There are several key decisions to be made this week by the county and school leaders. Time is short but if both sides committed to the difficult work anything is possible.
Here's one possible outline to begin a discussion: Rather than kicking the funding can down the road for a 13th year, the County Commission steps up and increases property taxes by $24 million, equal to the school board's wish list, yet still not nearly adequate to make up for years of underfunding.
Next, the schools have three months to identify 1-2 under-utilized/under-capacity schools per district for closure or consolidation before August, 2018 (if all schools are at capacity in a given district, that district gets a pass). Such a step by the schools would indicate good faith and a willingness to participate in the tough decision-making.
Furthermore, two outside panels of citizens over eight years have now identified excess school building capacity as a problem, but the school leadership has yet to take the first meaningful step to address this wasteful practice.
That's condition # 1 to getting the $24 million.
Perhaps the Commission ties the monies to other conditions as well. For example, if the County Commission believes the status quo in school leadership is not the answer at this point in time, maybe they make known their preference that the school board names an outsider Thursday as the new superintendent.
The school board does not like being guided by the Commission, but at the same time the Commission believes there is waste (documented by two outside groups) and wants greater accountability before they go out on a limb for a tax increase.
If the schools' leadership is unwilling to make difficult decisions and prefers to accept the status quo then the $24 million could be used as a down payment on the new jail and two smaller tax increases would be easier to digest than one massive increase later to make up for the past 12 years.
The politicians would need to fine tune the details but linked frameworks such as this might begin to separate words from meaningful action.
Kurt J. Faires