A fierce debate in the Carroll County schools centers on how to balance the budget — by cutting spending or raising taxes.
But many of the issues at play go back years and stem from longstanding differences between the superintendent and the school board’s majority.
The conflict hit a crescendo during a standing-room-only school board meeting Thursday.
Superintendent Billy Joe Ferguson recruited parents and teachers to attend and estimates 90 percent inside the J.Z. George High School band hall were on his side. He said several teachers and parents gave board members an earful.
“It was a tail-kicking. They chewed out the board. I’ve never felt this good; I could have won the lottery,” he said Friday.
But Harmon Stanford, vice president of the watchdog group Citizens for Equitable Taxes, said it was “outrageous” for the audience to scream and shake fingers at board members.
“What Mr. Ferguson did, he threw gasoline on a fire and lit a match to it,” said Stanford, who has attended school board meetings for nearly two decades.
The emotional confrontation finds its basis in some dry accounting figures.
The total budget for the 986-student district this year is $8.61 million with $1.85 million coming from local property taxes.
The proposed budget advertised in the Carrollton Conservative called for $8.69 million in total spending with $1.92 million from property taxes.
That’s a 3.9 percent increase in the school taxes paid on homes, cars and businesses in Carroll County.
The school board has twice voted 3-2 against the superintendent’s proposed budget. Board President Ben Shute and members Kenneth DeLoach and Jim Strong have voted “nay,” with Laura Davis and Rubye Miller on the other side.
The board has asked Ferguson to make cuts; Shute made an unsuccessful motion for a $300,000 cut, and Strong has recommended $50,000. The board will meet again Thursday.
A budget must be approved by Aug. 15.
The main problem is that all the sources of the district’s revenue — state funding, federal money and timber sales on 16th Section land — have declined, as Shute points out.
The board president insists that it’s not fair for county taxpayers to pick up the slack and that reducing spending is the common-sense solution.
“What we’re asking the superintendent is to look at the budget and reduce expenses because the funds are not there,” Shute said.
“It’s not fair to lay the tax burden on the local people when the state and federal government have cut the funding.”
Ferguson, on the other hand, said the district already “operates on fumes” with the lowest millage rate in the state. (Shute said the district is above the 50th percentile if you base it on the number of local dollars spent per student, although Ferguson said that factors in the high transportation costs in the large and sparsely populated county.)
The superintendent said the proposed tax increase is only enough to cover increased costs for retirement contributions and insurance for the upcoming year.
He said the district is barely breaking even this year and has never had a reserve from the regular budget. Instead, it has relied on 16th Section money — funds generated by rent and timber sales from property owned by the county schools.
Even so, he said he’s proud of what the district has been able to accomplish, including a clean, nice facility at J.Z. George and starting a band program for the first time in 35 years.
“I’m for the children, and I don’t care what color they are; I don’t care their handicapped condition. ... I just wish the board would get on board,” Ferguson said.
He said Shute’s motion to cut the district’s budget by $300,000 — which didn’t receive a second — would have caused him to lay off seven teachers, which he said would have jeopardized the district’s accreditation.
Ferguson alleges politics involving Citizens for Equitable Taxes played a role in the school board’s voting down the budget.
He said the board itself came up with that budget figure during a work session but backed off when members of Citizens for Equitable Taxes objected during the first budget hearing on June 28.
Ferguson said Friday that Citizens for Equitable Taxes controls the board’s majority, and he said Citizens for Equitable Taxes has racial motivations about not wanting the public schools to succeed because students would leave private Carroll Academy.
He also said the school board isn’t concerned about students but only saving money.
Friction between Ferguson and the watchdog organization goes back to his first years as superintendent in the mid-1990s. The group raised questions about a plan by Ferguson to build a new high school campus to consolidate J.Z. George in North Carrollton and the now-closed Vaiden High. The superintendent and taxpayers group later clashed in court over the cost of building a new gym at J.Z. George.
Stanford, a 77-year-old feed store owner, said he has no racial motivation whatsoever for his advocacy. Rather, he said he loves his native county and wants what is best for it.
He said he’s one of the founders of Carroll Academy and recognizes its importance to people who prefer private schools.
“I realize that overtaxing the people would put a strain on people who go to the Academy, but we have helped the Carroll County schools and the taxpayers considerably,” Stanford said.
For example, he said that the county schools would have gone into receivership twice if his group hadn’t taken action and that it saved taxpayers more than $1 million in the gym controversy alone.
Stanford said Ferguson has not been a good businessman and that Shute, DeLoach and former board member Marcus Kuykendall have stood up for what is right.
“I don’t hate anybody really,” he said. “But I’ve been tempted with Mr. Ferguson.”
Shute said that he’s not a member of Citizens for Equitable Taxes and that it doesn’t control him.
He said he doesn’t want an adversarial relationship with Ferguson and that the focus of board meetings should be on educating children. He strongly disputed that he doesn’t care about the district’s students.
“I’m very passionate about our children,” he said.
In Shute’s opinion, what is hurting the district’s children is students living in Carroll County attending school elsewhere, often Grenada or Winona. The district loses $5,000 to $6,000 per child in state revenue when that happens, he said. Shute said that adds up to millions of dollars in lost revenue over the years that could be used to repair or replace the district’s aging elementary school, Marshall Elementary in North Carrollton.
“The children that are in this county suffer because that child goes out,” he said.
