Taxpayers to the Barricades

What ever happened to the old American notion that schools are sacred? It has all but vanished in the suburbs of St. Louis. This year, voters in 13 districts have rejected school-tax levies--in one case, five times. As a result, many schools opened late, and classes may soon halt for about 35,000 children in two districts where votes are still pending. Nor is this phenomenon limited to the Show Me state. Coast to coast, public schools have made the transition from sacred cow to scapegoat in less time than it takes to say John Dewey.

The largest of the troubled Missouri districts is Hazelwood, a working-class suburb of spreading subdivisions and apartment projects. In 15 years, Hazelwood's school enrollment has grown from 1,000 to nearly 25,000. At the same time, tax revenue from industrial and commercial property has fallen from one-fourth of the school budget to 7%. When Hazelwood voters began protesting higher property taxes in earnest last year, it took four elections to pass a school-tax levy. After four more elections in 1970, the voters have still not approved a levy.

Out of Work. Hazelwood's proposed tax stands at $5.54 per $100 of property assessed at 30% of valuation. For the owner of a $15,000 house, this would come to $249.30, up from $234.90 last year. "Some of my neighbors are out of work," says Theodore J. Biondo, an aircraft engineer who heads a local parents' group. "They're wondering if they can keep their houses at all, so they're not anxious to vote more taxes on them." The board will resubmit the same tax levy on Oct. 21, and if it is rejected, close the schools on Nov. 17. Ironically, the first four elections cost Hazelwood $17,500.

The national forests and cattle ranches of central Oregon's sprawling Crook County are light-years away from cities and subdivisions. Some of the 2,450 students scattered over Crook's 3,000-sq. mi. school district travel 50 miles to class. The crisis in Crook, however, is distressingly familiar. Since last spring, taxpayers have rejected the school budget four times, finally settling for a version that was reduced by $90,000. A campaign was also begun to oust the school board; teachers' salaries were slashed by virtual coercion; a circuit court judge was called in to settle a ballot dispute; and campaigners on both sides were investigated by a grand jury. "All values were sacrificed to the cause," laments a local minister. "There was no more love, understanding or charity."

Guerrilla War. Money has usually been plentiful in Scarsdale, a well-manicured New York City suburb. Once known as the nation's wealthiest town, Scarsdale has also claimed the best public-school system in America. It had never voted down a school budget until this year. The stock market plunge may have been a factor, but there were several others. Last year Scarsdale's commuters were jolted by a New York Times story titled "Guerrilla War Tactics Taught at Scarsdale High." The story solemnly described one high school teacher's course about guerrilla warfare, which included demonstration field maneuvers in the woods. Then, in December, the school board voted to accept 50 black elementary school students in a busing arrangement with nearby Mount Vernon. Though Mount Vernon finally vetoed the plan, many people in Scarsdale did not forget. When the school budget came up in May--a record $11 million plan calling for a 4.5% increase in the property tax on top of new assessments--it came out on the short end of an 815-to-622 vote.

Complacency, said the president of the P.T.A., blaming the defeat on the light turnout and a small pressure group. But at the next election in June, with three times as many votes cast, a slightly reduced budget was defeated again. The voters finally gave their approval three weeks later, but only in the face of a state-designed austerity budget that would have eliminated athletic uniforms and new library books.

Cities like Sacramento, Calif., and Columbus have followed the example of towns and suburbs by rejecting school-funding proposals. The revolt is most dramatic in Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Oregon and California, but few states have been spared. Six years ago, bond issues for new schools enjoyed a 73% success rate at the polls across the nation. In 1969, the figure fell to 52%.

Strange Bedfellows. Spiraling expenses notwithstanding, Educational Consultant Nickolaus Engelhardt believes that simple ignorance is responsible for the majority of bond-issue and budget rebuffs. The expenses are not so awesome, he contends, if they are carefully explained and justified to the voter.

Militant students and teachers compound the problem. "It seems logical to assume that there is a cell of subversives on the faculty," said Lee Dorfman of Scarsdale. "Those of us who have been putting up money to pay such teachers are fed up with the whole plan."

In the final analysis, there is a deeper frustration, which can put a dissident taxpayer in the same boat with the student radicals he detests. Largely impotent in the real world, the student turns his campus into a battleground because it seems the only place he has a chance to win. The taxpayer, just as impotent, and forced to keep paying for things he abhors, is throwing his weight around in the only arena where it has any effect. Janet Wells, president of Scarsdale's League of Women Voters, explained the revolt in words that could have come from any young rebel: "The budget defeats represented a feeling of desperation, a feeling that somehow things are getting out of hand but no one can do anything about it."

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