Local school districts are not above receiving criticism, but it ought to be factual. Public bashing of the Grosse Pointe Public School System is in vogue, but the truth should matter.
A letter published by the Grosse Pointe News last week claims to debunk “myths” about the GPPSS such as that “families in select communities like the Grosse Pointes, in order to benefit from a perceived ‘better’ public school district, seemingly giving their child a better education for those higher tax dollars than what another communities district would deliver for lower property taxes.”
The writer implies “based on comparative data” (which is conveniently not stated) that GPPSS taxes are higher and therefore “academic achievement” should be higher.
So higher taxes should deliver better results? Here’s a sampling of districts in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, and Washtenaw counties whose aggregate school property taxes (Homestead Millages) are higher than the GPPSS’:
- Ecorse Public Schools
- Hazel Park Public Schools
- River Rouge Public Schools
- Inkster Public Schools
- Southfield Public Schools
- South Redford Public Schools
- Trenton Public Schools
Not exactly a “Newsweek” list. I could go on. In fact I could list the 30 school districts in these four counties whose local school Homestead millage rates are higher than the GPPSS’s.
If the letter writer and the Grosse Pointe News understood how school funding and taxes actually worked they could have made a clever argument in an attempt to correlate taxes and educational outcomes. Allow me to help them with this possible theory.
“The reason why “academic achievement” in the GPPSS is declining is that GPPSS school tax rates have dropped nearly 20% over the last three years.”
Of course this logic is a faulty as the original – but it is true. GPPSS Homestead Property school tax rates have dropped 19% from 2020 levels and this trend will continue. The GP News letter knows just enough about how the Hold Harmless levies work to get it all wrong.
Hold Harmless tax levies have become less and less valuable in the mechanics of Michigan school funding as Proposal A continues to deliver on its promise to equalize per pupil funding. This will not stop. So I have bad news for the GP News and the letter writer. Your taxes will continue to decline
For even more precision we could also look at Taxable Value – which the letter writer failed to analyze as well. Millage rates don’t tell the whole story. Taxes paid are the product of Homestead Millage Rates times Taxable Value. The letter writer trades on one of the long standing myths of Grosse Pointe property values.
On a per pupil basis, GPPSS Homestead Property taxable value is 9th among the four counties referenced above. For all the vaunted comparisons between Grosse Pointe and “like districts” Birmingham and Bloomfield, the truth is GPPSS’ per pupil Homestead taxable value is nearly 70% lower than those two Oakland County blue-bloods. And, oh by the way, their local school property tax rates are higher as well.
If other districts wanted to use the same logic to identify their “like districts” do you know who might compare themselves to the GPPSS? Eastpointe, Warren Woods, Lakeview, Allen Park Public Schools. All of these have per pupil Homestead Taxable Value about 70% lower than the GPPSS.
The GPPSS is not above criticism, but I encourage my fellow community members to think critically about these matters.