Good news in Springfield, Ohio?
Given all the fashy hubbub about Springfield, Ohio recently, I got interested in the extent to which Springfield City School District might be benefiting from its Haitian migrants, the ones that right wingers are so intent to say are eating pets. So I did a bit of digging and found something sort of heartening.
Snopes reports the pet-eating thing hasn’t been verified. But on the face of it, the relationship between the Haitian newcomers and schools has been tense since a Haitian driver lost control of their car and hit a school bus, killing Aiden Clark, the child of two teachers in town, and injuring 23 other kids.
A New York Times article about the situation states that more than 20,000 migrants have moved to Springfield, Ohio since the pandemic. This has meant an increase in enrollments to the district, including 350 new students signing up for spots that have caused some worry about things being “tight” moving forward.
But this migration comes as the city has seen modest growth in its political economy: a Japanese car company built a factory there, “food-service firms, logistics companies, and a microchip maker” all moved to town.
Up, up, up
In Springfield City School District’s comprehensive financial report from 2023, you can see the gains. Total revenues increased by about $11 million, but what’s jumping out to me is that property tax revenues increased by a third from $24.3 million to $31.3 million. In 2020, that revenue was $26 million, went up a bit to $27 million in 2021, down a bit in 2022 to $24 million, but then the big increase happened last year. Also miscellaneous earnings, grants and entitlements, and charges for services all increased.
When we look at the property values in the city, this makes sense: total personal income, per capita personal income, and even school enrollment after the pandemic drop in 2020—everything’s going up. In the graphs below, look at the numbers starting in 2019, when the Haitian immigrant wave increased.
Between 2019-2022:
Total personal income increased from 1.169 billion to 1.349 billion.
Total per capita personal income rose from 20,933 to 22,968.
Unemployment dropped almost a full percentage point from 4.5% to 3.8%
Assessed property value increased nearly 10% from $793, 070 to $864,952.
While public school enrollments dropped a bit, they’ve actually increased since, going against national trends.
(I don’t know why they don’t show that increase in the population count numbers, maybe something with the census?)
In any case, it makes sense to me why the school district’s local revenues have increased: property value’s going up! Everyone’s making more money! This makes it all the more enraging that right wingers insist on dehumanizing immigrants: these conservatives are getting richer and richer as they demonize one of the elements driving gains in their community. Yes, the bus crash was bad. But accidents happen. And this increase of immigrants in Springfield has come along with improvement to the political economy of the school district and city.
In Middletown
Of course we’d want to compare this to something nearby to see if the effect is there. It could be that growth in Springfield doesn’t have anything to do with the migrants. Conveniently, J.D. Vance’s hometown of Middletown, Ohio is nearby and a comparable city (size, diversity, regional location). From what I can gather, there hasn’t been a similar surge in immigrants there, but gains also haven’t been the same.
When we look at the revenues from taxes in Middletown, Ohio city school district, they’ve actually gone down about 8%. Other things like operating grants and contributions have increased (and for some reason the categories are a bit different), and their overall total revenues have indeed increased.
Then we get an explanation for why the total increased, and it’s actually federal and state dollars that account for the larger position. Importantly, revenue from local property taxes decreased.
I think we can say it’s a slightly different story in Middletown, not as positive as Springfield, and looking at assessed property value points in that direction. There was a big bump during the initial stages of the pandemic, including a $110 million surge in value, but during the same period we’re looking at for Springfield, Middletown’s assessed values went down 2022-2023 about $20 million, explaining perhaps the decrease in tax revenue to the school district:
Although if you look at the similar measures to what I saw in Springfield, Middletown has also seen increases in personal and per capita income during that period, in 2019 personal income was 1.078 million and now it’s 1.3 million (similar to Springfield), per capita it’s gone from 22k to 24k (also similar). Unemployment has also gone down (even more than Springfield). But they didn’t see that by-a-third property value increase like Springfield did.
Solidarity with the diverse working class
So I think we can say that, from the school district’s perspective, even though these two towns are doing pretty well, more is coming in from slightly increasing property values in Springfield than in Middletown. Since many things are the same between the two places, this suggests that maybe immigrants are good for property values in Springfield. At the very least, the political economies of these places are doing alright, against the doom and gloom right wingers like to raise.
I think this counter-message matters in the neofascist crucible where anti-immigrant politics is unfortunately ruling the day.
But the Democrats have pretty shamefully avoided making this kind of counter, afraid to take up and take on the nativism. They’re actually celebrating the fact that some conservatives—the very ones who paved the way for Trump and Vance—are endorsing them! I get it strategically, maybe, but why not confront the thing? Particularly if you want to be the party of antiracism?
There have been some positive framings here and there: employers in the area appreciate the Haitian immigrants since they come to work on time, work well, and “don’t have drug problems.” But I don’t think this is a good direction to go, since it feeds perfectly the “they’re taking our jobs” line, while also bolstering the notion—which J.D. Vance has championed—that deaths of despair, addiction, unemployment, and the plight of the ‘white working class’ in places like Springfield is somehow culturally their own fault, resentment about which feeds the anti-immigrant discourse.
Instead of getting caught in this morass, Democrats (and the socialists who will most likely hold our noses and vote for them) could point to the stuff I mentioned above instead: increasing revenues from increasing assessed property value, increasing per capita income, etc. Take up and take on the nativist politics from the right that are so disgusting through an expression of solidarity with the diverse working class, talking about how increases in immigration are helping, particularly public school districts, which are in such dire straits across the country.