In this week's column about the last school board meeting, Adam refers to our budget reserve as a "rainy day" fund that will be eaten up by future deficits. Problem is we don't have a "rainy day" fund. At the end of the last budget year we did have cash on hand of nearly $5 million, (what we call the "budget reserve") but this is necessary for the day-to-day operations: payments to the district come in large lumps at long intervals (the schedule can be found here), in order to meet our obligations before and between these payments we have to spend down our cash reserves and then some. In fact we still need to do a few million dollars in "cash-flow" borrowing each year to keep us solvent between state payouts. So there is no pot of money sitting around for us to spend.
The "budget reserve" does dramatically reduce required short term borrowing and avoids the resulting interest payments, each dollar reduction to the budget reserve results in higher interest costs to the district. Further, the size of the reserve helps maintain the district's bond rating, which helps reduce the cost of any district borrowing. This is why the board recently passed a policy recommending a 15% "budget reserve". At the time I advocated for some teeth to this policy- requiring a plan to restore the budget reserve to 15% should it drop below- but the majority of the board opposed this provision.
If the budget forecast predicted a year or two of deficits before returning to a balanced budget, then it might be okay to spend down the reserve temporarily to preserve programs and refill it later. But the projections show a continued and growing deficit for the foreseeable future, so spending down the reserve would only increase costs and make future cuts worse. It will be tempting for politicians (like me) to spend the reserve now to avoid unpopular cuts, but IMHO this would be short sighted and only leave the district in worse shape in the future.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
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Hasn't the time come -- before class sizes are pushed beyond 30 kids in a room, and before extra-curricular programs are threatened (as has happened in so many districts) -- to at least ask for, or start a debate, about wage concessions from teachers and other represented employees? Other areas of local government, through furloughs and wage cuts, are doing it. Why should the school district and its employees be exempt?
Two words: Binding Arbitration.
If you've ever read any binding arbitration decisions as the relate to school districts, you may not be so anxious to go in that direction. Further, as I understand it, the arbitrator cannot craft a decision that blends the proposals. He/she must simply choose one side over the other.
I would be very surprised if the unions would agree to wage/benefit concessions rather than layoff of staff. But it certainly wouldn't hurt to find out!
"I would be very surprised if the unions would agree to wage/benefit concessions rather than layoff of staff. But it certainly wouldn't hurt to find out!"
That's the point of at least starting the debate. The district's major cost is personnel, something like 75 percent of the budget. You can either have fewer people working in the district (which will eventually result in larger class sizes), or have those people work for slightly less, or the same, as what they are making now (as opposed to the wage increases that always occur).
Binding arbitration is likely to lead to wage hikes. But that frames the debate into a kind of "our hands are tied" discussion, when in fact the district ought to take the lead in pushing for reasonable wage concessions in exchange for avoiding drastic personnel cuts.
Disclaimer: I'm not advocating for or against any position relative to the teacher's contract, just explaining my view of hypothetical situations:
1) One-time consessions by the union might help with a temporary deficit problem but the structural deficit is an ongoing and growing problem, so consessions are not a long term solution. Expecting the teachers to solve the structural deficit through consessions would result in a continued erosion of their compensation on an ongoing basis.
2) WI law prevents teachers from going on strike. In exchange for this abrogation of their rights teachers are protected by binding arbitration laws. (If the two sides can't agree the arbitrator picks the final offer he/she finds most reasonable.) In practice this prevents districts from unilaterally imposing concessions that are significantly different from "average", it also prevents teacher's unions from asking for too much. Concessions might be negotiated, but not imposed.
I am oppose to increasing class size. We (my child) is already dealing with 26 and 30, it is nuts.
Class size is an easy out.
What else do you suggest?
I would rather see cuts that hit the few then everyone. I believe that increasing class size is basically the easy way out-kinda like cutting everyone's budget by 5%.
Cut Athletic Programs
Cut 4 grade strings or even 5 grade strings.
Cut curriculum offerings-French?
(I don't think that language will be on the uptick for another 1,000 years or so.)
Contract out certain services. (I know the last time we did it-this was not successful-but the blame there needs to be laid at the feet of those who wrote the contract-not the workers.)
Rightly or wrongly, there is no surer way of creating community unrest than cutting athletic programs. And why just sports? Why not all extra-curricular programs, like musicals and clubs? I guarantee there are just as many vocal and devoted parents of music programs in this district as there are for sports.
Why not all extra-curricular programs, like musicals and clubs?"
I have no problem with this one either.
I would rather see this-then class sizes of 30 to 35.
How about we look outward, not inward? Wouldn't that be refreshing for a change? We are certainly not the first district in America to deal with budget problems, and our budget problems probably pale in comparison to others we can find. Why not look at how districts that spend less per student than MG but have outcomes better than MG (as measured by test scores, matriculation to college, success of minority students, etc.) and see how they allocate resources. Why not look at schools with transformational leadership who do not accept budget woes as an excuse for poor student achievement and find out what they do?
This sort of research and fact finding should certainly precede the laundry list of cuts, no? Maybe we could actually put the horse before the cart?
Why do we have text books?
Why don't we just give students a laptop or make parents buy them.
I dread larger class sizes too. My son's teacher already said she has too many kids in his class to really get to know my child as is. Sad, huh?? This is at a lower grade, too. :(
When I went to school, (you know all of 20 years ago when it was uphill both ways) we didn't have in our district music until 6th grade. Really...I survived. I went on to play an instrument and be a functioning human being without a 4th grade music lesson.
re:Why do we have text books?
I think the digital versions of books still cost a lot, especially for textbooks (like $30-$40 each verses $70-$80 for print). Making illegal copies would put the district at a huge legal risk, so they would still buy a "e-textbook" for every student.
That means you would need about 10 books per student to save money once you add the cost of a $400 laptop.
This might work at the high school, they might use 10 books per student and the kids/teachers could take advantage of other online stuff, but I don't think it would save money in middle or elementary schools. Even more, the district would have to up the internet/wireless connection at the high school to handle 1000 kids logged on all at once.
At some point things might be cheep enough for this to work, but probably not this year.
Before we jump all over the elementary strings program, lets keep in mind that those teachers at least teach full classes. If we are talking class sizes, lets evaluate how much the middle school music teachers teach full classes. I saw some data that shows that the middle school music teachers- and there are lots of them- spend the vast majority of their paid time teaching GIGS- which can be composed of 1 to 5 kids. Great for the parents who don't have to pay for lessons, but is that really the appropriate use of teacher time. Band teachers at MS averaged between 45-65% of their teaching time is GIGS. That is a nice class size!
my brother went to high school in the south and the kids did a lot of their own field maintenance for sporting teams. For instance,if you wanted to play baseball, maintaining the field was the job of the team and their parents. It was just expected and accepted. There was one classroom set of textbooks and not every child got a history text to keep. In English, you had to purchase the reading books.
Dear Peter,
I recall reviewing my students; yearbook and seeing alot of classes at the el. level with a 50 percent split of teachers. Does the district have to pay for health insurance for both teachers?
Does the district have to pay for health insurance for both teachers?
No, benefits are only available to one person (51%?)and may be prorated for non-full time status.It might be cheaper than full-time teachers. Hmm, more part-time or job shares to save money?
the problem with many part time people is that it takes more admin time to manage people. But when you have part time people...they tend to work more than their percentage time that they are hired for. (so more "bang for your buck")
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