, it is imperative they have the opportunity to pursue it.
KCPS Superintendent Mark Bedell told the The Star in December that supporting the sales tax could hurt the Kansas City School District’s chances of getting support for a property tax levy down the road, and that the district would like to focus on its legislative agenda pushing for increased state funding.
If voters approve the sales tax, a five-member tax board would be tasked with recommending the annual spending plan for funds from the pre-K program. The schools take issue with the fact that the city’s 15 districts would only have one representative on the board, whereas three members would be appointed by the mayor, and one by the four counties that lie in Kansas City. In other words, mayoral appointees would have more say than schools in deciding how the money is spent.
James downplayed the influence of the tax board.
“They are really kind of an inactive group,” he said. “They meet maybe once or twice a year, whereas the governing board [the selected 23-member board] will meet at least monthly.”
The vote is next Tuesday, April 2. A recent poll conducted for The Star estimates that 71 percent of voters oppose it.
♦
