Ep 116 | What does the half-cent sales tax pay for?

SPEAKER_01 0:00

None of that money would be spent where you and I are sitting today in our administrative complex, the half cent sales tax. Those dollars are only going to be spent at a school site where students sit day in and day out.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Welcome to the Voices United in Education podcast. Each week we showcase the teachers, administrators, and community members who go the extra mile to contribute to the success of every student in Escambia County. You'll meet the real people behind the titles and learn about the amazing resources to support every student's success. While many of us are more than okay spending our time mindlessly scrolling social media, when it comes to our money, we want to know it's well spent, especially if it's money promised for our kids. Since 1997, the half-cent sales tax has been a consistent revenue source for major school projects and upgrades, producing approximately $40 million a year. My next guest is the Escambia County Public School Superintendent, and today we're going to talk about what the half-cent sales tax has done for students, why it seems to have so much support, and how it can and cannot be used. All in for kids, Tate High graduate, leading from the front, Mr. Keith Leonard.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Thank you, Meredith. Yeah, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

I'm glad that you're here again. It's always good to talk. And I'm actually going to kick it off by asking you to put it on your social studies teacher hat.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

No problem. If that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

And have you explain kind of like the historical context behind this referendum and you know w how and why it came about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Well, in the mid-90s, our school board, and they did this in a positive way, realized that we were not going to get the funding from the state to be able to do what we needed to do to keep our school facilities updated in the manner in which would be appropriate for our students, our teachers and everyone else who are trying to educate our 37,000 students. So they came up with this idea when referendums were allowed to create funding sources in order to renovate, build, take on technology projects for our school district. There's what's called PICO dollars that come from the state, and they basically dried up to zero. So our schools that were built in 1945 would have continued to be the schools today that were built in 1945. Finally, in 1996, that referendum went to our citizens. It was overwhelmingly uh popular, and so in 1997, that vision came to reality. And since that time, our citizens have continued to pass that referendum, and we've been able to do all types of projects at our schools since that time.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

So is without this money, would there literally be no resources for improvements and big projects?

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Yeah, there would be zero. So all you would be doing is repairing your vehicle. You would never have the opportunity to get a new vehicle and going from a hundred thousand mile car to a four hundred thousand mile car. You can imagine the problems and the issues that you would have with that vehicle. So we've been very excited each and every year and just overwhelmingly happy with what our citizens have been able to do through their tax dollars to help us keep the school district in fine fashion.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

So here's kind of another social studies is question is when I think about, you know, students and how they feel about school and how that maybe is correlated to the condition of the school, I I wonder, I speculate, if there's, you know, a connection there between like having a school that is nice and like wanting to go to school. I mean, you've been in education for a long time. Am I making that up or is there truth to that?

SPEAKER_01 4:08

There is truth to that. You're spot on. You know, when you get that brand new house. I know when my wife and I in 1995 were able to get our first home, uh, we did everything we could day in and out, month in, month out, year in, year out, to keep it feeling new because you felt proud about where you were and what what you'd been able to accomplish to buy that new home. Uh this half cent sales tax makes our students feel happy. Make make it makes them feel warm when they walk into that brand new school or that school that's been renovated with those half cents tax dollars.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

I imagine the teachers too.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

And morale is so important from the top down because then it helps the students feel like I'm glad I'm here, and my teacher's excited I'm here.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

And that's a little bit burdensome during that renovation period, but yeah, it does uplift the morale of teachers, the community, parents. You want to be proud of what they walk into and where they're being they see their students being educated day in and day out.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Aaron Powell So what kind of projects can people drive around Escambia County and point to and go, that is because of the half cent sales tax?

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Yeah. We had a high school, really, it was a K-12 school at one time up in the north end of the county. Ernest Ward is now Ernest Ward Middle School, and there's a brand new school there at Ernest Ward, AK Suter, on the southeast side of town. That was a a really good elementary school, but it was an old building, the half cent sales tax. With that money, we were able to build a brand new state-of-the-art elementary school on the southeast side of town. So I've been in that building. It is beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

It it is, you just walk around with your mouth open because it's so nicely laid out, and the lobby makes sense and the security setup, how you walk into the lobby and then there's like glass doors. You can't just bypass the person at the front desk.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

You're right. There have been a lot of technology needs that have occurred in a very short period of time, specifically as it relates to security. There's another school similar to AK Suter that is brand new now. For many, many, many years. We had Pleasant Grove Elementary School. There is now a brand new Pleasant Grove Elementary School because of the half cent sales tax with up-to-date technology and unbelievable security measures have been put into that school. There's a renovation going on right now at Ferry Pass Middle School. There's a renovation going on right now at Pensacola High School. And if we were counting on Pico dollars like I talked about earlier, none of those, none of those construction projects would have been able to occur. OJ Sims is an elementary school where there's right now, or they just finished up the renovation project at that particular site.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

So there's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

Since 1997, a lot of really good things have happened on our campuses.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Tell me about the bathrooms.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Okay. So at OJ Sims Elementary School, one of the things that we really needed to correct to correct and had this funding to be able to do so. In today's time, you can't just think about reading, math, science as it as it relates to a facility. You've got to really take into account what you're doing from a security standpoint to make that school as safe as it can possibly be. Well, SIMS was a an old elementary school, and it had the outer halls that led to the bathroom. So a student would have to leave the classroom, whether they were in kindergarten, first grade, or fifth grade, walk down a long hallway, and go to a community restroom. People may remember those from their college days when they were in their dorm, they had to get out of the room and walk down the hall. Well, that's really not a safe way to be able to transient a campus, and particularly just to go to the restroom. So with the renovations at OJ Sims, we were able to put a restroom in between two classrooms, and we were able to do that throughout the entire school. So not only was it more convenient for the students, it was an enhanced security measure that we were able to do because of our citizens and that half-cent sales tax.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

That is such an innovative thought. I I wish I had that because also you miss a lot of time when you have to leave the classroom to use the toilet. So you're saying it's kind of like a Jack and Jill on one door goes to one classroom and the other it goes to another?

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Correct. Yep. There's two classrooms side by side. Between those two classrooms, there's an office area that could also be used in case we needed to evacuate students from the classroom to a safe space. Teachers can use that many, many times. There'll be a copier or at least two to three desks in there for individual instruction. And then also in between those two classrooms is a restroom.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Wow, that's so cool. So I think when we talk about allocation of funds and everyday people who have worked in an office, they all know someone who got a hold of the corporate credit card and suddenly was having very nice lunches and like two lattes a day and all of that sort of thing. With this half cent sales tax referendum being so widely popular, how can we be sure that the money is being well spent?

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Right. Well, one of the things that our citizens can be comfortable with is what our school board and our district administration did not very long after the passage of that first ref referendum for the half-cent sales tax. They put together what's called the half-cents sales tax watchdog committee. That committee is made up of nine representatives. Five of them are selected by each board member. So there's a member of that committee that is from each school board district, and then there's four other members. There's a couple of our district staff that help work through the different issues with that committee. But those nine members of the Half Sense Watchdog Committee, they know what that referendum said that we would spend our citizens' tax dollars on. So they meet quarterly. Not kinda, but exactly the way we told our citizens we would spend their hard-earned tax money.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Are those people volunteers? Are there are they paid?

SPEAKER_01 10:57

All volunteers from our community. There's business leaders, there's civic leaders. I believe one of the members is an HR staff member at the City of Pensacola with a lot of experience, not just dealing with people, but also dealing with facilities. It's a committee that our community can be very proud of and that they hold our feet to the fire to make certain that we're spending every cent or half cent the way we told them we would.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Is that itemized spending list available to the public that they could go back, you know, on a rainy day if they're like, you know, what should I read today? I think I want to read how the half cent sales tax is being spent in my county.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Yes, ready. It it's it's available every day for them to be able to review it, vet against what we've done, where we've done it. And I I think they would be amazed. And we've only talked about six or seven of the projects that we've done with that money. One of the things that um I think our community members should know none of that money would be spent where you and I are sitting today in our administrative complex. The half cent sales tax, those dollars are only going to be spent at a school site where students sit day in and day out.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

That is surprising. Yeah. I think people would be surprised because usually the stereotype is the fancy corporate building, people you know looking down from the ivory tower, and but that's not the case.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

That's not going to happen with your hard-earned tax dollars in our school district. That's not going to happen.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Is it that committee that also helps prioritize the projects? Because in a county as old as ours, as you pointed out in the beginning, we had, would you did you say a school built in 1945?

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

We've got all these beautiful historic buildings, and we've also got salt air, right? That's right. So we have maybe different maintenance needs than a place that is not so close to the to the water, to the Gulf.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

That's correct.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

How how are those projects prioritized?

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Yeah. So what the two of the people that assist with with the half cent sales tax watchdog committee is our director, excuse me, assistant superintendent of operations and our director of facilities is the second individual. And they're able to show the age of each campus, each campus building, or a auxiliary building on a specific campus. They're able to look to see what the what we've been able to do at Washington High School in the last 20 years versus what we've been able to do at Pensacola High School in the last 20 years. They will help build a priority listing. A five-year plan goes to our school board each and every year, so it's five years out on what we're going to prioritize to do here in our school district. That's made available to the public. It's a publicly advertised meeting. It's submitted to the Department of Education, and our community members should be very, very thankful that we've been able to stick to that priority listing and will continue to do so.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Does the priority listing shift, though, when things like hurricanes happen? Because I mean, I feel like every every hurricane season, you know, we're wrapping up our hurricane season right now, and it's kind of like our lives feel a little on hold at different moments in time. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Sure. There was an event, uh, uh a weather event, I think it was late last spring, that uh damaged some property, in particular uh Pine Forest High School on the back side of that campus. There was a tornado that touched down on the back side of Longleaf Drive. So, yeah, that particular area back behind there were, I think, two auxiliary buildings and one full-fledged building. So, yeah, weather events are going to impact what we need to be able to do because we we may need to do something more immediately. Uh, and with that fund, with those funds being available, we are able to shift and prioritize where we need to.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

So it's not earmarked in a way that's inflexible, in other words.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

No, ma'am. In a school district, you better make it flexible. Go back to Hurricane Ivan, and there was millions on top of millions of dollars of damage done to our school district, and you don't get money back from FEMA. I think we were out 19 days, so immediately we had to spend some of those dollars to be able to do things to some schools so that we could get right back to going to school. And 19 days out of school is not necessarily right back, but a community doesn't really begin to thrive again until you can get students back in those seats in a school. And then that's when a community begins to thrive. So I I appreciate you bringing it up. That's a really good point.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Yeah. And you you said that the money cannot be spent or is not chosen to be spent on administrative building renovations. Is there any other example of how it cannot be spent that you want to highlight?

SPEAKER_01 15:43

So it's going to be spent on student stations, it's going to be spent on uh school sites, it's going to be spent on technology resources. That is something that uh I want to say in the last referendum, the school district added. And that's really important because more and more things that we do in school have are dependent upon what we can do from a technology perspective. A long time ago, when I was in school, everything was in a in a book. Not everything's in a book anymore. As you know, we're very proud that in our school district, we were able to go one-to-one with technology devices with our students, whether it be a Chromebook or an iPad. The half cent sales tax allows for us to be able to stay abreast of new technology and provide that technology to all of our students. The main thing our citizens need to know, the only way we're gonna spend that money is what's listed in that referendum. It'll spell it out right back, right in the referendum. The schools are gonna be the recipients of that money, and there's gonna be a watchdog committee keeping a close eye that we do exactly what we say we're going to do.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

I love that. I this seems like a no-brainer in so many ways. And obviously, it's received a lot of overwhelming support. Um, I think I read like 70% or something last time the referendum was updated. Are there any notable oppositions to this? Is there any pushback of of why people might not want that?

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Yeah, I don't think there's any pushback or opposition right here in our school, school district, in our school school community. But sometimes as voters, you get referendum fatigue or amendment fatigue. And if you look at what's if you've looked at your sample ballot on all the different amendments that are coming forth this particular general election, what we hope is that people uh they need to vote however they see fit, but when they see that referendum for the school district, that they keep that approval rating in their mind and they they ride down the road and they see a brand new Ernest Ward or a brand new Pleasant Grove, they know that's what their tax dollar, their half-cent dollars went to do here in Scambia County. It doesn't have anything to do with Amendment 1, Amendment 4, Amendment 6. Uh vote your heart, make sure you read through it and and and and keep those half-cent sales tax dollars coming to your school district.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

I think that's what makes platforms like podcasting special, that we can kind of unpack it and it doesn't have to be a 30-second commercial. You're not uh being quoted by somebody else, you're able to say this is what is is causing these improvements to be made. And then the citizens, the listeners, can go out themselves and check out those improvements.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

That's why you're in the top 10 in the country, right? With this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Because of the story you're able to tell each and every time you do a podcast about what's going on in our school district. We're very proud of what you do and we appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Where can people go online to read more about this, how it works, and the projects that it's paid for?

SPEAKER_01 18:53

You I would say a couple of weeks back, our our director of facilities did a great article in the Pensacola News Journal. So you could go to the Pensacola News Journal and just search a Half Sense Watchdog Committee or Half Sense Sales Tax here in Scambia County School District. You can go to our school district website, just type in ascambia schools.org. Up in the very top, type in ha in the search engine, type type in half cent sales tax, and it'll take you to everything we've ever done with that that with your money. So yeah, type it in and go in there and take a look.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Okay, that's perfect. I'll link those in the show notes too, so listeners can easily find them. Thank you again for coming back.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Yeah, it's my pleasure to have been here today with you, Meredith.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

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