Even before classes began this fall, Principal Pam Adams was greeting new families at Castlen Elementary School. They had moved to Grand Bay, where subdivisions are muscling out cotton in the lush, flat land of southern Mobile County.

   Castlen opened in 1968 to serve 350 children. Today, it has three times that number. The school has the same kitchen and cafeteria it had 32 years ago, the small size of which requires the first lunch shift to begin at 10 a.m. Ms. Adams has to pack many of the newcomers into 27 portable classrooms. Children in those cramped quarters lose as much as an hour every day trooping back and forth to lunch or the library, or lining up at two portable restrooms.

   Ms. Adams keeps a daily vigil for any suspicious odors rising from the little sewage treatment plant behind the school, hoping it can handle the demand.

   Recently, she learned the local water board expects 1,000 families to move into the area each year for at least the next five years.

   "It's a great community," says Ms. Adams, who is in her third year at Castlen. Parents recently raised $10,000 selling candy to buy six new computers and a dozen printers.

   Still, on Aug. 17, 1999, local voters helped defeat a Mobile County property tax increase that would have generated $22 million a year to build new schools and renovate old ones like Castlen. Then came another blow: Local legislators refused to approve a less-costly alternative that would have at least provided relief for Castlen's crowding.

   In both instances, Mobile County's schoolchildren lost out because a rattletrap state constitution fails to move education into Alabama's new Mercedes age. That document belongs in the 19th century, when mule-drawn wagons hauled cotton to the gins. It's obsolete today, when information floods the Internet and learning is a life-long endeavor.

   The 1901 constitution prevents local government from levying reasonable property taxes to support public schools. Thus, local officials must beg the Legislature to amend the constitution's stingy limits.

   This procedure gives legislators a blank check to meddle back home. They can add whatever conditions they please to an amendment or tax act before sending it to local voters for approval.

   Worse, the constitution turns legislators into petty tyrants because it doesn't allow county governments to pass local ordinances. The Legislature writes the local laws instead. In practice, such law-making is done by the legislators who represent the county. Under a rule known as "local courtesy," however, a single state senator among that small delegation can veto any proposal -- no matter how desperately folks back home need relief.

   These provisions helped a group of landowners and other opponents defeat the proposed school tax increase in Mobile County last year. First, they turned to their friends in the local legislative delegation, especially Sen. George Callahan. These legislators cut the school board's request by a third before agreeing to let local voters decide the fate of the tax. Next, they backed up the voting date to a time when schools would be closed and many parents on vacation.

   It was an easy victory for opponents, who kept harping on distrust of the school system -- while doing all they could to foster such attitudes.

   Last April, the Mobile County Commission came forward with a bold plan to pump $75 million into the school system as a down payment on $250 million in construction needs. Commission President Sam Jones received a thunderous standing ovation from business and civic leaders when he proposed diverting several county revenue sources to support this bond issue.

   But Mr. Callahan, a Republican still nursing political wounds from old battles with the commission's two Democrats, was lying in wait. He pushed an alternative that would siphon to schools a portion of the revenues from the county's 1-cent sales tax, crippling other services. There was no way the county commissioners could buy his scheme.

   A furious Sen. Vivian Figures of the Mobile County delegation blasted Mr. Callahan's tactics. In the uproar, the commission's plan died in the committee room, along with hopes for relieving crowding in Mobile County schools.

   This fall, when the doors opened to a new year, school Superintendent Harold Dodge informed employees that the system was having to cut its budget by several million dollars. Already, it had reduced spending on textbooks, eliminated a homework hotline and hired fewer teachers than the schools needed.

   It's understandable that many frustrated school advocates in Alabama are ready to give up the fight for more property taxes, although this traditional source continues to sustain schools around the country.

   The sales tax might seem to be an attractive option for schools because, unlike property and income taxes, it is not restricted by Alabama's 1901 constitution. And the Mobile County Commission already has authority to levy another penny. But such a move would be unwise for two reasons:

   -- First, adding a penny would increase the tax burden on poor people because they pay the same sales-tax rates as everyone else. Indeed, they pay an even higher percentage of their incomes for necessities such as groceries, which means that sales taxes hit them harder.

   Mississippi and some other states offset such unfairness by giving poor citizens a break on income taxes. Alabama largely ignores its poor. Our state constitution requires a family of four to begin paying taxes on its income at just $4,600, the lowest threshold in the nation.

   The rich are treated preferentially, of course. The top tax rate -- 5 percent -- applies to poor and rich alike. And Alabama is one of only three states that allow a full deduction for federal income taxes. Because people in the top brackets pay higher federal taxes, this benefit provides minimal relief for most Alabama families.

   -- Second, adding another penny would make local public services even more dependent on a regressive and fickle tax source. Already, consumers in the city of Mobile pay 9 cents in sales taxes on every $1 of purchases. Push the rate higher and watch more business flee to the lower rates of unincorporated areas.

   At present, the city derives about $524 per capita -- 56 percent of its total revenues -- from its 4-cent share of sales taxes. By contrast, the city gets just $41 per capita from property taxes.

   What we have in Alabama, then, is the worst tax system that our unfair, antiquated constitution can inspire. That system also is one of the least adequate in providing services that Alabamians need. Certainly, it treats public schools like orphans. Alabama places dead last among states in local support for schools. It is hardly surprising that Alabama also is near the bottom in per-student spending.

   Such rankings can be heart-wrenching when you put a child's face on them. That's not hard to do, either. In fact, there are 65,000 faces -- all belonging to Mobile County's students. They're looking out the windows at us from 100 schools, where buildings often sag from age, or from 520 portable classrooms.

   The young minds deserve better than what politics has served up for them. They are, after all, the faces of the future -- even as their state constitution looks resolutely toward the past.

Return to: Century of Shame, Introduction

Part 5: The Last Big Mule

Reprinted with Permission from the Mobile Register.