Last year, 20 districts statewide implemented this new system as part of the Demonstration Project. Public data on this initiative will be released soon on September 30. These districts are primarily seeking exemptions because administrators in those districts do not feel the MAP is an adequate tool to improve student performance. The test is administered to students at the end of the year, which means districts do not receive test results back until the fall of the following year.

The system adopted by these district tests students  three times per year in English/language arts and math. Missouri could also consider pairing this model with a teacher rating system (like Tennessee’s) to gauge how effective a teacher’s class and curriculum are.

The fact that many districts believe that they could develop better testing than DESE speaks volumes. The MAP needs to be timelier, and it needs to be more informative for students, parents, and teachers. My colleague, James Shuls, lamented the lack of detail in a 2018 blog post.

Even with the shortcomings of the MAP test, Missouri ought to have a uniform statewide test that allows researchers, district officials, and policymakers to learn about different education strategies and trends. If a district implements a new strategy for teaching algebra, and it sees great improvement on the MAP, another district could mimic its practices.

There will be more clarity when statistics for the Demonstration Project are released in a month. If the results are encouraging, fully transitioning to this new testing system statewide might be worth considering.

The post More Districts to Try New Standardized Testing System appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

*Statistics are based on a self-compiled compilation of calendars. If snows/sick days have shifted the last day of school, they are not accounted for.

**Kairos Academies, Clarksburg C-2, Clarkton C-4, Crocker R-II, Eldon R-I, La Salle Charter School, Mark Twain R-VIII, New York R-IV, Premier Charter School, The Biome, Thornfield R-I, and Union Star R-II are not accounted for.

Skyline R-II was the first district to start summer break, on May 1. Hazelwood and Ferguson-Florissant will be among the final districts to go on break on May 31.

Based on the projected last day of class, if you are a St. Louis kid, you are probably getting out later than everyone else. Of the 15 traditional school districts (non-charters using a five-day school week) that end classes May 28 or later, 11 of them are in the St. Louis area. These St. Louis–area schools are Ferguson-Florissant, Hazelwood, Clayton, Ft. Zumwalt, Parkway, Wentzville, Ladue, Maplewood-Richmond Heights, University City, Mehlville, and Riverview Gardens.

How long do most summer breaks last in Missouri?

*Based on the projected number of days, we rounded the district to the nearest week. For example, a district with an 81-day summer would be coded as “12 weeks.”

**In this estimation we assume districts have the same first day of school as 2023-2024, and then subtracted that number by two. In 2020, Missouri mandated that Missouri public schools’ first day of school cannot be before a certain date. In 2023-2024, it was August 21st. For 2024-2025, it will be August 19th, two days earlier.

As the above figure displays, the average summer break is a little over three months for Missouri students. The shortest summer break is roughly 10 weeks, while the longest is around four months at 16 weeks. The rural districts (enrollment in parentheses) of Fairview R-XI (493), Glenwood R-VIII (218), Howell Valley R-I (209), Junction Hill C-12 (193), and Richards R-V (343) all have nearly four-month summer vacations—with May 2 as their last day of class, and August 21 as their first day of class in 2023–2024.

Interestingly, the districts that have the shortest summer breaks all tend to be St. Louis–area districts, with Ferguson-Florissant and Hazelwood having the shortest breaks. Along with these two, Clayton, Ft. Zumwalt, Parkway C-2, Wentzville, Ladue, University City, Mehlville, Riverview Gardens, Affton, Bayless, Brentwood, Francis Howell, Orchard Farm, Rockwood, and Valley Park all have estimated summer breaks under 90 days.

How do these statistics differ amongst various types of schools?

The above figures are known as a box and whisker plot. The vertical line (whiskers) represents the full range, while the box represents the middle 50 percent of responses. Any statistical outliers are noted as dots, the horizontal line is the median, and the “x” is the mean.

As shown, rural schools on average have much longer summer breaks than their suburban and city counterparts. Additionally, most of the longest breaks in the state are rural—of the 50 longest summer breaks in the state, 47 of them are rural districts. While this may be reflective of the bygone days when most rural children worked on farms, Institute analysts have conducted research that found rural high school students may have fewer opportunities and lower rate of college readiness than their suburban counterparts.

Another important takeaway from these figures is the difference in break length between charters and traditional schools. Charter schools have an average (mean) summer break of 84 days, versus 92 for four-day school week districts and 94 days for traditional five-day school week districts. In Missouri, charter schools serve high proportions of disadvantaged students and shorter breaks may be a good use of charter school flexibility.

Do longer summers hurt students? Summer learning loss is a well-documented phenomenon. However, there are debates about the actual extent of achievement loss. Regardless, it is interesting to see the variability across the state and to consider if there could be academic implications.

The post When Do Summer Breaks Start for School Districts Across Missouri? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This year’s proposals focus on raising the minimum salary that teachers can be paid. There are several bills in each legislative chamber (see links here, here, and here), but they all take a similar shape. They raise the minimum salary that districts can pay new teachers from $25,000 to $38,000 (some go higher), then raise the minimum higher over several years. To help school districts afford the increase, the bills create a state fund that districts can request reimbursement to pay 70% of the increased salaries. The legislature has already been appropriating this higher minimum salary for teachers via the budget for several years—these bills would enshrine this change into statute, but also increase salaries even more down the road.

As my colleagues have written previously, the discussion surrounding raising Missouri’s “minimum” teacher salary is somewhat misleading. School districts set teacher salaries, not the state— but the state does set a floor for pay that districts must remain above. You often hear people claim that Missouri has one of the lowest teachers’ pay “minimums” in the country, but that is not an accurate representation of how much teachers are actually being paid, as my colleague James Shuls has outlined. For example, the average teacher salary in the district I live in, Affton, is more than $62,000 per year.

My biggest concern is not with the idea of the state raising minimum teacher pay, but the way the proposals go about doing it, and the perverse incentives they would enshrine into state law. By offering to permanently subsidize teacher pay for some school districts, especially at a time when the state’s budgetary outlook is so uncertain, Missouri will begin sending state dollars to cover what have previously been almost entirely local decisions.

The primary way the state funds schools is through what’s called the foundation formula. Though the formula may not be perfect, it offers an equitable method to distribute state funds, adjusted by a variety of agreed-upon criteria. The proposals that our policymakers are now considering seek to create an outside-the-formula funding source for a specific purpose (minimum teacher salaries). The problem is that these funds would not be distributed in an equitable way. If enacted, these proposals will represent a significant redistribution of state funds to school districts whose voters have chosen not to raise their taxes sufficiently to pay their teachers more.

Since state fiscal year 2023 when Missouri began piloting this approach, it’s become clear that many school districts would jump at the chance of additional state funding. Governor Parson’s budget recommendation shows that approximately 65% of the state’s school districts have already taken advantage of the state salary grants. It’s not unrealistic to assume that if this program is made permanent, more districts will begin participating. Of course, it makes sense, because once the state begins offering subsidies for teacher salaries, why wouldn’t districts take advantage? Or, perhaps more importantly, why would districts ever choose to raise salaries with their own money if the state would pay for them instead?

None of this is to say that the way Missouri funds its schools is ideal, or that teachers shouldn’t be paid more. But whatever the general assembly decides to do, it’s important that policymakers think through the unintended consequences. Incentives matter—Missouri’s voters and school districts have demonstrated as much, and it’s time our policymakers started acting like it. There’s no getting around the fact that the proposal to raise minimum teacher pay, as currently drafted, is a bad idea for Missouri.

The post The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad, Teacher Pay Plan appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

All this makes for a great opportunity to bring up the most important annexation-related change we need in Missouri, which is to get rid of the special rules regarding annexations and fire districts in St. Louis County. I am generally not in favor of annexations. We have too many small cities as it is, and municipal annexations should be more difficult (again, outside of St. Louis). I generally support the special rules for new incorporations and annexations within St. Louis County, except for the one involving fire districts.

Statewide, if a city with a fire department annexes an area within a fire district, the city has to pay the lost property taxes to the fire district on a declining basis for five years. That is fair. The district may have issued bonds based on the larger populations, and the five-year phaseout is a reasonable way to address that. But in St. Louis County, RSMO §72.418 allows fire districts to essentially force cities to pay their taxes forever, as long as the original fire district still provides fire protection for the newly annexed part of the city—even if the residents of the newly annexed part want services to be provided by the city’s fire department, not the old fire district.

Hazelwood and Crestwood have found this out the hard way, as both cities – particularly Hazelwood – have been raked over the coals (pun intended) by the Robertson and Affton fire districts respectively. The Robertson case was so egregious it finally spurred a recall of the fire board, which for the previous two decades had been raising taxes to a confiscatory level. How could they do this? Because a tiny number of voters in April elections could elect a board that then raised the tax rates Hazelwood was required to pay under its “agreement” with the district, knowing that the entire city of Hazelwood had to pay the tax, not just the residents within the crossover parts. How much was spending out of control? According to The Robertson Report:

While searching for an explanation for this high cost per call, Valley Park Fire Protection District (VPFPD) was identified as the most proportional fire district to Robertson FPD. Between 2016 and 2020, both maintained two firehouses, two ambulances, one pumper/rescue and one ladder truck, responded to almost equal number of emergency calls (VPFPD 2246 vs RFPD 2455 annually) and took roughly the same percent of commercials calls with an average 8.8% difference. A comparison of financial audits during these years revealed Valley Park FPD had spent $18.8M in total expenses (an average of $3.7M annually) to operate while Robertson FPD had spent $45.6M (average of $9.1M annually) for the exact same EMS and fire service. This is a total spending difference of $26.8M within 5 operating years. [emphasis added]

Special laws like RSMO §72.418 shield fire protection districts from municipal competition for local tax dollars and harm taxpayers. This law needs to be removed. The law is highly beneficial for the fireman’s union, and bad for everyone else, especially taxpayers. If residents and voters want to have municipal annexations or incorporations that include fire protection by municipal fire departments, then that’s what they should get.

The post The Worst Law in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

*Affton, Branson, Center, Confluence Academies, Fayette, Lebanon, Lee’s Summit, Lewis County, Liberty, Lindbergh, Lonedell, Mehlville, Neosho, Ozark, Parkway, Pattonville, Raymore-Peculiar, Ritenour, Ste. Genevieve, and Shell Knob

The Demonstration Project is a formal trial implemented with the goal of determining whether the Missouri Assessment Project (MAP) (which tests at the end of the year) should be replaced with an individualized and continuous system. I have discussed the details, benefits, and concerns with this project in two previous posts. If this new system sees success, Missouri could try to incorporate it statewide.

What will change for students this year?

Students in these 20 districts will be tested more frequently—three times in English/language arts (ELA) and three times in math (45 minutes for each subject), and the assessments will be on a computer. Students should know that it is an adaptive test, meaning the test will change in real time based on the responses—if a student misses questions, the test offers easier questions and vice versa. For a test taker, this means one cannot afford to make any careless mistakes. On traditional tests, all questions are weighted equally, so if one accidentally marks bubble C instead of bubble B, it will count as one mistake. However, if one accidentally picks bubble C or carelessly forgets to flip the sign on a negative number, the adaptive test will count it wrong and think the student cannot do harder problems since one of the easier problems was missed. Therefore, students should double check their work, because a careless mistake on the wrong problem can tank their score.

Students in these 20 districts will also take the MAP this year. The federal government mandates that every district in a state participate in a uniform standardized test. The MAP is a federally approved and mandated test, so any exemption from taking the MAP would have to come directly from the federal government. These 20 districts have requested a federal waiver, and we will see whether it is accepted or not.

What will change for parents?

The results of these student assessments will return quickly via an online form, and there will be a detailed breakdown of each student’s strengths and weaknesses (here is an example of adaptive test results). A dashboard will also be designed to report annual performance targets and goals. Page 29 of this report shows a sample dashboard. A parent should be able to access information relating to their district via the dashboard.

Hopefully this new trial will yield success that can help us find better ways to teach and assess our students.

The post 20 Missouri Districts Get the Green Light to Try New Assessment System appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This waiver is being requested in partnership with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) in order to conduct a formal study (called the Demonstration Project) to determine if a new testing system should replace the existing MAP. If the exemption is granted, these districts would use their own test but would not administer the MAP. If the waiver is denied, these twenty districts would use their own test and also administer the MAP.

The MAP test is traditionally given to 3rd through 8th-grade students in Missouri at the end of the school year to evaluate their understanding in mathematics, English/language arts, and science. MAP testing also includes End of Course (EOC) tests for high school students who have completed four chosen subjects—Algebra I (or II if you took Algebra I in middle school), Government, Biology, and English II.

The Demonstration Project will use an adaptive testing system, which will test students and provide timely results three times per year. An adaptive test essentially learns who a test-taker is. As students miss questions, the prompts become easier, and vice versa. Through this process, a computer algorithm can learn a student’s skill set, provide a detailed report to the teacher, remember it, and use that student’s proficiency as a baseline for the next standardized test. In practice, a student will sit down at a computer for 90 minutes to take one 45-minute adaptive test on ELA and one 45-minute adaptive test on mathematics three times per year. Since this system is online and designed for quick feedback, a detailed breakdown of how each student performed will be provided to teachers and parents in order to help students improve throughout the year. The new state assessment will shift from a “lagging” indicator to a “leading indicator.” This system will require 280 less minutes of testing time and will cost $21.60 more per student annually.

Below are the 20 districts that are seeking exemption from the MAP:

• Affton, Branson, Center, Confluence Academies, Fayette, Lebanon, Lee’s Summit, Lewis County, Liberty, Lindbergh, Lonedell, Mehlville, Neosho, Ozark, Parkway, Pattonville, Raymore-Peculiar, Ritenour, Ste. Genevieve, and Shell Knob

These 20 districts roughly represent the demographics of Missouri, with huge districts, rural districts, and a charter school (although low-income students are underrepresented).

The study was created because of doubts about the effectiveness of the MAP; as the Demonstration Project proposal states, “The MAP was never intended as a progress monitoring tool at the student level.” Since the MAP is administered at the end of the year, districts do not receive test results until fall of the following year. Districts claim that makes it very difficult to make adjustments and corrections within the school year if a student is struggling in a certain subject. They also claim that adaptive standardized testing throughout the year would allow teachers and administrators to make adjustments to help students before the next school year. (There are reasons to take these complaints from districts with a grain of salt, which I will get into in my next blog post.)

It will be interesting to see if this trial is successful. The desire to try something different than MAP (which traces its origins back to 1993) raises plenty of questions in itself, and I will discuss those issues also in my next post.

The post 20 Missouri Districts Seek Exemption from the Missouri Assessment Program appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I wanted to take a moment to put this tax increase into perspective. According to data from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the average tax rate ceiling for school districts in Missouri was $3.70 per $100 of assessed valuation in 2015. Regionally, however, property tax rates are considerably higher. The average tax rate for Saint Louis County school districts is $4.528. On top of that, county residents pay an additional $1.2609 per $100 of assessed valuation for the special school district. This brings the county average up to $5.788.

The table that follows shows how Saint Louis’ school property tax rate would stack up to Saint Louis County school districts. For county districts, I combine both district and special school district rates.

As has been written on this blog before, Saint Louis could do other proactive things to address the budget crisis, such as selling vacant school buildings. And as Joseph Miller has pointed out, the city could help the district out a little by ending its flagrant TIF and tax abatement policies.  Nevertheless, it is certainly within the right of the school district to seek a property tax increase. If this one passes, Saint Louis will still have the lowest school taxes in the area. 

The post Should Saint Louis Raise Property Taxes for Public Schools? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As part of the campaign, the Department of Education has proposed a new regulation that would require all copyrightable intellectual property created with Department grant funds to have an open license. If the federal government pays for it, citizens (who actually paid for it) must be able to access it for free.

What would happen if public schools no longer had to purchase new textbooks every five to seven years? How much would schools save?

Though textbooks only make up 1 percent of overall education spending, over time, these costs add up. Between 2012 and 2014, Francis Howell School District in Saint Charles spent nearly $3.5 million on textbook purchases. Using open-source textbooks could cut expenses in half or more.

For example, a 2008 edition of a high school Biology textbook can be purchased for about $100 dollars. An Amazon Fire tablet with Wi-Fi goes for $49.99, and with that tablet the Kindle edition of CK-12 Biology can be accessed for free. CK-12 Biology is just one of hundreds of textbooks available to students at no cost.

In addition to reducing costs, digital textbooks provide differentiation opportunities for teachers. One study looked at the science performance of 1,651 high school students from three states. The researchers found that reading ability was just as important to a student’s state test score as the amount of science knowledge the student had.

With a digital textbook, the text can be manipulated to provide the same subject matter at multiple reading levels. Just as easily, the textbook can be updated throughout the year in response to new discoveries—how many students in Missouri would you think are using a textbook that says Pluto is a regular old planet?

I’m excited to see where innovation in the textbook industry takes learning in Missouri. I hope when it’s time for other school districts to enter the digital age, as Affton has, they are ready.  

The post Open-Source Alternatives May Disrupt Billion-Dollar Textbook Industry appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Funds raised from the tax increase will be directed toward priorities such as hiring 16 new certified teachers to help struggling students and restoring technology and student club funding. Proponents of Proposition R say that without additional funds, home values will decrease due to declining academic performance. Opponents believe the additional funds won’t be used wisely, in which case the increased tax rate will lower the value of their homes.

Analysts at the Show-Me Institute have looked at how school quality and tax rates affect home prices. In Real Estate Assessment and Property Taxation, analysts demonstrated that the quality of schools and their related tax rates are capitalized into the value of property. As the video below explains, homeowners in the Clayton and Ladue school districts in Richmond Heights pay substantially more for comparable homes with better performing schools and lower tax rates.  

In short, homeowners and voters want to get the most bang for their tax bucks. The following data on school performance and school funding may shed some light on what’s going on in the district.

First, the graph below shows how Mehlville and the districts around it performed on the MAP test in 2015 in both math and science.

Mehlville doesn’t look great. In fact, the district has the second lowest math scores in the area.

But, if we look at a second data set—college readiness indicators like average ACT scores, college remediation rates (the percentage of students who enroll in courses they should have completed in high school), and the number of AP courses the district is offering—Melville is performing better than other districts in the area (see table below). 

Even with reports of losing teachers to neighboring districts, Mehlville is able to offer a large number of AP courses and prepare students for college at about the same rate as neighboring districts with more teachers and administrators (as our next graph displays).

The graph below presents teacher/student and administrator/student ratios. Mehlville has more students per teacher than Kirkwood, but fewer students per teacher than Lindbergh, even though both are better-performing districts. Mehlville also has the highest student-to-administrator ratio in the area.

Finally, relative to other school district property tax rates in the area, Melville has the lowest rate:

So what should we make of all of this? Frankly, it’s tough to say. In some ways, it appears that Mehlville is operating efficiently. With fewer teachers and administrators and a lower tax burden, the district is achieving about as well on several key indicators as other districts. In other ways, it appears that the district is lagging behind.

The real question is whether new dollars will do anything to move the needle on student performance. Simply hiring more teachers and investing in technology and student clubs doesn’t seem particularly compelling. What’s more, will raising taxes hurt Mehlville’s competitive edge in recruiting new homeowners? Without strong answers to these questions, it is hard to determine if taxpayers should get behind any effort to increase tax rates in the district.

The post Melville School District Wants to Raise Property Tax Rates appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

P.S. 199 is a National Blue Ribbon Award-winner with high state test scores, strong parent involvement, a high percentage of white students, and a low percentage of students qualifying as poor. P.S. 191 is made up of mostly poor, Hispanic, and black students from the public housing unit across the street. Because of overcrowding issues, P.S. 191, which sits within nine blocks of P.S. 199, may enroll wealthier students if the districts are rezoned.

Parental response has been mixed. Some want to erase the boundaries between the two schools altogether, allowing for a greater mix of students at each. Others say they’ll move to another school district or send their kids to private school if their children are sent to P.S. 199.

The story of P.S. 199 and 191 may sound familiar to residents of Saint Louis County and City. Here students may live within walking distance of one school but attend another, because of where boundaries are drawn.

For years, numerous groups have advocated for a unified district in the Saint Louis area, but as SMI’s James Shuls has pointed out, this solution is too pie-in-the-sky to make a difference for students who need better education options today. As an alternative, the St. Louis Post Dispatch Editorial Board proposed an open enrollment policy last November. “Districts would agree to a set tuition amount that would follow any student who wanted to cross boundaries. Transportation would be provided for those below poverty level,” they wrote.

Open enrollment policies have become more common over the past several decades. In 1988, Minnesota passed the first mandatory open enrollment law. By 2013, 21 states had allowed students to transfer from their home district to another school district. Some of these states, like Missouri, only allow students to transfer if their current district is failing.

But there are many reasons why a student would want to transfer to another school district aside from poor student achievement. A student might just live closer to a school within another district (this example also applies to students who live in rural parts of Missouri).

Another way to create more options for students would be to allow charter schools to operate anywhere in the region, and allow students to transfer across district lines to attend them. For example, if a charter school opened in the Bayless school district in Saint Louis County, students in the Affton, Hancock, and Lindbergh districts could apply to attend.

In the upcoming legislative session, I hope lawmakers consider the alternative to unifying school districts—expanding the state’s open enrollment policy to include not just students in failing schools, but all students in the Saint Louis area and across the state. 

The post School District Boundaries Are an Issue Here, Too appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Obviously when I was 6 years old I lacked the foresight to bring my sno-cone to the kitchen table, or simply save my money for something better than an artificially colored high-fructose corn syrup treat. But as an adult, I think carefully about my purchases and investments to determine whether they are necessary and beneficial to me.

And I appreciate when cities make careful decisions about spending residents’ money, even when others around them do not.

I commend the Crestwood Board of Aldermen for scrutinizing the use of taxpayer dollars for the Crestwood Mall commercial redevelopment. (See link for project description.)  Board members opposed the heavy use of tax incentives for developer Centrum Partners, despite neighboring cities’ use of incentives for similar projects (such as Kirkwood, Webster Groves, Affton . . .). During the Oct. 9 meeting, the Board voted to defeat a proposal to use $26.6 million of public financial assistance to Centrum via tax incentives.

Centrum’s plan included one subsidy, Tax Increment Financing (TIF), and two additional taxes, which would put Crestwood’s sales tax at 10.745 percent. Neighbor Kirkwood’s sales tax is 8.175 percent.

It sure is enticing to follow the route of surrounding municipalities that used subsidies such as TIF to create shopping centers that took business away from the now vacant Crestwood Mall. But should a commercial center be heavily supported with public dollars? Would it benefit the city to have such high sales taxes? They are right to question the amount of taxpayer money going into this development.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the project may be re-visited at the Oct. 23 Board of Aldermen meeting. Hopefully, city officials will continue to stand firm against subsidies for this project.

The post Crestwood Says No To Tax Incentives appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

They aren’t asking for subsidies for their enterprise, and they don’t insist on free public land. They aren’t lobbying the state to impose their preferences on anyone else, either. While they would like more people to agree with them, they go about convincing people without coercion. They show their neighbors the benefits of their lifestyle — no local food mandates or preferential policies are involved.

Anyone who lives in an area that allows chickens can try this approach.

The post I Applaud These Locavores’ Efforts appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

McCellan had a very interesting column this past weekend, about how the state assesses golf course property. He claimed that state officials are “subsidizing” private country clubs by charging lower taxes than they charge for public courses. This is a very exciting topic for geeks like me, because the nexus of property taxation and country club golf is something I am well qualified to write about.

This question is similar to the debate we have had in the comments sections of other posts about tax incentives and abatements. One view — let’s call it the “low taxes at all costs” view — is that lower taxes are always good, in every case, for anyone, for whatever reason. Another view, which I generally hold, is that taxes should be low, but that they should also be as evenly spread out as possible — a view which can, in certain instances (like TIF), lead to arguments against lower taxes for certain taxpayers in favor of lower taxes across the board.

Golf courses in Missouri are assessed at the residential property rate of 19 percent — except for municipal courses, which are tax exempt, as McClellan states. The dispute at the heart of his column is that country club property other than the course itself, such as a clubhouse, is also taxed at the residential rate, while public course property, like a driving range, is taxed at the commercial rate of 32 percent.

How do these differences work out in practice? Tower Tee, the public par-three course in Affton — which lies at the heart of McCellan’s column, and which almost every St. Louisan is aware of — paid $77,692 in property taxes for 28 acres during 2008, according to St. Louis County public records. It paid those taxes on an appraisal of $3,162,700 — about 85 percent of that in the commercial classification.

Glen Echo Country Club, in nearby north St. Louis County, paid $65,128 in property taxes on 130 acres, with an appraisal of $3,252,800 — all residential.

Westborough Country Club, in the Webster-Kirkwood area, paid $95,057 on 73 acres and an appraised value of $7,476,600 — almost all of that at the residential rate.

So, the total tax bill for Tower Tee does not seem out of line or unfairly high here. Consider that the main reason it is smaller than the bills for other courses is that it’s a par-three course. If it were a full-sized course, that land would be taxed at the lower residential rate.

The general consensus among those I discussed this with here at the Show-Me Institute was that the overall rates should be equalized, and that the total property for all golf courses should be taxed at the lower residential rate. Some thought that a land-heavy use such as a golf course deserves some type of general tax reduction, so as not to price the game out of the ability of most people to play. This sort of falls in line with how we all agreed it made sense to tax agricultural property at an even lower rate than residential or commercial, at 12 percent.

While I have no problem with lowering the tax rates on public golf courses, I was somewhat alone in disagreeing with McClellan by not seeing anything wrong with the current situation. One of the differences between commercial and residential assessments is that the former aren’t set just based on market value, the way homes are. Commercial assessments can be set several ways, and one of the most common methods involves expected income generation. A popular driving range like Tower Tee is going to generate a substantial cash income, and that is one reason its commercial assessment is so high. It would be unrealistic to attempt to assess the property of country clubs in that fashion, because they are not trying to generate a profit from their property. Although commercial property can be assessed by market value of the land, the primary alternative use for land golf course land is to turn it into housing developments, so perhaps that’s an argument in favor of applying the residential rate.

The most important thing to me is that the clubs, even as non-profit entities, are still paying substantial property taxes — as they should be. They all have to compete against municipal courses, which pay no taxes at all. I hardly think the rest of us you are subsidizing country club membership just because state law sets their property tax rate at 19 percent. Again, though, I see nothing wrong with lowering the rates for public courses, too, in the interest of equity.

Then again, maybe Rodney Dangerfield was right in what he said about country clubs. (Scroll down about 49 clips.)

The post Bill McClellan on Property Taxes and Country Clubs appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I remember there was an effort around 2005 to open a public pool in the Affton area. I sat in on a few related meetings for my boss, Councilman Kurt Odenwald. Whenever the issue of the price for pool usage came up, there were always some who wanted a lower rate for Affton residents (aka, unincorporated area residents) and a higher charge for residents of nearby municipalities. Their reasoning was that if Shrewsbury was going to charge more to non-Shrewsbury people to use their pool, then Affton should do the same. We always had to explain to people that the county could not do that, because that person who lived in Shrewsbury was paying just as high of a county tax rate (which would have funded the pool) as the residents of the unincorporated areas were paying. They just happened to also be paying municipal property taxes, which residents of the unincorporated areas didn’t pay. A few people had trouble wrapping their heads around that.

Which gets us to the issue of unincorporated/incorporated county spending breakdowns:

Stokes points out that the County expends much more per capita on unincorporated areas of the County than it does on denser municipalities.

Now, the county does not break down its spending in that manner, so I can’t point you to a line item in the budget to prove it. But it is obvious to anyone who works for the county, and it is the same in every other county in the state. There is nothing wrong with this — if someone chooses to live in a municipality (I live in U. City), they are going to pay for the services that city provides. You can’t charge a different county tax to people based on whether or not they live in a municipality. It has to be flat across the board. But the county does have more responsibility for the people who don’t live in a city, so they are going to spend a higher percentage of the budget on those areas. That’s just the way it is. So, if the city rejoined the county, you’d get an enormous increase in assessed valuation without adding significantly to county expenditures. Result: a lower county tax rate for all, although it would not feel like a tax cut for city residents who weren’t paying to the county beforehand. It would be a very real tax cut to current county residents, however.

The other thing I want to add is that while I stand by my belief that, in immediate terms, the real beneficiaries would be county residents, I think the city reentering the county would greatly benefit city residents, too. It just might take a few years for those benefits to become apparent. Right away, as the county took over some of the city’s “county” offices, the city could cut its own tax rate to partly offset the new county taxes. Over time, as the county and city each decided which services to manage, the city’s tax rate could  be cut even further. There would not be any wholesale takeover of city services, though. For a few things, like major arterial roads under local control (think Forest Park Parkway), it would benefit the entire area if the county highway department had responsibility for the road for its entire length. The change would also bring many other benefits to city residents, but I will discuss those in the future.

Lastly, I have to run the numbers on the sales tax question. Yes, the city would be giving up some of its sales tax revenues, but its population might be large enough to get almost all of that money back from the pool distribution. You can’t really know the answer until it happens, because any particular decision could affect marginal behavior — i.e., a county resident might spend more in the city if it was in the sales-tax pool, and a city resident might keep more of their money within the city if it was a “point-of-sale” city.

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My advice to the good folks in Affton (and anywhere else where a developer is looking to assemble property) is to immediately read the Eminent Domain Survival Guide offered by the Institute for Justice. It offers invaluable information for those who find themselves in a situation where the government might take away their property. Second, I urge you to contact Anthony Martin, Missouri’s Property Rights Ombudsman. His job is to help Missourians understand the way that eminent domain is pursued in this state. And, finally, contact us at the Show-Me Institute so we can help tell your story and, hopefully, help save your home or business.

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Confluence is now larger than many public school districts — nearly the size of the Clayton and Affton districts.

The interesting thing about this situation is that nothing is preventing SLPS from running its own Confluence Academy. This is a good time to review Caroline Hoxby’s remarks about charter schools. She points out that charter schools are not doing anything that it’s illegal for public schools to do. Nobody ever said traditional public schools couldn’t imitate the best charters, or pioneer their own innovations. They just don’t do those things.

So if SLPS really wanted to replicate Confluence Academy’s success, they could: teach Spanish to kindergartners; spend extra time on reading; offer more opportunities to study chess, poetry, and African step-dance; and teach a different character value each month. (At Confluence, this month’s value is compassion.) But SLPS isn’t looking for innovations like these, because in the past, its students have had no other school to choose. It didn’t need to attract students and show results.

Maybe SLPS will start trying new things as it faces more competition from charters. But even if it doesn’t, at least families will have options besides SLPS.

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I wrote about this a few months ago. The Mayor of Affton has also chimed in with his always enjoyable opinions. The argument for freedom in choosing your hauler carries great weight with me, although — let’s be honest — we are just talking about trash removal here. In the end, it’s just garbage, not freedom of speech, or religion, or beer. Most citizens in the county are probably having trouble understanding what the fuss is about, considering that most people live in municipalities that have long done with trash service exactly what the county is planning to do — bid the contract out to a hauler that comes into your neighborhood once a week to pick up the trash.

So, what should trump here? The right of the people to keep the system as it is, in which they contract with their own hauler and pay all the costs? If they want to have trash trucks come onto their street multiple days each week, that is up to them. On the other hand, having multiple trucks come on multiple days is obviously bad for the street itself, which everone in the county pays for with our tax dollars. (You may not be aware of this, but if you live in a municipality you pay the same county tax dollars as you do if you live in the unincorporated parts.) So, lower costs versus economic freedom of choice? Usually, these two things go hand in hand. This is a rare case where they seem to be opposed. I say, always err on the side of more freedom. Scrap the trash plan for areas that clearly do not want it, and keep it for areas that do.

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