Now that they’ve voted down a sales tax plan that could have brought in more than $80 million, Cobb County school board members are hoping state legislators will find a way to get their school district and others across the state more funding.
That’s not a new hope. But, as the economy slowly improves and state revenues rise, so do hopes that legislators will provide more funding to districts struggling to educate a growing population of students with less money from the state.
Cobb School Board Member David Banks said his sales tax plan could be the answer.
It would have two-thirds of the General Assembly pass legislation putting a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot. That proposed amendment would allow local school board members to ask voters in their community if they want to approve a penny sales tax that would be directed to K-12 public education.
Districts in counties with 50,000 or more residents would be required to roll back property taxes by at least 30 percent of what is collected by the sales tax. Revenue from the tax could be used to cover a variety of education costs, including non-construction costs like teacher salaries.
Banks hopes to get the Georgia School Boards Association to pick up the idea and push it with legislators. GSBA, however, said it wouldn’t consider doing so unless Banks and his colleague on the Cobb school board approve a resolution of support for it.
Last week, Cobb’s board rejected Banks’ resolution. Three board members, Banks, Brad Wheeler and Scott Sweeney, voted in favor of it. Four of their colleagues, chairman Randy Scamihorn, Tim Stultz, David Morgan and Kathleen Angelucci, voted against the resolution.
When it was discussed earlier this month, Scamihorn had seemed open to the idea of the sales tax. He and others noted that Cobb would have to find a way to close a budget deficit of roughly $80 million. They expressed frustration with legislators who often voted to withhold some of the money the state’s complicated funding formula calls for districts to get.
Ultimately, though, Scamihorn said he voted against the sales tax resolution with the hope that legislators are hearing from district officials about the need for more funding.
“I want to give legislators a chance,” Scamihorn said.
Banks said he hasn’t given up on the plan.
“If we had this constitutional amendment in place now, we could go to the voters and we wouldn’t have a budget problem,” he said.
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