Tidwell creates info website for BISD VATRE
Joe Tidwell knows better than most Boerne residents the background, needs and issues facing the Boerne independent School District as it moves forward with a Voter Approved Tax Rate Election Nov. 4.
A former BISD trustee, Tidwell put his knowledge of the school district, school financing and school performance into a website — kendallfreidenker.com or “free thinker.”
And while he agrees Boerne educators make less than some of their area counterparts, he questions using that argument as a tactic to get people to approve the VATRE.
Which is why he created the website: So folks could make up their own minds.
“I thought one thing I could do to help the community is provide really good, solid data and information for people to make their own decisions, and not try to tell people what to do. Or how to vote,” said Tidwell, who served three terms after first being elected to BISD in 2016.
Traditionally, a VATRE approved by the electorate funds daily operations and student programming.
He credits the district for going after the remaining so-called “gold pennies” for the school fund, but he disagrees with its approach — especially arguments the district is losing teachers because of low pay.
“I might agree with what they want, but not how they're talking about it. And so that's why I started this site,” he said.
Boerne is one of the few districts that has been consistently A-rated, but achieving such academic success with a lesser paid staff has its drawbacks, Tidwell said.
“It goes back to an idea that they've been dancing around and now are explicit about — that one in five teachers have left the district because of low pay. And that’s simply not true. It’s not a true statement,” he said.
Up until two years ago, he said, Boerne consistently had a turnover rate significantly lower than the state average. Currently, Boerne’s lack of educator retention is the same as the state average — 18 percent.
“And that's where the one in five comes from,” he said. “But to say that one in five teachers left because of pay, that's a much, much bolder claim, with nothing to support it. There’s no evidence that Boerne has a unique turnover problem.”
Tidwell said there have been no studies to show why Boerne teachers are leaving.
“Clearly, we pay less. And clearly, I know teachers who have left Boerne ISD because they needed more money,” he said. “But to say that one in five teachers have left and the reason is paying stipends is an unsupported assertion.”
Tidwell does not dispute that BISD teachers make less than their peers, but to say that is the cause of an exodus has him replying “show me the data.”
“Saying that every teacher who's left the district did so because of pay without any statistics, that includes things like teachers who've retired. It includes teachers who got a promotion to a non-teaching job; those count as turnover even if they stayed in the district,” he added.
Tidwell acknowledged the subject of school funding is “incredibly complicated, but I try to make it really simple. The tax yield from a golden penny is the most efficient tax yield that any school district can get.”
Tidwell said there are up to 8 cents of the maintenance and operation, or M&O, tax rate — known as “golden pennies” — a school district can levy that have a special status.
“And it generates more revenue than any other part of the M&O tax rate,” he said. “It’s the most efficient tax rate and a whole lot of other districts have done it. From a tax perspective, it’s the most advantageous portion of the tax rate to maximize.”
Tidwell said use of the “golden pennies” is a well-supported argument for the VATRE.
“It’s the most efficient tax dollars we can get. We actually get more money than we levy in taxes for it,” the former trustee said. “It helps bring us closer in revenue per student to area districts and increases overall revenue so we can do things like the district is saying: pay teachers, pay everything in the maintenance and operations budget.”
He predicted voters deciding the fate of the VATRE will have one of two perspectives.
“One person will say, ‘Holy cow, look at everything the district’s done despite having less revenue per student than other folks — let’s try to remediate that,’ he said.“The argument against this is, ‘We already pay a lot of taxes. Where has the district made significant efforts to improve? Show me.”
Early voting is Monday through Oct. 31.
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