Advertisement

Hernando County School District launches sales tax campaign

 
Published May 28, 2015

SPRING HILL — Hernando County school superintendent Lori Romano launched the grass roots campaign for the upcoming vote on a half-cent sales tax by enlisting school administrators to spread the word of the district's financial crisis.

"Principals and assistant principals, know your story," Romano told the administrators gathered in Central High School's auditorium Tuesday night.

"Nothing in the way of data and facts and figures, nothing in the way of any of that compares with you telling the personal story of your school."

That story, for now, is about the need to replace aging roofs and air conditioning units, part of the $87 million dollars in deferred maintenance needs across the district.

After the School Board determines the other cuts needed to make up the district's $12 million shortfall, the stories will have more "heart," said Beth Narvarud, one of several School Board members who attended the meeting.

That's because the board will almost certainly have to make cuts to programs parents hold dear, she said, possibly including music and art programs, middle and high school sports, and every instructional employee — counselors, reading coaches, and media specialists — not directly responsible for a classroom.

The district may also close undercapacity schools, at a savings of slightly more than $1 million each, Romano said.

The School Board will receive more information about these cuts at its next workshop on June 9. Romano said that she will later make recommendations about which programs the district thinks are most essential to preserve, but that the final decision will be the board's.

The campaign strategy of recruiting administrators — who were, in turn, encouraged to enlist teachers and parents — differs sharply from the last year's failed push for a 1-cent sales tax that would have been shared by the county and schools.

Then the emphasis was on fundraising for a political action committee to send out advertisements advocating for the tax. And officials mostly stayed silent because state election laws forbid school employees to campaign for tax increases.

But they are allowed to demonstrate the need for funds, to "educate, not advocate," Romano told them.

And that need is bad enough that one member of the political action committee supporting the referendum, Jimmy Lodato, compared the district's situation to a form of bankruptcy.

"If we were a corporation and I were CEO," he said, "I would ask you for permission to file Chapter 13."

Contact Dan DeWitt at ddewitt@tampabay.com; follow @ddewitttimes.