St. Paul Public Schools’ $125,000 Campaign for Referendum Vote Sparks Discussion
On Election Day, a majority of St. Paul voters approved a special school district tax levy that will cost some $37 million per year for the next decade, adjusted annually for inflation. This significant investment in the school district’s future has raised questions about the campaign efforts that led to its approval.
To help convince residents to vote on the $1,073-per-student tax levy, St. Paul Public Schools hired a consultant known for promoting public education and public health organizations, printed its own lawn signs, recruited student volunteers to record robo-call messages, and filmed campaign-like YouTube testimonials featuring parents, students, and teachers. The school district effort — which cost taxpayers about $125,000 — rolled out on top of and separately from independent expenditures in direct support of the levy, by the “Vote Yes for Strong Schools” campaign led by parents and staffers.
Understanding the Guidelines
Officially, school districts are not allowed to spend district funds to promote a ‘Yes’ vote on referendums, according to the state Attorney General’s Office, but they are required to send out mailers laying out how much money will be raised by the levy and what it will be spent on. School district officials have said they conferred with in-house general counsel and the Minnesota School Boards Association on their additional efforts, such as robo-calls and yard signs printed on school district printers, to make sure they had complied with the letter of state law.
About $48,000, or more than a third of their $125,000 in expenditures, were spent on the requisite mailers. “Protect their future,” read the school district lawn signs and levy literature. “Invest in our community.” The attorney general has ruled that school boards may spend “reasonable amounts” of district funds to “impartially place pertinent facts” before voters, according to the Minnesota School Boards Association. St. Paul Public Schools currently has a budget of approximately $1 billion.
“And so when you think of $126,000, it’s money and I get that,” said SPPS Superintendent Stacie Stanley. “It’s not 10%, it’s not 50%, it’s not 70% of the budget.” The district’s informational campaign was about ensuring residents have the information they need to make an informed decision when they vote, and no “Vote Yes” materials were distributed by the district, officials said.
Reaching the Community
School districts and other public agencies are allowed to distribute factual, impartial information on a levy, such as the size of a levy proposal and how the money will be spent. By statute, districts must send voters a mailer with those details. The school board determines what a reasonable amount of money would be to spend on informing voters.
A total of $124,791 was spent on referendum activities, including mailers, yard signs, radio and television ads, supplemental pay for teachers featured in materials, and a consultant. Some funds went for advertising the referendum on TV channels or radio stations targeting Hmong, Somali, and Spanish-speaking residents. “We have to really be culturally responsive about how we’re reaching out and it requires translations, it requires more than just community meetings,” Stanley said.
Stanley and other district staff also spent time getting the word out on the referendum, attending Rondo Days, Hmong International Freedom Festival, and presenting to the Midway Chamber of Commerce, St. Paul College, and the African American Leadership Council, among others. “So we were going to make certain that our major groups of individuals, that we had outreached to them,” Stanley said.
Statewide Context
Statewide, 45 school districts had operating levy referendums on the ballot this year. Of those, 31 were approved by voters. The amount of money per-pupil provided by the approved levies ranged from $275 to $2,700. The highest per-pupil amount was approved for Granada Huntley-East Chain Public Schools in Martin County.
Tom Sager, the district’s executive chief of financial services, estimates that around 80% of levy funds will go toward district wages based on how district revenue is typically distributed. Around 8% of the district’s budget goes to administrative services. “And the interesting thing about that 8% … we compare and pressure test that against well, what else is that — what are other people spending? And we’re actually below the state average in other districts like us in that administrative support,” Sager said.
For more information on the St. Paul Public Schools’ referendum and campaign efforts, visit Here
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