Word: boarding
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Webster Groves Board of Education is convening in the one-story school-district building tucked into the shadow of the high school. Had out-of-town visitors driven to that meeting by way of Elm Street, with its lovingly restored Victorian homes valued at as much as $700,000, they might have assumed that the board's major task this evening was figuring out how best to invest all those tax revenues that must roll in from such a prosperous community. They would be wrong...
...main issue before the board this evening is how to sell voters on even higher taxes. The superintendent, Bill Gussner, wants to ask residents in April for approval to borrow some $10 million, by issuing new bonds, to repair leaky roofs and antiquated heating systems. But he also wants to collect more than 50[cents] per $100 valuation in new tax levies, most of which would go to raise the pay of the district's 292 teachers...
...neighboring districts like Kirkwood or Clayton. (A 58-year-old, 5-bedroom home that sold recently for $289,000 has an annual property tax of $2,914.) But because of the community's historic resistance to commercial development, and thus the limited options for raising new revenues, the board has little choice but to count on the district's voters to see them through to fiscal equilibrium...
...help with that effort, the board has recruited Rod Wright, president of Attitude Research, a St. Louis polling firm that specializes in school-finance votes. Fortunately for Webster, he has kids in local schools and donates his time. The goal, he advises the board, "is to get people to vote their emotions and aspirations--and not their pocketbooks...
...confirm that observation, one of a handful of parents attending the meeting, Peter Bakker, who has four daughters in the system, rises to urge the board not to settle for a tax increase that would only raise teacher's salaries slightly, but instead to "make Webster one of the best...