Voters in two states face November ballot questions asking them to hand more money to school districts that can't manage what they already have — and families struggling under inflation are supposed to just pay up.
In Will County, Illinois, 12 different referenda from 11 taxing bodies hit the ballot Nov. 3, including two school districts asking for property tax rate increases. In Charleston County, South Carolina, the school district wants voters to reauthorize a 1-percent sales tax projected to haul in $1.25 billion over six years — despite losing students.
Richland School District 88A in Crest Hill wants a 0.39% property tax increase that would bump its rate to 2.78233% and extract an additional $1.78 million a year for operations. The district says without it, staff and extracurriculars get the axe. It's the familiar playbook: approve the hike or the kids suffer. The district explicitly says the money would not fund building improvements — just day-to-day operations, which raises the question of where current operating revenue is going.
Troy School District 30-C in Joliet and Shorewood wants a 0.45% rate increase, but frames it as painless: taxes won't go up unless your property value does, the district claims, because the increase wouldn't take effect until a previously approved bond retires next year. Rather than letting taxpayers see their rate drop in 2028 as promised, Troy wants to keep the rate flat at 3.1741% — a tax increase by any honest definition, just hidden behind an expiring bond. Shaw Local reported the district's framing; what the district buried is that a "no" vote means an actual tax decrease for homeowners.
Down in Charleston County, the ask is steeper and the track record worse. The district is losing K-12 enrollment — by its own published figures, a net loss last year with an even bigger decline projected — yet it wants $1.25 billion in capital projects from 2029 to 2034 via a re-up of its penny sales tax.
The current 2023-2028 penny tax was projected to raise $708 million. Midway through 2026, it had already collected $550 million — on pace to overshoot projections by roughly $300 million. Rather than return that surplus or hold the line, the School Board has repeatedly approved new capital projects never on the original voter-approved list to justify the windfall.
Cost overruns are endemic. A Johns Island elementary school doubled from $34 million to $68 million. A West Ashley middle school ballooned from $40 million to $61 million. Lucy Beckham High School, built in 2020, went from an $82 million budget to $112 million — and the district didn't even build enough capacity, forcing millions more in portable classrooms. Now the board wants yet more millions to expand Lucy Beckham, a problem of its own making, on the next tax cycle's project list.
As Hunter Schimpff, a former classroom teacher and charter school authorizer who ran for the Charleston County School Board, wrote in the Post and Courier: "Rather than issue a defined amount of debt that relates to a specific set of capital projects, the penny tax is a 1 percent sales tax locked in for six years. Whatever revenue that sales tax raises from 2029 to 2034 is what the School Board will get to use."
That's the feature, not the bug — an open-ended revenue spigot with no cap and no accountability. Schimpff noted bad ideas floated over the years, including a middle school shopping mall and teacher housing development.
Whether it's Will County property taxes or Charleston's penny sales tax, the pattern is the same: government institutions treat the taxpayer like an ATM, mismanage the money, and come back asking for more. Nov. 3 is the day taxpayers get to hit "withdraw" on the ask.
