Show-Me Institute Podcast

New Schools, Old Problems: The KCPS Bond Proposal with Patrick Tuohey

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Patrick Tuohey, senior fellow at the Show-Me Institute, about the Kansas City 33 School District's recent proposal to issue $424 million in bonds for building improvements. Despite a significant decline in enrollment and a previous failed bond referendum, KCPS is asking taxpayers to fund this initiative through increased property taxes. They discuss whether new buildings can truly address the district's deeper issues, such as poor academic performance and declining enrollment, if the funds could be better spent elsewhere, and more.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

Duration:: 21m
Broadcast on:: 28 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

(upbeat music) - Thanks for coming back on the podcast, Patrick Tooey. I appreciate it. - It is always my pleasure, Susan. - Last time you were here, we talked about raising taxes on Kansas Cityans, or perhaps a couple of stadiums to help out a couple of very wealthy athletic team owners, should the public dip into their pockets a little bit more. Apparently, the answer was no, right? Kansas Cityans? - Well, no. - No, for now, do you know how these things go? We vote on it until the powers that be get the answer they want. And so I am confident that we will, I think we're gonna vote on something else again, but it's all in play. - And those are pretty popular teams, people like 'em. (laughs) - As opposed to what I want to talk to you about today, and I know education policy isn't always your jam, but now Kansas City, I fell out of my seat when I realized that Kansas City Public Schools, which is the Public School District, also called Kansas City 33, that has gone from almost 50,000 students to fewer than 15,000 students, partly because more than, or about half of the families in Kansas City Public Schools have left for charter schools. So the kids who are left in K-CPS, fewer than 15,000, claims it needs 1.25 billion with a B dollars to fix and build buildings that are sufficient for the kids to learn. And what, and so about half of that, 650 million, they would like to go ahead and borrow now, and a big chunk of that, 424 million is through bond referendums, and they're gonna have a referendum on whether or not they should get the issue of these bonds. And if they do, they have to raise property taxes. And in my opinion, the amount with the property taxes would have to go up is pretty significant for a $200,000 home, it would be a $200 increase. So like a 1% increase, that seems pretty big to me. I just wanted to know, basically your opinion, you live in Kansas City, what do you think the schools need 1.25 billion? And how do you think taxpayers are gonna react? - So, yeah, that's always the question. You can have a really bad idea, but if people are on your side, they'll vote for it, and Kansas Cityans, I'm sorry to say, have a real history of voting to tax themselves for really bad ideas. Now, as you started off by saying, education isn't really my jam. I started looking into this, you had a blog post the other day, which kind of detailed some of the numbers, which was helpful. You know, I just kind of looked at their budget. They, now you'll correct me if my simplistic way of figuring out cost per pupil is wrong, but they have a 28 and change million dollar budget. They've got, like you said, just over 14,000 students. I calculated that at spending over $20,000 each year per student, K through 12, that's a lot of money. - It's a lot of money. - That's an incredible amount of money. That is more than, you know, college tuition in Missouri. So, the first thing somebody might say is, well, how are you spending the money you already have? And that is a completely reasonable question, because Kansas City's student population, or I should say, the student population of the Kansas City Public School District, and by the way, for your listeners who aren't in the Kansas City area, there are a number of school districts in side of Kansas City. One of them just happens to be called the Kansas City Public School District, but all the other districts around them will be quick to point out that there are maybe a dozen or so other school districts within the city. But this particular one has seen-- - It's the original, the flagship, the downtown. This is K-C-P-S. - Yeah. - And they've seen a precipitous decline, and so they have a lot of property and old buildings that they are hanging on to. And there was an effort, gosh, six to eight years ago to divest themselves of some of these buildings. It was a long and seemingly needlessly difficult situation. There is a lot near my house. I walk by it every morning. It used to be Bingham Jr. High on Wharnell. It is now a big field, but before they tore it down, they were entertaining the idea of selling it, and they gave a tour. And I went on the tour, and there were plants and moss growing in almost every room, except for the greenhouse, which made you laugh. And they had rooms. First of all, it looked like from the hallway that one day the bell had wrong, and everybody just left and never came back. - That's so weird. - There was still artwork on the bulletin boards in the hallways. It just had this eerie feeling. Some of the rooms, there was one room that was absolutely filled with these C-3PO-looking vacuums or floor polishes. And what they would do is they would just turn these closed schools into warehouses and would let them sit. And they had to keep the plumbing and the electrical on just to keep it from degrading too much. And I asked the woman who was giving the tour, like, why don't you just sell this right away? And she said, well, we wanna make sure that the seller takes care of it and doesn't blight the neighborhood. Meanwhile, the Kansas City public schools, the closed buildings are blighting every neighborhood they're in. So that's a long way of saying that they made it very difficult to divest themselves. They ended up tearing down Bingham, but now it is just a giant lot. There is commerce all around them. There are housing developments all around that spot. I am sure somebody would love to put in mixed use development or housing or something. There are lots of other former buildings in the district that they either do not want to give to charter schools or do not want to sell. So this is a long way of saying, if the school district needs money, it ought to first go and look at all the property it has that it no longer needs and generate funds that way. But it's still a hard sell for me to say that if a school district is spending in excess of 20,000 per student per year, that they need any more. - Right. And you know, I've said for a long time that public school districts don't necessarily need to be in the real estate business too. Like, and you just pointed out lots of great reasons by that is if they issue bonds and build two new schools, they're gonna be like 30 year bonds, probably they're gonna be very long-term bonds. The KCPs has already done to 15,000 students. Lots of times you end up with school buildings in the wrong places, not a school building over here, but two extra ones over here. And you're committed to pay for those things for, or the public is committed to pay for those things for 30 years. And what we've seen is like, such a, of course we all in Kansas City to be a place where parents wanna raise their children. And I think charter schools have helped with that. But shiny new buildings are not gonna be what brings people back to KCPs, right? If they can leave, they leave. They either go across the river to Kansas or they choose a charter school. And the idea being that $1.25 billion, which is a staggering amount of money, will somehow build buildings that will then bring families to Kansas City is unfathomably expensive gamble. You know, they have a 20, 30 blueprint. And it is like building the buildings as part of it. That's like a quarter of it. And then a quarter of it is like supporting kids through extracurriculars and community activities. And a third of it is like customer satisfaction and things like that. And then there's little slice that's on learning. You know what I mean? And it's like, if you focus everything on the learning piece, people will come to your schools regardless of what they look like. But you can have beautiful, you know, Kansas City of course is well known for the court case in the 80s and 90s that mandated they spend money and they put swimming pools and buildings. And you know, they didn't even know how to spend the money. And yet people have left since then, right? With swimming pools, still they left. And so I just like if they, if I read an article that said they wanna spend six and a million dollars to, I don't know, hire the best teachers in the country and like do some crazy education plan. I might support it, but to build a building because they say that that gives children value and makes them feel important. This is kind of one of my beefs with what we've done in public education for 75 years, right? We just like the worst districts need the most money because somehow giving them money is gonna make that turn around. When, you know, some of the charter schools have fantastic facilities. University Academy, great. You and Coppinsville, great. I mean, they do have nice buildings and things, but that isn't what makes them great. - No. - Not quite people wanna go there. - And some of our listeners may identify with what I'm about to say. I grew up going to Catholic elementary schools. These were not well funded. We did not have great libraries. We did not have, I mean, computers. This is back in the '80s, but we had some computers. And I find this to be a universal observation of anybody who's gone to a Catholic elementary school. We were not allowed to play on the grass. We had to play on the blacktop. There was a plateau that had grass, but we, you know, they didn't wanna kids ruining it. So nobody sent their kids to that school or to private schools in Kansas City or probably elsewhere around the country because of their facilities. It was because they understood that there was discipline, there was, their kids were safe, there was an environment of learning and ultimately these schools produced students who were able to read and write and matriculate to the next level successfully. That is it. When you can't deliver that, and this is true of kind of cities largely, when you can't deliver on the basics, the next thing you wanna do is confuse your customers by delivering on other things. So look, we've got new whiteboards or we've got, you know, incredible lighting. We've got a computer lab. Well, can anyone in this school read? - An atrium, that's always a favorite. An atrium, right? - Exactly, look at our track is made of shredded rubber and all that type of stuff. Those are nice to have, but parents know instinctively that what they are looking for is a quality education. And I think Kansas City public schools' biggest problem is branding. They have been known for decades to be not great. They've got one or two schools, which are okay. Lincoln and the Paseo are great schools, have a great history, but not everybody can get into those. And so many people in the Kansas City have solved the education problem for themselves. Either by sending their kids to charter schools, sending their kids to private schools, or moving out of the Kansas City public school district, or out of the city entirely, maybe even out of the county, that the number of people who might otherwise fall for a, hey, school needs more money, let's support them argument, aren't they? - Yeah, they had a hard time passing bond referendum. They haven't passed one in 60 years. They had that court order. They had a huge influx, like everyone did, during COVID of federal funds, millions and millions and millions of dollars. You know, yeah, I just want to say for the record, I went to a public school that was 100 years old. And when I went to it, which was almost 100 years ago, and we had close calls to our room. So you theoretically would be hanging up your clothe and putting your lunch pail in and going in the back of the room. That's how old it was. We didn't have cafeteria or any of that. And it was public school. But I just feel like Kansas City has, as you've talked about many times, they've tried some fun entertainment districts that are talking about the need for these stadiums to be nicer and newer and in a better location. And then maybe nicer, newer, prettier schools. When you know the Kansas City's got a lot of problems that it could solve differently. They are barking up the wrong tree to solve the problem of how to attract people to the city. - Yeah, my fear is that for many people associated with the Kansas City public school district, is that it really isn't about educating kids anymore. It is a jobs program. To the degree that they can pass this, it becomes a jobs and construction program. - They've said that. - It becomes consulting fees. We still don't know how St. Louis School District blew through so much money so quickly. But there are so many different ways now of measuring the effectiveness or the success of a school district other than simply, can the kids read or write? - Yeah, and we should be clear on that. One in four in Kansas City, their pass rates on the Missouri assessments were 20% in English English arts and 20% give or take in math. I mean, one in four kids are on grade level. And that is not the whole way to judge a school system, but that should be one of them and it should be a big part of it. And if the kids aren't learning. - Right. - In chronic absenteeism. I mean, there's so many problems that when I think, there's so many problems happening in KCPs and losing kids to charter schools and all of that. And it's like, you think that building buildings or renovating buildings are going to build two new elementary schools or close one and build two. And to sell this to the public, they're saying no kid who attends a school that closes or who has to move from one school to the other will go to anything older in school they go to. They'll either go to a newer school or a new school. And so that's somehow going to sell the public on this. And going back, like, what do you think? I think that's a substantial increase in property taxes, $200 for a $200,000 house. I call that a lot. - No, it absolutely is, especially when so many people, remember, think of the population at the school district. So many people do not have, will not get any return from that investment. The other problem in reading about this in Kansas City and this is kind of an opportunity for you and others that show me that to step in is the reporting on this is really poor. I've read in outlets that should know better by reporters who should have bothered to do the work that we haven't seen a bond issued in Kansas City, or Kansas City public schools in so many decades or we haven't seen our levy increase. I mean, those are grossly misleading. Everywhere in the state of Missouri, when property taxes go up because of assessments, the school district must lower their levy so that the effect of the property tax is revenue neutral. Because the Hancock Amendment says, if property taxes go up and the school district earns more money, you have in effect raised taxes without a public vote. - Right. - Fair. Kansas City public schools are not beholden to that. - Right. - So they have seen their revenue go up every time there's been a property tax increase. Simply saying while their levy hasn't changed is when it should have gone down several times is just grossly misleading to the point of, it almost has to be intentional. And again, the reason why we haven't seen a bond pass is because the Kansas City public school is so flush with cash. I almost called you before we did this podcast because I wanted to look up all the various Missouri school districts by their spending per pupil. - Did you look at most school rankings.org for that? As a matter of fact, when you pull up Kansas City, it gives you a rank order. It tells you where they rank in the state and spending per student and it is $22,000. - And so-- - It's a great resource. - I wanna look at it by the tuition of some of the private schools in the Kansas City area or some of the school districts on the Kansas side of the state line. But I get it, I understand that the school district may see places where they could use more funding, but good Lord, you guys are probably, you almost have to be wasting millions of dollars a year on things that you don't need. It may be property, it has to be, you know, labor costs-- - It is so solid. - Overhead, they should invite in an accounting firm, an independent accounting firm to kind of look at their books. And then again, like I said at the beginning, to a fault, Kansas Cityans have been very generous in taxing themselves. If the school district can make a case that once they open up their books that there really isn't money to be found anywhere else, you know, then they can push forward, but I am almost metaphysically certain that if they had an audit, an independent audit, that there is money in every sofa cushion in that district. - Yeah, the HVAC systems need to be refurbished, but how have they gotten to that point? I mean, this goes back, you know, well before this year, it does look like they're gonna share some of these bond proceeds with charter schools, so I don't know, but it is true that the public has a chance to weigh in between now and November, and then there will be a vote, but you know, oftentimes what happens in these school bond referendums is they put, I've seen this, not saying it's gonna happen, but they put like children in their school t-shirts outside the grocery store, saying please vote so I can have a new school kind of thing, and sometimes they do pass, but I think that the thing that really I think people don't realize is how long-term this commitment is. This is a 20 to 30, 50-year commitment into KCPS, into a group of people who has not demonstrated, you know, a lot of fiscal responsibility to date, and you know, I just don't know if I would, there is probably very important ways that they could properly spend money. I'm just not sure that that incredible amount of money, over a billion dollars on buildings is the way to do it, but I appreciate your take as a Kansas City Inn. - Well, it's so many times in Kansas City, we're being asked for money, and we simply wanna know the details. It was true with the sports teams, it was true with, you know, previous go bonds in the past with the streetcar, what is it we're actually getting out of this, and the school district needs to articulate what the benefit is to kind of rank and file people living in the city, and they can't, and every year their population of students drops, they are losing people with a vested interest in their success, and I think they've got an uphill climb, they should have an uphill climb. My fear is that they are not going to be asked to answer these tough questions by the local media. - Yeah, well, unless you ask them. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate your take on it. It's interesting, we'll see how it goes. I think it's a long shot, but I could be wrong about that, but maybe we'll check back in after the vote. - Absolutely, I'd love that. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)