Bossier school pay hike product of politics

Now, was that so difficult? But why didn’t happen sooner and without being told once and warned again not to hike taxes to do it?

Last week, the Bossier Parish School Board sprung pay raises onto district employees. Starting next academic year, educators would receive $2,500 more annually, while other personnel would net 4.75 percent more. The cost will start at $10.6 million more annually.

Of course, among staff and school board members many risked breaking their arms trying to pat themselves on their own backs so vigorously. Most obsequious in effusive praise was Superintendent Jason Rowland, who surely brought tears to the eyes of all involved when he talked lovingly about how the board “cares so much about their [sic] school system.” Closely following him on that score was Republican Member Erick Falting, who a few months ago berated taxpayers for not coughing up more tax dollars to let him spend more, relating how pleased as punch he was to see this happen.

That telling off of taxpayers happened during the occasion the Board set millage rates so that the total millages for 2025 actually dropped below the constitutionally-required roll back. This was done by shifting most of a 3.5 mill roll back for capital outlay by rolling that portion into the larger of the two salary and benefits millages, and signaled a commitment to a future raise.

But this acquiescence came to fruition only after years of trying to fob it all off onto taxpayers. In 2019, the Board, claiming this infusion of a reckoned $22 million was needed for salary increases, stupidly shoveled a nearly 23 mill increase – 40 percent more than the combined rate then – in front of voters who decisively rejected having rates zoom up to 91 mills (with another small unrelated new levy, also defeated) to what would have been by far the state’s highest school district property tax.

What it couldn’t do then just months ago it looked set to try again but this time going around the citizenry. Weeks before the meeting where millages were set, it advertised it would attempt to roll forward rates but the public backlash was such that it then canceled the meeting, citing a mysterious budget error that public documents don’t confirm and which never has been discussed by the Board.

As it is, the whole pay raise idea is based upon a series of myths that teachers are underpaid in a system so tight for bucks that it otherwise couldn’t afford raises, much less to reduce taxes. In reality, Bossier teachers already are among the best paid in the state and whose average salary beats the average of any southern state, and while the student population has remained stagnant over the past decade district spending has shot up nearly twice the rate of inflation.

So, why wasn’t this – using own resources –done to dole out raises in, say, academic year 2020 rather than 2026? Let’s start with the reason stated why the rejiggering of levies occurred: debt service requirements had decreased, freeing up partially that taxing power.

For AY 2020, interest on debt was about $5 million while the outlay levy collected about $14 million. This $9 million remaining would about cover the $8.9 million in principal due over the next year of the $172 million outstanding in general obligation bonds, leaving the balance in the 2012 Bond Construction Fund at about $35 million.

For AY 2024 (the last year available; the district is running behind on its AY 2025 audit), interest had fallen to $4 million while the levy increased to $17.6 million. However, while the GO bonds amount has fallen to $132 million, due in 2025 was $10.1 million while the amounts in reserve restricted for debt service and capital projects had slipped to $33.6 million.

In other words, there was some breathing room that could back the reallocation. But the debt numbers suggested that cushion didn’t even equal half of the new $10.6 million commitment. Instead, the majority would have to come from the salaries and benefits levy, which over this span increased in amount collected annually from $38 million to $45.6 million – some of which would go to things like merit increases and increases in pension and insurance costs.

The larger point is the increase, perhaps at a smaller level, could have been implemented a few years ago because of the growth in the salary and benefits levy (although this would be diluted by the steady increase in teaching staff and principals over the past decade from 1,452 to 1,684 despite the student population going up only 0.3 percent). Indeed, at any time, the Board could have performed the reallocation to spring extra money.

But it wouldn’t if it had its eye on the quadrennial reassessment that afforded its only chance in four years to roll forward rates in 2024; in other words, a chance to increase taxes. If so, then why didn’t it announce a salary hike when it reallocated, instead waiting months to put together groups to study the issue only in the last three weeks (as Rowland in his comments made at the meeting noted had been done)?

Because that happened on the cusp of the state Legislature’s third special session last year that produced Amendment 2, part of which guaranteed $2,000 raises for teachers and $1,000 for staff through a reorganization of state finances. This allowed the Board to promise raises without having to dip into the district’s own resources.

Except then voters statewide torpedoed it at the end of March (Bossier voters did their part by a majority approving). With the distinct prospect that the stipend bonuses of the past two years would disappear, and with taxpayers unwilling to allow the Board to pry more out of their pockets and the state unable to commit to give it more funds, the last option left was to use own existing resources to cough up the pay boost.

And perhaps Board members felt spurred by the super-caring Rowland crooned about. But that caring probably extended more to a fear of electoral retribution than agape for district employees. After employees had enjoyed the extra dough for two years and assured it would become permanent, undoubtedly they feared if something like that didn’t then those thousands of employees and their family and friends would take it out on them at the polls. Make no mistake, caring about reelection (with the exception of once-independent, now-Republican Craton Cochran who just won election to the Bossier City Council effective Jul. 1) had more to do with this than caring about employees; otherwise, it could have been done years or months ago.

The Bossier schools employee pay raise happened, but it could have happened already without tax increases, and happened now with own resources only because School Board members had their backs against the political wall.