Vermilion Parish Superintendent Tommy Byler answers Chamber’s questions about April 30 sales tax proposition

On the April 30 ballot, Vermilion Parish School Board is seeking a .5% sales tax increase to fund teacher and employee pay raises. 
The Vermilion Chamber of Commerce submitted questions to Superintendent Tommy Byler. The Chamber has allowed the Abbeville Meridional to run the responses. The Meridional is running Byler’s responses exactly as he returned them to the Chamber.

Since Vermilion Parish has the highest sales tax rates in Acadiana, how do you think raising the tax rate .5% will impact the businesses in our community? See tax rates below:
Sales tax in nearby communities Sales Taxes in Vermilion
New Iberia: 9.45%
Lafayette: 8.45%
Broussard: 8.95%
Youngsville 9.95%
Crowley: 9.95%
Opelousas: 10.2%
New Orleans: 9.45%
Baton Rouge: 9.95%

Sales tax in nearby communities Sales Taxes in Vermilion

Abbeville 10.45%
Delcambre 9.70%
Erath 8.70%
Gueydan 8.20%
Kaplan 9.20%
Maurice 8.75%
New Orleans: 9.45%

Unincorporated Gueydan area 8.2%
Unincorporated Kaplan area 9.2%
Unincorporated Abbeville area 8.7%

Byler: I think we must be very clear when we say that Vermilion Parish has the highest sales tax rate. The Abbeville sales tax rate is one of the highest in the area and recent additions for city operations have increased this number, but overall, the tax rates in our other cities within the parish are very comparable to the nearby areas.
Any time you have an increase in tax rate, there could be some type of impact on the business community. However, we feel that investing in public education is one of the areas that provides the best “return on investment.” Currently, Vermilion Parish has 1.5 cents sales tax dedicated to the public school system. 1 cent of this is used for general operations and the other .5 cent is used for salaries and benefits from the 2008 sales tax election. The 1.5 cents to education in Vermilion ranks as the lowest in the state dedicated to education along with the parishes of Acadia, Orleans, Caddo, and Tensas parish. Three other districts have a 1.75 cents sales tax, and the other 60 districts have a dedication of sales taxes between 2.0 and 3.5 cents for education.
Despite being at the bottom of the list in sales tax dedication, the achievement level of our school system has been superb. In the latest school performance scores from the state of Louisiana, Vermilion was ranked as the #2 district in performance. We have also led the Acadiana area and surrounding parishes for the past 10 years in performance. Because of this type of data, the education system is one of the biggest draws for moving into Vermilion Parish. This, in turn, is better for the business community. Daily, we receive calls about our school system and moving into our parish for a better educational opportunity. As a school system, we feel like it is crucial that we continue to offer schools that can generate interest in our parish. Having a salary schedule that is a little more competitive with the surrounding districts will be essential in maintaining the human capital necessary for this to happen. Thus, we feel like the “invest in Vermilion” concept is very important for us at this time.
In the end, we feel like recruiting and retaining human capital helps us to continue producing quality schools and students. These successes hopefully outweigh the impact that the ½ cent would have on the business community.

Did the Vermilion Parish School Board research the cost difference to the taxpayers by putting the proposed tax increase on the April 30 ballot rather than the March 26 ballot? If the deadline was missed for the March election, was the November election considered to save taxpayer dollars?

Byler: As we continued to see the shortage of certified employees and the lack of applicants for many of our support positions, we felt as a system that we did not have time to wait to bring out this initiative. We also wanted to have something in place for the start of the new school year to retain and recruit employees. Since we did not meet the deadline for the March election, the next available date was the April election. As it turned out, we will be splitting the cost of the election in a two-way split instead of a three-way split that could have happened in March or November. The timing of getting this out and in place before the start of the 2022-2023 school year was the priority from my office, and the April election was the earliest that we were able to get on the ballot.

With the emergence of Charter Schools in the parish because of school overcrowding, was any consideration given to a portion being dedicated to building/improvements of schools and/or developing of new schools when the sales tax proposition was being developed?

Byler: While it is completely understandable that our facilities need some help and that we have some overcrowding issues in the northern part of the parish, we feel like we need to develop a plan for the long-term future of our parish’s facilities. We must remember that we had $52 million dollars of damages from the last two hurricanes and that we are currently still in the process of fixing buildings. Insurance and FEMA have been very slow to reimburse, and we are having to phase in repairs. Because of this obstacle, the long-term plans of building adjustments, the moving of students, and other factors are waiting in the wings to take place.
Most building additions and/or development of new schools is very relevant to the northern end of the parish. Asking for a parish-wide sales tax to fund schools only in the north was not something that we felt would be well received.
If we are fortunate to pass this tax and benefit employees throughout the parish, we are expecting an increase in our per pupil MFP funding. We are currently studying how this increase can be used to possibly go out for excess revenue bonds to begin facility improvements without having to go to the citizens for an increased property millage.
Priority wise, we felt like this was the first step needed to continue the quality of our education system and that this, along with the completion of hurricane repairs, would catapult us into some strategic planning that should have been done 10 years ago.

What has the school board done, or has plans to do, to address other indicators of teacher retention outside of pay alone?

Byler: As a school system, we do feel like we are taking steps to increase our teacher work force. Retention of teachers in Vermilion has not been a major issue, but recruiting has. The curriculum support for our teachers in Vermilion is second to none as verified by teachers who have left our system to only return later.
The biggest issue for us is getting teachers to give Vermilion a chance. When new teachers, the few that are coming out of college, or those making career changes to education, look at pay scales and see Vermilion 3-5 thousand less in starting pay we are behind the eight ball to start.
We do know that a slight increase in salary will help, but we also know that it will not solve all of our problems. Because of this, we have started three initiatives in the past year as a school system to do our part to address these issues.
Educators Rising – We are starting two programs, one at Erath High and one at Abbeville High, in which we will begin a pre-educator pathway that students can earn college credit toward their education degree. It is also an opportunity for students to become para-professional certified upon completion of their courses. This “grow-your-own” program is one of our efforts to start interest in our next wave of future educators.
Reach University – We have teamed up with a program called Reach University that is designed for support personnel on a school campus to take their college courses in pursuit of a certified teaching degree. We have had over 50 employees show initial interest and currently have over 20 of our employees enrolled in the program.
240 Tutoring – This program provides free online tutoring to our teachers and other employees who are attempting to gain teacher certification but are struggling to pass certification exams. Many of our one-year-only teachers who are close to final certification are being helped by this program to complete their certification. This program will help to increase the number of teachers who are not only certified, but who can be retained each year.
As a system, we recognize the issues that are occurring nationwide and have been very proactive in trying to help our own cause. This “invest in Vermilion” initiative is our hope for an added piece to our overall efforts.

Would the school board consider a withdrawing proposition and revise the “in perpetuity” language on the ballot to include a sunset on the proposition after a certain period?

Byler: Because this tax is 100% dedicated to salaries and benefits, we do not feel like language such as this is favorable for us at this time. Not having other sources of revenue to draw from makes this a very important source of revenue for the future of our school system.

Has the school board looked internally at its own budget to reallocate funds for an increase pay for school employees? If so, please explain the areas wherein the budget was reallocated, and how much of the overall budget or amount will be dedicated?

Byler: This past school year, we have done a complete review of our budget. As a new superintendent, I wanted extensive training on the financial aspects of running our system. During the 2021-2022 school year, we were able to adjust and cut parts of our budget that allowed for a support employee raise that ranged from 4% to 6%. While this adjustment was different for some people based on their years within our system, it overall put our support employees in a little better position. This was over an $800,000 investment into our support systems.
Currently our budget is around $104 million dollars. Nearly 80% of this budget, around $80,000,000 is locked up in salaries and benefits, which includes salaries, school system retirement obligations, school system Medicare obligations and portions of insurance premiums. Around $24,000,000 is tied up in operations cost. There is not a whole lot of space to reallocate many of our funds.
Vermilion, which is the #18 largest in student population, generates local funds of $28,000,000. In comparison to other districts with student populations comparable to us, their local funds range from $32,000,000 to as high as $140,000,000. Unfortunately, our current budget structure does not allow much room for deviation due to the fact that 80% of the budget is already salaries and benefits.

Where does Vermilion Parish rank in Acadiana, or the state. in teacher salaries? If the proposition is adopted, what is the amount of increase in salary and benefits per school employee?

Byler: Currently, Vermilion Ranks #10 of 11 in Acadiana and surrounding parishes. In what is officially, Acadiana, we rank #8 of 9. After the millage of 1998, Vermilion got as high as #2. After the 2008 sales tax, we ranked #5, and with this increase, it would put us back in that same area as #5 or #6.
Our goal is to increase the base scale by 5-7% across the board. This is a systematic change that affects the entire pay scale. This is how school system scales operate based upon years of experience and degrees. Basically, for simplified purposes, for every $20,000 on the base pay scale it would go up $1,000.
Systematically, this is the only way to make our scales comparable to other districts.

If the Legislature would relax the return-to-work policies for retired teachers, how would that impact the teacher shortages in Vermilion Parish?

Byler: The current legislation that is being discussed is for retirees to be able to come back and work and earn up to 50% of their retirement benefits. Currently this sits at 25%. It is hard to say that this would bring teachers back to us, but it would help us in situations where long term subs are needed. Currently we have retired subs who would do more for us, but they reach their 25% earnings capacity and are unable to continue. Certified teacher subs, many who are retirees, are able to continue with high quality instruction when our teachers are out.