St. Helena schools again ask for tax

• By DAVID J. MITCHELL
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: Nov 2, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:00 a.m.

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

St. Helena Parish voters will be asked Tuesday for the third time in a just over a year to approve a public school property tax proposal.

School officials are asking voters to approve two property taxes: a 15-mill, $8 million bond issue for 25 years to renovate existing schools, and a 10-year, 20-mill property tax to generate $840,000 annually for employee salaries. Voters must approve both for either to pass, according to the proposition.

The combined 35 mills in property taxes would cost an additional $262.50 a year on a $150,000 house with homestead exemption.

In early September, the School Board scaled back previous plans to build a consolidated school complex for pre-K to 12th grade, which was in the two other tax plans that both failed by a few hundred votes.

Those bond issues — which went down to defeat Oct. 20, 2007, and July 19 — ranged between $18.9 million and $20.4 million and called for higher millage rates than what is being proposed Tuesday, school officials have said.

The new $8 million bond issue would help upgrade aging school buildings, including possibly central air-conditioning and heat, school officials said. The 20-mill property tax would give employees an estimated average pay increase of about $4,000 per year, officials said.

Gloristine Tanner, who was replaced Oct. 28 as interim superintendent, said the school system has a hard time keeping teachers.

“We cannot have any stability or consistency. If we can get the salaries, then maybe we can do something different,” said Tanner, who has returned to her post as a curriculum supervisor.

St. Helena Parish has one of the lowest starting teacher salaries in the state for all education categories, ranging from $29,493 to $31,085 in the 2007-2008 school year. That year, Louisiana’s average starting salary for a teacher with a bachelor’s degree was $36,683, state reports show.

The new tax proposals and the previous two have come up as the school system struggles with poor performance under the state’s accountability program, which ranked the district last in the state in 2006-2007.

When the July 19 tax was on the ballot, school officials waited for word from the state on whether the entire school system would be taken over. Since then, St. Helena Central High School saw strong improvement under state accountability, pulling the school out of academically unacceptable status and preventing district takeover.

But St. Helena Central Middle School is eligible for state takeover this year. State education officials expect a decision Dec. 4.

School officials acknowledged such news affected the outcome of the past two tax proposals, but said they are hopeful this time could be different.