Mythbusters: School Tax Edition

Got this comment on CSDWeAllWin’s Facebook page today.

Today I had a friend say all the programs and cuts Christina school district was making is nuts. All because people wont sign a referendum. My answer was Christina School district asked for almost 100% raise in funding on their first attempt. This was highway robbery. They then asked for I believe a 15% increase and it was shot down… You know why??? Everyone I talked to who googled the referendum, saw the previous request. They thought their taxes were doubling. The district did this to its self… So lets do a little math and see if the money is spent correctly. 2014 budget 228 million dollars. 16255 students. That is $14,026.45 / student. I googled the “average private school tuition 19711″… the answer was $11970.00. If it can be funded privately for 2000 less per student and provide a better education… Something isn’t adding up. We cant continue to throw money at a mismanaged program. I really don’t want to hear go to a budget meeting. I want to hear my math is either incorrect or why we should pay $2000.00 more per student for your education. What is better? I’m beginning to think the whole system should be private. Talk me off this ledge please.

So let’s go.  Sorry they don’t want to hear “go to a budget meeting”.  But GO TO A BUDGET MEETING!  Public school finances are too damn complex to talk about on Facebook and really get a solid handle on them.  But why not try again?

Their math isn’t wrong but it is the wrong kind of math. Districts do not determine per student funding by adding up the budget and dividing by the number of kids enrolled, although that seems like a much better way to do it than the way it’s done now.

Christina, and all districts in Delaware, have little control over how much money is spent on each student. Nearly all the formulas used to figure that out come directly from the State of Delaware. However much money the State determines each student “deserves” *in total*, Christina foots approximately 35% of it through property taxes.

In previous years, the District was responsible for <30% of the cost. Over the last 8 years the State has continued to chip away at the amount of money spent on education. This year is no different. The State raised the amount each student must get by 0.52% and at the same time said they wouldn’t be funding that increase, which means local money from each District has to cover that increase.

Christina School District per student general ed funding

This is the breakdown of our non-special services, regular education per student funding for 2015-16 school year. This is the amount of money, collected through our property taxes, that Christina School District spends per student. We, in this District, do not pay $14,000 per student. We pay an average of $3,913 per student in grades K-12. So what the hell is that $13,000 cost per student number you find on the District profile on Delaware Dept of Ed’s website? That’s an average of ALL sources of funding for our students, that’s all money that comes from the State + all money that comes from the District + all money that comes via the Federal gov’t that rolls up to an AVERAGE cost per student in our District.  It is NOT what we pay from property taxes per student.

You can pay $12,000 to send your child to a private school in Newark. But you, the parent, are paying that entire $12,000 for your child. Send your child to a public school, and you’re paying a fraction of what it costs to deliver an education to your child.

My property tax bill for schools last year (on my $189,000 townhome assessed at $50,000 ) was around $1,120. I have two children in the District. I paid $560 in taxes for each of their educations last year. If I had both of them in private school, my school tax would still have been $1,120. Plus $24,000 for private tuition. I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell can’t afford $25,120 a year for school right now.

The current total *school tax* rate is $2.09/$100 assessed value of property. Of that $2.09, $1.42 of it is the *Operating Tax* rate. The Operating Tax rate is what was up for referendum twice. (I won’t get into the New Castle County Tax Pool dipping into that $1.42, that’s another discussion).

The first increase that the BOARD wanted (not the District) was, I believe, $0.65 phased in over 3 years. OMG THAT’S 46% INCREASE IN TAX……RATE. Increase in your tax RATE. That does NOT = a 46% increase in your taxes paid. Why?

Let’s say that $0.65 was approved, and it all went into effect right away. The rate went from $2.09 to $2.74. The tax RATE is now $2.74/$100 of assessed value. For my house @ $50,000, my NEW school tax bill this year would be: $50,000/$100 = 500. 500 x $2.74 = $1,370

$1,370 is not double of $1,120. So what % increase is that in my ACTUAL taxes paid? $1,370-$1,120= $250 $250/$1,120 = 0.223 x 100 = 22.3% increase. Not even close to doubling.

Well we know the first time failed hard. So what if the second time passed? The DISTRICT asked for and the Board approved a $0.37 increase phased in over 3 years. Let’s take the same scenario. It passed, and all $0.37 went in right away. Our new tax RATE is $2.46/$100.

My new tax bill is: $50,000/$100 = 500. 500 x $2.46 = $1,230. Well how much did it go up this time?! $1,230-$1,120= $110. $110/$1,120 = 0.098 x 100 = 9.8% tax increase. Again, not even close to doubling.

Again, total budget/# students isn’t wrong math but it doesn’t do jack to help figure out how we spend money per-student and whether or not the money is being spent “correctly”.

I said before, during, and now after the referendum, I’m available to talk to anyone about this. I’ll answer any question you throw at me. If you don’t want to come to a budget meeting (although you should), I’ll come to you. Public school finances in this State are not easy to understand. It’s way too damn complex, but I’m willing to help anyone get a better understanding of it. Google won’t do anything for you. Talk to someone who actually knows something about how it works (or doesn’t work).

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Credit Where It’s Due

Last night 6 of Christina’s Board of Education members did something extremely unsavory yet equally necessary.  The preliminary budget for 2015-16 was approved with all proposed reductions, some of which are shown here.  In what undoubtedly be one of the most challenging years in this District’s history, the Board did make the call when they had to and for that, I thank them.

Notable reductions, as mentioned by CFO Silber last night, School resource officers utilization will take the form of 1 officer in each high school, 1 officer within the City of Wilmington to be shared by Bayard Middle and Sarah Pyle, and 1 officer to be shared by the 4 middle schools in the Newark area.

Elementary counselors will have their utilization changed as well.   Each elementary school will have a counselor, but the days and hours the counselor is present will change from full-day and full-week hours.

EPER pay: the same number and type of EPER positions will be available in the District. The amount of funding to fill them will be reduced by $629,000 leaving around $900,000 to be allocated to the schools for use in filling some of the positions. The decisions on what positions will be filled is up to the each school’s leader.

As I mentioned previously, building discretionary budgets are reduced by approximately $800,000

Management and payment of all leases for multi-function copier machines has now been taken off the schools and will be paid and managed by the District business office.  Previously each school made payments for their copiers out of their building budgets.  That will not be the case this year.  Speaking of which, if you or anyone you know works in a CSD building with a leased Canon copier/printer, tell them to send all their print jobs to and do all their copying on those machines.  The lease agreements & payments with Canon cover all expenses associated with those machines except paper.  Any other printer, the District is responsible for toner, maintenance/replacement, paper, ink, etc.  Seems silly at first but toner and printers are expensive and that adds up quickly in schools.

Anyway, the analysis and breakdowns will continue.  Right now I’m trying to find someone to start an IV drip of caffeine for me.

Declining CSD Enrollment

Comparing last year and this coming school year as far as enrollment and discretionary building budgets, the overall picture gets gloomier.  It is important to remember that projected enrollments are always lower than what the actual numbers will be come Sept. 30.  How much lower is what we really need to look at.   In this table (color scale is mine) we’re looking at decimated discretionary building budgets from 2014-15 to 2015-16.  Enrollment numbers are very surprising as well.

We’re looking at a preliminary reduction of almost $750,000 and a loss of 708 students.

Discretionary budget and enrollment changes 2014-15 to 2015-16

If we’re looking at just actual and projected enrollment numbers over the last 3 years, it’s not any better:

Enrollment changes 2013-2015

I know looking at tables and colors and numbers everywhere is confusing as all hell.  I’ll try to help.

From 2013-14 to 2014-15 the District initially was projected to lose about 798 students, they actually lost 530. (Shown as Student Recovery: 268).  From 2014-15 to 2015-16 CSD projects a loss of 976 students.  Obviously we’re not at September 30 yet, so we don’t know what the actual numbers will be.  But assuming CSD recovers the same number of students, it’s still down around 700 students.

You can see the District consistently projects losses greater than what they actually turn out to be which, for budgeting purposes, makes some sense.  But the hard truth of the matter is that CSD continues to hemorrhage students and continues to operate the same number of buildings.  Some big, drastic changes are in order.

The final piece of the financial mess is factoring in the Charter growth and cost.  I’m writing that now.

Please keep in mind, all of this is preliminary.  We have no idea what things will look like in September.  And the budget is still a proposal at this point in time, subject to CSD Board of Ed approval tomorrow night at August General Business meeting.

Ask For What You Seek

I was kinda proud of this response I posted to Facebook, so I thought I’d share it here. It relates to the Operating Referendum for Christina School District on May 27th.

A question was asked about where the money goes and why there isn’t an understandable budget for people to see, etc.  This was my response:

I’m a Dad of 2 boys at Keene Elementary, I’m working with our all-volunteer Referendum Committee and for the last year and a half, I have served on the all-volunteer Citizen’s Budget Oversight Committee (CBOC) for the Christina School District and its Board of Education, as of Wednesday I also serve on the new Expense Reduction Committee (ERC) for the District and its Board.   CBOC is a legally required entity charged with ensuring the District is expending its Board approved budget appropriately.

The current State required funding process for all 19 public school districts mandates that an Operating Tax increase of any amount requires a public vote.  This sets *every* District up to hold referenda every 3-5 years to generate additional Operating revenue to pay for rising costs that Districts largely have no  control over.  Costs like energy, water, bus transportation to get students from home to school and school to home, supplies that go into the classrooms (paper, pencils, etc).  The District does have control over another area Operating Tax revenue is spent: portions of staff employment costs like salary, medical, prescription, vision and dental benefits, and the ENTIRE cost for staff and supplies in programs the State does not feel are worth funding on their part: Art, Music, Drama, and Phys Ed instructors, Librarians, School Nurses, textbooks.  83% of the funds generated via the Operating Tax are spent on student service personnel.  The remaining 17% largely goes to supply (including electricity, water, internet, transportation, classroom supplies, etc) needs at the individual school level.

“Fixing” the funding issue is a very high-priority item and I 100% agree it must be done.  Problem is, all Districts are required to follow State funding requirements.  The broken process is owned by the State of Delaware and any fixing has to come out of Dover with legislation.  For this referendum we are working within the severely complicated and restrictive confines of current public education funding regulations.  Would it be great to just cut things here and there that we all feel provide no value and use that money to fix the looming deficit?  Heck yeah it would.  But we can’t do that.  The only revenue the District has to spend on things that are not required by the State or Federal Gov’ts are the Unrestricted Local Funds generated by Property Taxes.  That is where our shortfall is and we are unable to move other money around to cover it.  For the last 3 years, the District has been using operating cash reserves to compensate for the inadequate operating revenue coming in.  Next year, what remains in reserve will not be enough to cover the operating expenses listed above; it will be short by approximately $9.5 million.  We are at a breaking point where we have to ask the public to raise revenue to keep things going as they are (tried in Feb with Option 1), make spending cuts and ask for a smaller tax increase (happening now, $2 million in cuts ant $0.37 increase) or eliminate the shortfall entirely by cutting operating expenditures by $9.5 million.

For the last 3 years, CBOC in its monthly meetings and reports to the Board of Education has consistently been noting this snowballing budget shortfall and that it is not due to mismanagement of funds, but largely uncontrollable rising costs.  We have indicated, consistently, that without increasing funding reductions an operating referendum will be needed prior to the start of School Year 2015-2016.  The authorization for referendum did not come from the Board until late last year.  February failed, and there is a mandatory 60 day wait until another vote.  Board authorization for this vote came in February, and the absolute last time we could hold a vote and still have it impact the school year starting this fall, is next week.

As far as an understandable budget, with the way public education funding is done in Delaware it’s 99.999% impossible to condense a District budget to the point where it still accurately shows very, very detailed spending (what you are asking for) and isn’t 250 pages long.  However, CBOC exists for this very purpose.  We serve as the ‘translators’ for the ridiculous process Districts have to go through for funding to aid in the general public and Board of Education’s understanding of what is spent where and why.

To that end, I’m offering my service to you and ANY member of the public to help you gain a better understanding of the funding process, why things are done the way they’re done and where the money comes from and goes to.  It took me a good 8-10 months to really grasp why things are the way they are, and I am more than willing to help you and anyone else grasp it like I, and the rest of CBOC has.  I’ll meet for coffee, just to talk, or email/text back and forth.

CBOC’s next meeting, which is and always has been open to the public, is 6:30pm on either Wednesday June 17th or June 24th at Gauger-Cobbs Middle.  Schedule is announced on CSD’s webpage.  If you friend me on Facebook, I talk about it all the time.

ERC’s next meeting is next Thursday, May 28th 6:30pm at Gauger-Cobbs in the Professional Development Room.  Open to the public.  Questions welcome.

Our volunteer committee is running a website that focuses on info surrounding the referendum CSDWeAllWin.org, and a Facebook page: facebook.com/CSDWeAllWin

*ALL* district financial data is and has been available on CSD’s website, including CBOC reports, http://www.christinak12.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=195038&type=d&termREC_ID=&pREC_ID=393370

brianstephan@gmail.com or 302.419.5276.  If I miss your call or if you text me just let me know who you are in the voicemail or text and I will return your call or messages/emails.

 

An Impromptu TV Appearance

So tonight, my wife and I were asked to appear on Delaware’s Channel 28 with Maurice “Doc” Pritchett and discuss the upcoming referendum in the Christina School District along with retired Glasgow High Principal Bob Anderson and current Leasure Elementary Principal Dr. Diedra Aikens and Bancroft Elementary Principal Harold “Butch” Ingram, Jr.

I honestly didn’t know what to expect.  I’m not an “on camera” kind of person.  I feel I do my best work when I’m behind the scenes.  Regardless, there I sat in front of the cameras discussing the need for the additional $0.37 come May 27th.  It really went better than I could have thought.  It was real, not scripted, very candid talk about why the referendum is needed, and how it’s going to impact our children.  The sense sitting in that room was that everyone really cares deeply about every single child that walks through a Christina School District building’s doors.  We weren’t there talking about individuals, we were talking about the Christina community.  That everyone’s involved, everyone is impacted by how well our public schools are doing.

Our kids need a balanced education in a competitive learning environment, to make that a possibility our schools need a consistent source of funding from our community.  That’s what this is about.  Our students, our children.

In the end, it is my hope that we all successfully conveyed the message that we need the YES! vote on May 27th.  Turns out I didn’t really need to be as nervous as I was.