How Do We Control the MemphisCitySchoolTaxzilla?
I read in the paper the other day that the Memphis City School Board members accepted a $936 million dollar budget-$61 million more than last year.
I have been thinking about this problem and here are my thoughts.
- The first problem is the “Maintenance of effort law embedded in the Tennessee Code Annotated”. This section requires that you never reduce local funding for education unless there is a reduction of the number of students.
- This law, obviously initiated and supported by the teachers unions, ensures that there is never any serious effort at efficiency. Imagine a business that lived by this rule that you could never spend less than the year before but you could spend more and then this would be the new forever base level of spending in the future.
- This law should be done away with and we should depend on local officials to fund to the level that they can afford and allow a demand for more efficient operation.
For now I have a suggestion until the above could be implemented. Cap the amount of spending from the City and the County to what is was last year (do away with the extra $61 million that they say they need) and make them operate with what they had last year. Then the next year make them operate again at the same frozen figure and force more efficiency on them. I point out what recently happened in Kansas City. http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=10118434
I point out the record of the Memphis City Schools over a past ten year period.
| Memphis City Schools | Year 1998 | Year 2008 | % difference |
| number of students K12 | 109137 | 103000 | -5.60% |
| number of employees | 10693 | 16500 | 54% |
| general fund budget | $550,147,000 | $931,966,000 | 69% |
| CPI up over 10 years | 31% |