My View: No more Mulligans

The Sarasota County School District has cut golf and tennis in middle school.

The first and most obvious question is … wait, we have golf and tennis in middle school? Seriously? In this era with years of cutbacks, we have golf and tennis in middle school?

Well, it has been cut, and I bet most didn’t know we had it.

See, when we hear about the threat of drastic cutbacks in the public schools — particularly when they want more tax money — this is not the end-of-education-as-we-know-it kind of cutback pictured. We envision cuts that result in big classes, overburdened teachers, no football or basketball, old computers, falling down buildings.

But it turns out to be golf and tennis in middle school. And some French and Italian classes at some high schools and other peripheral cutbacks.

Now, these are real cuts to programs, and real children are affected. So it is natural that some parents and coaches are upset with these cuts. It’s understandable if your 13-year-old was in golf or tennis, or planning to be, that this feels painful.

But a little perspective please. We live in difficult economic times, and our community is in the heart of the difficulties. That may not seem fair to your child who is 13 only once, but life is not fair. The sooner that lesson is learned, the better a person will be for handling the adversity that will naturally arrive in life.

Some parents feel betrayed over the extension of the one-mill school tax that passed this spring in a light turnout election. They were told the money would help keep enrichment programs for the schools, and naturally everyone thinks that the extracurricular activities their children are in are exactly the enrichment programs that need to be kept.

But that was the selling hook to voters, not the meat of the tax use. You can expect deeper program cuts in the future.

I tried to explain at the time in debates and columns that there is a critical reality in the tax extension that other local media essentially ignored: Almost the entirety of the tax increase goes for salaries and benefits. Passage of the tax was written into the school employee-union contracts, and their money was based on it.

Someone has to pay for those extravagant Christmas bonuses each year (the top bonus of nearly $15,000 that three employees got last year might alone pay for golf.) Then there are the costs for salary longevity step increases combined with annual salary increases and for benefit packages that include health insurance to which the employee contributes nothing. No one really wants to revisit that whole debate from the spring, but this is the reality.

Gold-plated ain’t cheap.

This is what you voted for. If there is another squeeze next year, there will be more cuts to enrichment programs, to extracurricular activities, to the extras in the Sarasota school system for which you thought you were maintaining funding.

What there won’t be are cuts to the salaries of teachers, principals, custodians, bus drivers,
administrators, secretaries and so on in the schools. They have contracts, they have the most powerful union in the county and the extra millage is tied to their contracts and benefits. Remember, school-district employees get Christmas bonuses and completely free health-insurance coverage — regardless of the economy.

But those who turned out voted for it.

I’m sorry you relied on the somewhat embarrassing cheerleading coverage of the daily newspaper and television station. You got sound bites from the union-funded PAC backing the extension for the benefit of its members. You got precious little from the other side.

If you are unhappy with what you see in the realm of school-spending decisions in coming years, by all means, hold the School Board members accountable. But also remember which local media sources told you the whole story.

The tax extension was not really for enrichment or for education, although some slivers will go for that. It was always primarily for government union employees working for the school district.

I hate to say I told you so, but I did.

Expect more.

And, don’t just swallow what the mainstream media give you. There are a lot more options for information nowadays.

Rod Thomson is executive editor of the Gulf Coast Business Review and can be reached at [email protected].