High Cost of Stinginess

Jacksonville, commercial center of Florida's Duval County, wears all the badges of a prosperous city in a space-age state: bustling expressways, glass-skinned office towers, a rebuilt water front. But Duval's high schools are so poor that teachers raise money for supplies by sending students out to sell candy and chewing gum. Low salaries keep the schools short of teachers and shabbily maintained. Textbooks are old; one history hesitantly predicts that man might some day orbit the earth. But stingy spending on schools finally proved to be a costly policy. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools has disaccredited all 15 of the high schools in Duval County--the first time that the association ever whacked off a whole system.

As in most U.S. cities, Duval school budgets are determined by real-estate taxes. But two-thirds of the county's householders duck out of taxes by virtue of low appraisals of the market value of their properties. When these appraisals are figured at the official assessment rate of 42% , they mostly fall below $5,000, which is then forgiven under Florida's ancient "homestead exemption." Every attempt by worried parents to elect an assessor who would raise appraisals has met defeat. Turning from the polls to the courtroom, a band of determined Jacksonville citizens this week begins testifying in a suit that seeks to force the assessment of all property at fully 100% of market value.

Disaccreditation by the Southern Association put the county's 116,000 high-school students in a jam. Though they can still enter Florida's state-run universities freely, private and out-of-state colleges often require that the applicant be a graduate of an accredited high school. Duval County also worried about its economy: new business nowadays can hardly be attracted to areas with schools authoritatively pronounced to be bad.

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