Five years after sales tax hike, district, county schools benefit; here's what it took

Carolyn Harmon of Springfield voted for the 1% sales tax increase benefitting Sangamon County schools five years ago.

Harmon supported past school referenda rejected by voters. On a personal note, she has two grandchildren attending School District 186 schools.

But Harmon also takes the longer view.

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"Education is the foundation of society," said Harmon, outside of Lincoln Library recently. "I think 1% is such a small amount of money in comparison to the benefits that result."

The referendum passed in 2018 with 53 percent of county voters favoring it. It was the first school referendum to pass since 1984.

The hike did make Springfield's overall sales tax rate − 9.75% − one of the heftiest in the state.

Because the district educates just under 50% of students in the county, there were initial projections that it stood to get about $10.1 million annually. The average, though, has worked out to $13 million.

There was opposition to the referendum at the time. A group called Sangamon County Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility sent out robocalls urging a vote against the referendum. The Illinois Policy Institute claimed that Springfield voters were getting “nickeled and dimed.”

There's a stipulation that the tax money can only be used for facility upgrades or construction, safety improvements or to retire building bonds. It can't be used for salaries and overhead, operating costs, moveable equipment and direct instructional costs.

The vote has transformed the landscape around Springfield.

A $93.2 million reconstruction of Lanphier High School, where a commons area will wed the new building and the old building, is nearing completion after the beginning of the new year. Forthcoming renovations to Springfield High School that will reorient the entrance among other things were estimated to cost the district about $126 million.

Memorial Stadium, home to Lanphier and SHS, was outfitted with new artificial turf, a new track and a new scoreboard with a large video screen topping it.

Most of the completed construction at elementary and middle schools has focused on secure entrances, classroom additions, cafeteria spaces and elimination of mobile units.

Amy Madigan, president of One Sangamon Schools, the political action committee that shepherded through its passage, said reaching out to support groups, particularly local labor unions, helped tip the balance early on.

So did sticking to a cohesive message.

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"I think it was the way we stuck to some basic points that people could wrap their heads around and presenting it as not so much a burden of a tax, but an investment in the community," Madigan said. "We explained even if you don't have kids in the school district, when these schools improve, our community's going to improve."

Micah Miller was a candidate for school board when he was knocking on doors of voters, asking them to support the referendum.

"There's no way this was going to happen without the voters," Miller said. "There's just no way around it."

'A gut punch'

While benefits from the tax have been bright spots for the district, recent rankings of student performance at several schools have been tough.

Franklin Middle School principal Tod Davis admitted it was dealt "a little bit of a gut-punch" by its designation according to the Illinois Report Card released last week.

The school's ranking went from commendable to targeted in an assessment made by the Illinois State Board of Education.

The designations are calculated by assigning each school points for every accountability indicator, such as graduation rates, chronic absenteeism and academic growth, according to ISBE. The indicators are weighted, meaning each indicator is worth a different number of total possible points.

The annual report card provides a snapshot of how students performed in the 2022-23 school year on standardized tests, such as the Illinois Assessment of Readiness and the SAT college entrance exam taken by juniors.

"I can share with you it hurt, but after the hurt went away, we got to work immediately and got with (Jamar) Scott (the district's chief equity and school improvement officer) and started unpacking the data," said Davis at Monday's school board meeting.

Telling the staff the news was, Davis allowed, "a very, very vulnerable moment."

Wendy Conaway, principal of Owen Marsh Elementary, said her school was on the cusp of being rated exemplary, which would have put it in the top 10% of Illinois schools.

"We will not stop," Conaway told the board. "We will get exemplary."

Franklin was one of a dozen District 186 schools whose designation downturned, while two schools, Ridgely Elementary and Edwin Lee, improved their rankings.

Nicole Moody, the assistant superintendent of teaching, learning and school culture, said district officials have already started meeting with ISBE to discuss its plans for schools that are designated targeted and the two levels below that, comprehensive or intensive.

School board member Ken Gilmore said he knows what Davis is experiencing. Gilmore saw many report cards as the longtime principal at Ridgely before retiring in 2022.

"It's tough," Gilmore said after the meeting. "You get that designation, and it just tears you up. I've had the same situations over the years where we've had really good scores, and we turn right around and we have all these pieces in place and then the scoring comes out differently."

Superintendent Jennifer Gill said the idea is "owning the data," but not wallowing in the misery.

"We don't love our test scores," she said, "but we also know we've been through a lot, and we need to make sure we continue to forge ahead."

This story will be updated.

Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788; sspearie@sj-r.com; X, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: A sales tax hike in Sangamon County has benefitted schools