Legislation that would allow the Dallas County Commission to pass a half-cent sales tax to benefit the Dallas County School System died when the legislative session ended.

The bill would rescind the current half-cent sales tax, which splits the money almost evenly between the county and city schools, and allow the commission to pass a new one to restore the tax’s original intent.

“We felt like the least complicated way of addressing this was through our legislative delegates, and we thought that was the way it was going to be resolved, but it just didn’t happen,” said Dallas County Schools Superintendent Don Willingham.

The county school system and commission thought the bill would be introduced and eventually passed in May, but it lost support after the Selma City School Board signed a resolution disagreeing with the 90-10 split.

“We were hoping the legislative delegates could handle it, but since that didn’t happen, we look forward to a referendum so we can get the funds that were intended for us back,” Willingham said.

“I talked with [Dallas County Probate] Judge [Kim] Ballard, and he is going to discuss with the county commission between now and the next meeting if it is going to be done through a special election of if we are going to wait until the next general election.”

Dallas County Commissioner Roy Moore said the commission still wants to resolve the problem with the sales tax.

“I agreed and this commission agreed that this half-cent sales tax was designed to rehabilitate the Dallas County School System because they were in financial straits to the point that the state school board was about to take it over because it simply couldn’t operate because of the lack of funds,” Moore said after Monday’s commission meeting.

As it stands, the tax brings in about $150,000 a month, according to Willingham. A little more than half of that amount goes to the city school system.

“Each month we write a check to Selma City Schools for over $70,000, and that is coming straight from our general fund, and we can’t afford it that much longer,” Willingham said. “We finished last year with a little over $900,000 in our reserve, and that includes $300,000 of our tax being given to Selma City Schools. We would have had about $1.2 million at the end of our last fiscal year if it had not started being shared.”

Since the tax is still being shared due to legislation not being passed, Willingham said the school system has budgeted for no extra revenue, which calls for drastic cuts.

“We cut staffing. We have no locally funded teaching units at any of our schools. We’ve cut support staff, which includes maintenance of our schools,” Willingham said.

“We’re looking at reducing some of our basic services that we provide and have provided the last couple of years. Somewhere in those discussions we’ll have to look at the consolidation of schools just like we’ve done in the past.”

Willingham said two Dallas County Schools have closed in the last five years — Shiloh and Five Points —to try to save money.

“We don’t want to do that again, and we don’t want to have to do any consolidating at this time, but it is certainly something we’re going to have to look at if the tax situation doesn’t get straight soon,” Willingham said.

Willingham said he is disappointed that legislation wasn’t passed to restore the tax to its original intent, but he has hope that it will pass if put to a vote by the people of Selma and Dallas County.

“Our goal is to educate the children and offer them services competitive with everyone else in the state,” Willingham said.

“And when we have to make every key decision based on the amount of money we have, it makes things so difficult.”