On the Ballot Sales tax, school takeover amendment facing voters

By Collin Kelley

When voters go to the polls on Nov. 8 (or during early voting leading up to election day), residents will have more than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to mull over. Along with a host of local and state elections, voters will also be considering the creation of the controversial Opportunity School District, which requires an amendment to the constitution, and Atlantans will decide if more transportation options are worth paying the highest sales tax in the state.

Sales Tax Referenda

Officials from the City of Atlanta and MARTA were on hand at the October meeting of the Buckhead Council of Neighborhoods to discuss the two sales tax referendums that will appear on the ballot.

The transportation special local option sales tax (TSPLOST) referendum is asking for an 0.4 percent increase for street, sidewalk and trail projects. If approved by voters, it would raise anywhere from $250 to $300 million over the next five years. A second referendum would ask for a half-penny sales tax for MARTA expansion projects.

If voters approve both referendums, it would push the city’s sales tax from 8 to 8.9 percent – the highest in Georgia.

Tom Weyandt, former director of comprehensive planning at the Atlanta Regional Commission who is advising the city on the TSPLOST, said that the 0.4 percent increase would fund major projects, including purchasing the rest of the right-of-way for the

Atlanta BeltLine, help refurbish streets, repair and built new sidewalks, create additional multiuse trails, and provide money to expand the bike share program.

For MARTA, the extra sales tax is expected to raise $2.5 billion that would go toward light rail along the BeltLine, a new line connecting Lidbergh station to the Emory university campus, and extending the west line to I-285. MARTA has launched a new website at moremarta.com to educate voters on what passage of the sales tax referendum and the various projects involved.

Opportunity School District

Voters will also decide whether to create the Opportunity School District (OSD), which requires a constitutional amendment that would allow the state to take over chronically failing public schools.

The OSD would create a new school district that would have its own superintendent appointed by the governor. Schools that have consistently fallen below 60 on the state accountability system for three consecutive years could be brought into the OSD.

The accountability system measures every school on student achievement, growth and progress, and whether the school is closing the gap between the lowest performing students and the state average. Schools are then given a score of 0 to 100.

There are currently 127 schools that meet the criteria for OSD, with 22 of those being in the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) district. No more than 20 schools in any given year can be taken over by the state and the OSD is capped at having 100 schools.

Under Georgia’s OSD, the state would have four options for underperforming schools: a full tak eover; shared operation with a school’s local district; conversion to charter school; and, as a last resort, closing the school.

Atlanta Public Schools Board of Education member Nancy Meister said the district had been working hard alongside Superintendent Meria Carstarphen to turnaround the system’s failing schools.

“We are trying to be proactive so we don’t became part of OSD should it happen,” Meister said. “We have targeted our lowest performing schools, partnered with outside resources, and took $23 million out of this year’s budget to turn these schools around so we are not on the list.”