Bored of Education

(Editor's note: This is treacherous ice on which I'm about to tread; I've got family and friends who are schoolteachers, or retired schoolteachers, and I know several past or present school board members. So let me start out by saying that nothing in today's essay reflects anything done by any specific individual, and that opinions expressed here are mine, and mine alone, and have not been endorsed by anyone. Not even me, maybe. Get it? Got it? Good. Deep, cleansing breath now.)

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If you own a house valued at $63,000, and you live in the city of Duquesne, you're paying about 56 percent of your annual $2,392 in property taxes to the Duquesne City School District.

The owner of a similar house in Our Fair City is paying 63 percent of his $1,814 in property taxes to the McKeesport Area School District.

And the owners of $63,000 homes in West Mifflin or Port Vue are paying a whopping 68 percent of their roughly $1,900 in school taxes to their respective school districts, West Mifflin Area and South Allegheny.

Have 68 percent of the taxpayers in the South Allegheny School District ever been to a school board meeting? Get real. I'd be stunned if it was 6 to 8 percent. I've never been to a South Allegheny School District board meeting, but if they're anything like the school board meetings I have attended in a half-dozen or more communities around Western Pennsylvania, there might be 20 or 30 people in the audience if there's an extremely hot issue. Otherwise, the board members usually outnumber the members of the public.

So ask yourself these questions:

1.) Do you know which school district you live in?

2.) Can you name one of the members of your nine-person school board? (If you don't live in the City of Picksberg, no fair naming members of the Picksberg public school board, who are always on the news.)

3.) Can you describe the duties of a public school director in Pennsylvania?

Don't feel embarrassed if you can't answer any of those questions. Since moving into North Bittyburg, I haven't been to a school board meeting yet, and I wouldn't know who the board members were if I tripped over them. As for knowing the duties of the school board, I probably wouldn't if it hadn't been for my mediocre career as a newspaper reporter. (Public school directors vote on how to expend the district's money, which in point of fact, gives them near total control over hirings and firings, what projects will be funded, and what purchases will be made, within the limits of state and federal laws.)

Yet Mon-Yough area residents are paying one-half to two-thirds of their property taxes to a government body that most of them know nothing about.

And here's the dirty little secret about your local school board: Some of the members like it just fine if you stay ignorant, and Pennsylvania's laws encourage them to keep you that way.

Oh, every so often, some issue explodes into the news, and people demand answers. Take the firing of the school superintendent in Mt. Lebanon. The school board, according to what has leaked into the newspapers, was dissatisfied with her performance, so they bought out the remainder of her contract at a cost of nearly a half-million dollars. When the good citizens of that Great State of Mt. Lebanon demanded to know why, the school board said it was a "personnel matter" and refused to say.

Under Pennsylvania law, when a public board of elected officials tells you something is a "personnel matter," they're actually telling you to "pound sand." Ostensibly, not discussing hiring or firing decisions is supposed to protect the rights of the person whose job performance (or lack thereof) is being debated, but in practice, calling something a "personnel matter" in Pennsylvania is the cover-all provision for hiding information from the people.

I once had a local borough council toss me out of a meeting because they wanted to discuss a "personnel matter" in private. What was the personnel matter, I asked?

"The sewage authority."

A sewage personnel matter? Something stunk, all right, but it wasn't sewage. I complained on the spot to the borough's solicitor, and after some back and forth, they allowed me back in.

But even if they hadn't, there wasn't much I could have done. I could have filed a complaint with the district magistrate. The complaint might have taken weeks to get a hearing, and the borough could have appealed any ruling, meaning that it might be months before the disputed information was finally released. Even if found guilty on all counts, the borough would have been forced to cough up a $100 fine.

That's under the stringent terms of Pennsylvania's Open Meetings Law. Let's say, hypothetically, that the members of a school board are breaking the law by refusing to discuss the reasons they fired a superintendent. A hundred bucks seems like a small price to pay to cover up a half-million dollars in hinky dealings.

In the meantime, they can keep embarrassing information, or other things they don't want to discuss, out of the public eye until the furor blows over. I suspect that after the holidays, all but a few hardcore activists in Mt. Lebanon, for instance, will have forgotten about what Mike Madison over at Pittsblog calls "SableGate." And that will suit most members of the Caketown school board just jam dandy, I suspect.

Closer to home, the South Allegheny School Board bought out the remainder of its superintendent's contract, though at least, to their credit, they said why; they didn't approve of his decision to build a new school, the cost of which helped drive school taxes from 14.98 mills in 2003 to the current 20.96 mills.

Unfortunately for the taxpayers, in a move that the Post-Gazette called "unconscionable," the lame-duck South Allegheny school board that left office in 2003 extended the superintendent's contract, with little or no input from the public, and over the wishes of the incoming, newly-elected school directors. Indeed, several of the school directors said they never even saw the contract before it was voted on.

Then, the neighboring McKeesport Area School District hired the same superintendent to run their own system --- and darned near did it in secret.

Now, I'm not saying anything was done that was illegal or unethical. In fact, I've heard some very good reports on the superintendent in question from people who have worked with him.

But running around and sliding these things under the noses of the people --- people who are each paying thousands of dollars per year in wage taxes and property taxes to maintain these school districts --- stinks to high heaven. You've got to admit, it's one hell of a way to run a railroad.

What needs to be done? Some bright --- make that "brave" --- state legislator needs to get some tougher public disclosure laws in place for all public elected bodies in Pennsylvania. Right now, the number of public records that are not available for the public to look at --- things as basic as police incident reports --- is stunning and sickening.

Or, say, the employment contracts of school superintendents.

News organizations have been agitating for tougher disclosure laws for years, but with their public credibility and respect hovering somewhere between "grave robbers" and "loan sharks," they're not exactly the best ones to be running the ball.

So writing angry letters to the editor, or going to board meetings to yell at the school directors, is just a lot of wasted energy. The newspapers know, and are powerless to do anything; the school board members know, and they don't care.

Instead, people in the Mon-Yough area, Mt. Lebanon or elsewhere who feel like they've been played for fools need to channel their anger into a lobbying effort, focused on their state senators and legislators, and directed at getting sweeping reforms of the state Public School Code (which hasn't been overhauled since 1949!) and the Open Meetings and Open Records laws. They're the only ones who have any power or motivation to change things.

Now, question number four: Do you know who your state senator and legislator is? That problem, I can help with: Click here, and type in your zip code in the upper right-hand corner.

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By the way: To find out how I calculated the property tax figures cited today, click on the "Continue reading..." link at the end of this essay.

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In other news, a Glassport native has been named an auxiliary bishop of the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese. The Rev. Paul Bradley will be ordained Feb. 2, according to Lillian Thomas in the Post-Gazette. Megan McCloskey has more in the Trib.

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To Do This Weekend: McKeesport Symphony Orchestra presents "The Glorious Sounds of Christmas" at McKeesport Area High School, 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Tickets start at $8. Call (412) 403-0002 or visit www.mckeesportsymphony.org. ... it's the final weekend for the train show at McKeesport Model Railroad Club, and for Charlotte's Web at the McKeesport Little Theater.

How I Did The Math

I assumed a house valued at $63,000, because that seemed like a nice compromise price for houses in the 11th Ward of Our Fair City (Myer Park, in particular); the 1st Ward of Duquesne (the area near Kennywood Park); and Port Vue and West Mifflin. Frankly, the $63,000 number was a little high in Duquesne --- I found only a handful of houses in the mid-$60,000 range in the city --- but I needed a common base of comparison.

Property taxes in Pennsylvania are assessed in mills. If your community's tax rate is 5 mills, then that represents 50 cents in taxes --- or $0.50 --- for every $100 of value that your house is worth.

In other words, if your house is assessed at $50,000, you would divide it by $100 and come up with a multiplier number of 500. Then you'd multiply that 500 by the tax rate of $0.50 and get the total community property tax on your house of $250. (500 x $0.50 = $250)

Confused now? Good. It gets worse.

Estimating the impact of school taxes in Duquesne and Our Fair City is tricky, because they assess land and buildings separately. The land is taxed at a higher rate, which is supposed to encourage people not to leave lots vacant. (It's an outdated concept, frankly.) After checking property values in Myer Park and in Duquesne's 1st Ward, using the county's website, I settled on a lot valued at $8,400 in Myer Park and a lot valued at $5,900 in Duquesne, which seemed to be what several of the lots in those neighborhoods were assessed at. I then subtracted the cost of the lot from the $63,000 median house price to come up with the value of the building.

The source of the millages for the various taxing bodies was Allegheny County Treasurer John Weinstein's website. The property values for lots in Our Fair City and Duquesne came from the county real estate assessment website.

The final math breaks down like this:

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House valued at $63,000 total in each community

Allegheny County tax on all properties: 4.69 mills ($0.469)
($63,000/$100) x $0.469 (46.9 cents) = $295.47 county tax

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Our Fair City

School tax: 18.21 mills (McKeesport area school district)
($63,000/$100) x $1.821 = $1,147.23

City tax (buildings): 4.26 mills
($54,600/$100) x $0.426 = $232.60

City tax (land): 16.50 mills
($8,400/$100) x $1.65 = $138.60

Total property taxes (including county): $1,813.90
Percentage school tax: 63 percent

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City of Duquesne

School tax: 21.1 mills (Duquesne City school district)
($63,000/$100) x $2.11 = $1,329.30

City tax (buildings): 11.47 mills
($54,600/$100) x $1.147 = $654.94

City tax (land): 19.0 mills
($8,400/$100) x $1.90 = $112.10

Total property taxes (including county): $2,391.81
Percentage school tax: 56 percent

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Port Vue borough

School tax: 20.96 mills (South Allegheny school district)
($63,000/$100) x $2.096 = $1,320.48

Borough tax: 5.11 mills
($63,000/$100) x $0.511 = $321.93

Total property taxes (including county): $1,937.88
Percentage school tax: 68 percent

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West Mifflin borough

School tax: 21.092 mills (West Mifflin area school district)
($63,000/$100) x $2.10 = $1,323

Borough tax: 5.27 mills
($63,000/$100) x $0.527 = $332.01

Total property taxes (including county): $1,950.48
Percentage school tax: 68 percent