Sheffield schools

THE ISSUE

Sheffield residents will be asked whether they want to increase their property taxes to maintain teachers' jobs in city schools.

Sheffield's financial struggles are known throughout the community. The city is isolated from the main thoroughfares and retail businesses are thin on the ground downtown. As a result, the sales tax base is flat in good years, leaving officials little to work with in providing services.

Now, the school system is feeling the pinch. After renewing a 5-mill property tax in May, the school board is asking voters to approve an additional 5 mills of tax to prevent layoffs in the teaching ranks.

The additional 5 mills would generation about $200,000 a year, costing the owner of a property valued at $100,000 an extra $49, school officials said. The current millage rate is 19 mills.

The city council has set a referendum for Tuesday, Sept. 11.

Sheffield schools do a good job with a group of children who, statistically speaking, are not the envy of most school systems. Sheffield has a significant percentage of low-income students. Traditionally, children from low-income families struggle academically, but Sheffield bucks that trend in many respects, in no small part because of the quality of the teaching staff.

Without the additional property tax money, Superintendent Richard Gardner said cuts in the staff will have to be made. Even with the renewal of the earlier proeprty tax, nine staff positions were left vacant after retirements, he said.

Sheffield schools - and more importantly, Sheffield's children - will suffer without the additional money.

While this small millage rate increase will help the schools maintian its corps of quality teachers, Sheffield has broader problems that will require more than maintaining the status quo. A downtown redevelopment model was put together more than a year ago, envisioning a shopping and entertainment district downtown. But until city and business leaders work more closely together and become aggressive about cleaning up derelict buildings and marketing available property, little will change. If new businesses are not interested in Sheffield, it's certain new customers won't be interested, either.

And there are areas along Jackson Highway and Hatch Boulevard - the most heavily traveled streets in the city - that are ripe for commercial development. These thoroughfares should be part of an aggressive marketing plan, too.

But in the short term, Sheffield's children need an additional 5 mills of property tax to help ensure that they receive a good education. It's a small price to pay for so important an investment.