LIVE from the Red Clay Board of Education Special Meeting on WEIC

(originally posted on delawareliberal.net)

Pinned: 7:08pm:  RCCSD Board Approves the District’s WEIC Plan/Draft/Outline 4-1 with 2 not present.  More details to come once I get home

Final Update:  Apologies for the complete discombobulation of a post, but here you go.  (Apparently I need to brush up on my live-blogging skills).

If you ask me, what I saw Red Clay’s board vote on tonight was accepting a plan with no source of funding that’s going to cost a lot of money, take 7 years minimum to implement, and affect thousands of children and hundreds of educators and support staff keeping them all in uncertainty until 2022.  Keep in mind the State is $130 million short already next year, and Dover has said any financial changes will be “revenue neutral”.  If that is true, ANY cost to get the WEIC plan moving must be offset by a reduction in spending somewhere else in the gov’t. Below are the paraphrased details that I could type up as the meeting went on.  They’re disorganized, but there’s some good information in there.

The Players: CT: Catherine Thompson, Board Member.

KR: Kenny Rivera, RCCSD Board President

TA: Ted Ammann, Assistant Superintendent RCCSD

Jill Floore – RCCSD Chief Financial Officer

How will we know what the funding for WEIC is going to look like?

– Governor’s budget comes out in Jan 2016, that will provide the first look at funding changes.

What about giving the Board of Ed power to adjust operating tax like they do Tuition Tax and Debt Service tax?

– RCCSD plan includes a provision to permit local school boards to adjust operating tax rate without referendum, until a rolling property reassessment takes over.

What’s the rolling property reassessment going to look like?

– 1/3 of the properties in the district’s tax base will be assessed at a time with an undetermined amount of time to complete each phase of the reassessment and this would be a statewide rolling reassessment process managed at the County level.

What about transportation for students who choice to schools outside their feeder patterns after the lines change? By law, students have the right to remain in the program/school they are in until graduation:
– Ted Ammann, Asst. Superintendent for Red Clay: “One of the early points we thought we’d get into an argument with Christina about but we didn’t” was over how to transport choice students.  If the program is in Christina, CSD will handle transport, if in RCCSD, Red Clay handles it.

But then Ted threw in the Sterck School:  “Not unlike how its done with the Sterck School, if a student attends there a Christina bus goes to their development to pick them up.”  While that is true, Sterck School for the Deaf is a statewide program, not a district program. Tuition tax paid in the student’s residential district pays for the student to attend the program.  So if a student who lives in Red Clay goes to Sterck (in Christina), a Christina bus does pick them up but Red Clay’s taxpayers are paying for that.  So no, Mr. Ammann it is not like how it’s done with the Delaware School for the Deaf.

Another point of confusion for me came up when Christina’s special programs in the city were mentioned:

CT: If a student likes the program they’re in, they’ll have the opportunity to stay in the program. So would we see overcrowded schools in RCCSD?

KR: That would be on Christina, example: if the student is in Glasgow, they’d choose to stay in Glasgow. Paid by Christina.  So we might see undercrowding in the first few years.

CT: What about Christina’s Special Ed programs: Pyle Academy, DAP, Douglass?

TA: If we get the buildings, we will only offer programs we decide we want to offer. If Douglass program building comes to RCC, CSD wouldn’t be able to host the program there. RCCSD is in no rush to take buildings, so they may permit CSD to use the building to phase out current students.

Delaware Autism Program (DAP), like the Delaware School for the Deaf is not a Christina program, it’s statewide, meaning that tuition taxes paid in the students resident district pay for attendance.  DAP also isn’t in the city.  Christina only pays for students who live in the Christina School District to attend these programs. Sarah Pyle Academy is also tuition funded. Whichever district the student lives in is the district paying for them to go there.

Ted Ammann also stated that Red Clay, rightly so, will need to do a full assessment of the Christina city buildings to figure out what needs to be done to them to get them up (or down) to Red Clay’s specifications at a cost of 8 cents per square foot. This would also be included in the “Transition Funds” requested by Red Clay to come from the State.

Red Clay also plans to have a 1:1 technology program fully implemented by 2022, when the WEIC transition will be completed.

The idea of creating a Wilmington City “sub-district” of the Red Clay Consolidated District was brought up along with what modifications to Board representation and governance would have to be made as the transition moves forward.

Board President Kenny Rivera believes that the WEIC plan will generate the additional resources needed to move education forward in Delaware.

As I said above, the Board approved a plan with very little detail to it and no clear picture of costs associated with it, on the premises that “the State will give us the money” and it’ll be figured out by July 2016.

Merv Daughtery, Red Clay’s Superintendent said if July 2016 gets here and there’s no funding, then there’s no plan.

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5:43pm – Support resources for Low-Income and ELL: Jill Floore, CFO – multiple models have been discussed but there are no final details.

ELL: One specific weight for weighted funding?  Or sliding scale depending on English proficiency?

Committee unanimously endorsed property reassessment. Long discussion on equalization funding formula, frozen since 2009.

In 2015 dollars, less per pupil state funding than in 2008.  Extra time programming, SROs, ELL ‘discretionary funds’ were the most frequently cut.

5:39pm

Revised WEIC Timeline:

Approval Phase – First half 2016
Planning Phase – July 2016-June2017
Transition Phase – July 2017 – 6/18
Implementation Phase – 7/18 – 6/22

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Red Clay’s Board of Education has called a special session public meeting this evening.  The lone topic on the agenda is WEIC.

This will be my attempt at live blogging the meeting, start to finish. You can check out the agenda and related documents from Red Clay’s BoardDocs site: http://www.boarddocs.com/de/rccsd/Board.nsf/Public

Meeting is scheduled to begin at 5:30pm.

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Nobody Wins In A Zero Sum Game

Written for DelawareLiberal.net:

If you have been following anything related to funding public schools in Delaware, you probably know that the system is severely broken and there are major changes being talked about. The Wilmington Education Improvement Commission is talking about needs-based funding (or weighted-student funding) and reallocation of the existing money in the system. Others are talking about changes to the equalization funding formula that’s been frozen for about 20 years. Some are talking about property reassessment. So who’s right? The short answer is: everyone, partially.
Reallocating the money already generated for public schools is a zero-sum game. It isn’t a long term solution and I’m not really sure that it’s a viable short-term solution. Although it’s better than doing nothing I suppose.

Delaware has a hybridized general ed/needs-based funding system already embedded into the current unit count system. See the following chart:

The first 3 columns are the general ed categories. For every 12.8 pre-k students in a school, that school earns 1 teaching unit from the State which amounts to approximately 55-70% of the funding for a teacher’s salary and benefits. For every 16.2 K-3 students, you get a teaching unit. Same deal for every 20 grade 4-12 students. By the way, I’ve yet to figure out how you get two-tenths of a kindergarten student.

The 3 categories on the right: Basic, Intensive, and Complex are the needs-based system. If a student’s level of need is categorized as one of those three, there is significant portion of additional funding that goes to that student. 8.4 students with “basic” level of additional needs gets them 1 basic special ed teaching unit. There are different criteria to meet to categorize a student as one of the three levels of need, but it is a needs based system. By no means is this system adequate to meet the needs of Delaware’s schoolchildren, but it is a framework to expand upon.  

As the educational landscape of our schools has changed over the last few decades it’s become clear to many that at least two additional categories of needs-based funding are needed: one weighted on the level of poverty and one weighted on the prevalence of English language learners in the school. I can only speak for the Christina School District since I deal with their finances on a regular basis, but ELL is one of the fastest growing expenses in the district and Christina currently serves some of the poorest children in the state. Make no mistake, our teachers that work with our highest needs students go all out and give everything they have and more to give these children the absolute best education possible, but they need help. 
Adding more categories of need requires more money to fund them. If we’re talking reallocation, that means taking money from something else in the education system and putting it towards the new categories. I’m not sure how our kids and teachers come out winning in that scenario. If we’re talking bringing in additional revenue, then given the current financial situation in the State we have to be talking about adding tax brackets. It’s an election year, which politician is going to take one for the team and start talking about raising taxes?

Equalization funding. Once upon a time, the equalization funding formula was created to help the school districts with smaller tax bases (Sussex County) stay competitive with the wealthier districts (New Castle County) in the state by providing additional units of funding tied to the relative size of the tax base. Fast forward a few decades and when it became apparent that the tax base was growing in Kent and Sussex Counties the formula, designed to be fluid and dynamic, was modified, modified again, and then frozen. The result is a complete mess of funding that follows no discernible pattern. Some districts with large tax bases get significantly more funding than a district with a smaller tax base. Some districts earn equalization funding that has no apparent relationship to its tax base (Appoquinimink). Equalization funding is jacked up and it needs to be completely redone.
And then property reassessment, the political hand grenade. Want to scare the crap out of our State politicians running for election/re-election next year? Ask them what they think about statewide property reassessment. 

It is true that New Castle County has not had a property reassessment since 1983 and Sussex hasn’t had one since 1974. It’s also true that reassessment would be damned expensive to do but over time, would help out our school districts. The property taxes you pay now in New Castle County are based on what your land and dwelling would have been worth in 1983. In Sussex, imagine that $2.9 million ocean front property in Fenwick sitting there, its owners paying taxes on what it would have been worth in 1974. That needs to change. 

Even after everything I’ve just written, there’s still way, WAY more that needs to be changed when it comes to funding schools in Delaware (having Charter schools funded by a line item on your property taxes like VoTechs, creating new tax brackets on incomes over $60k/yr, and more). Those will be a topic for a future post though. I’m sure this riveting foray into the public school system funding world has you all on the edge of your seats wanting more. I don’t want to scare you all with the level of insanity that our school districts have to deal with when it comes to funding, though. At least not yet.

Christina School District SBAC vs PLI

I’m not even going to write anything, just a graph I modeled off one I found in a blog comment.  It merits some serious discussion and action at the highest levels of our State government, in our Districts and schools.

Christina School District Smarter Balanced proficiency scores compared to the percentage of low income students by school.  modeled on Red Clay’s data, found here: http://www.delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/RedClayPovertyScores.png

Poverty. Affects. Education.

PLI = Percent Low Income, ELA = English Language Arts

Everyone Out of the (Tax) Pool!

And now for something completely not different:  The New Castle County Tax Pool.  Ahead of the WEIC town hall scheduled for this evening at Cab Calloway, here’s some information on the New Castle County Tax Pool, as it was brought up during the last WEIC town hall (and some errant information was given by WEIC regarding how each district contributes to the pool).

I’ve written and given presentations, blog posts, Facebook posts on public school financing for the last couple of years and I haven’t mentioned the tax pool hardly at all even though it does significantly affect the tax revenue (in a negative way) for both Red Clay and Christina.  So what is it?

Once upon a time, there was only the New Castle County Public School District, one district serving the entire county’s public school students (interesting concept..).  Then, the county was broken up into the 5 main public school districts we know today: Red Clay, Christina, Brandywine, Colonial and VoTech.  For the purposes of the tax pool in this post, VoTech is excluded.  For the 4 other districts, check this out:

At the time of the NCCSD dissolution, its current operating tax was $0.468 per $100 assessed value.  That tax rate still exists today, it is embedded in our current school taxes as part of the operating tax (also called current expense tax).  What does that mean?  Christina’s current operating tax is $1.42 / $100 AV.  That $1.42 is a sum of two tax rates: The NCC Tax Pool rate of $0.468 cents + Christina’s direct operating tax: $0.952 cents / $100 AV.   The operating tax revenue is actually collected in two portions.  For reference:

District	NCC Tax Pool Rate	District Operating Rate	Total Rate
Christina	$0.468	$0.952	$1.42
Red Clay (pre-referendum)	$0.468	$0.758	$1.226
Colonial	$0.468	$0.738	$1.206
Brandywine	$0.468	$0.818	$1.286

Rabbit hole alert!  The money collected with the tax pool rate gets put into a big pot.  DDOE uses wizardry to allocate the pool money out to the districts.  Ok, it isn’t really wizardry but the formula is all kinds of jacked up and outdated.    

If you’re feeling adventurous and would like to play along at home:  the “formula” is as follows and is performed for each of the 4 districts:

A) Total Div I Units – Special School Units = Net Div I Units
B) Net Div I Units / Total Net Div I units = Allocation Factor
C) Allocation Factor * Tax Pool Receipts = how much tax revenue is returned/lost for each district from the pool.

A couple of charts and graphs I threw together:

In this bar chart separated by School District, the red bars indicate the gross operating tax receipts collected by each district in millions $ (money collected via Operating Tax).  The green bars show the after-effects of the New Castle County Tax Pool. You can see that both Christina and Red Clay are net contributors to the pool (they pay in more than they get out).  Brandywine and Colonial are net beneficiaries (they receive more from the pool than they put in).  The purple bar shows the after effects of the payments each District makes to Charter and Choice schools, illustrating how much general operating revenue remains for running the Districts. Infer from these graphs what you will, but I feel it is beyond doubt that our public school funding mechanisms are woefully obsolete.  

In fiscal year 2015 (school year 2014-15) the four school districts made payments to charter schools totaling approximately $35,000,000.  50% of that was paid through Christina alone.

WEIC wants to have a conversation about public school funding.  We all need to be part of that conversation because the funding issue extends well beyond the City of Wilmington.

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).

Where Are The Kids?

Troubling enrollment projections for the 15-16 school year in Christina. Last night at the CBOC meeting we were shown that enrollment counts as of July 21 (an early indicator of what student counts will look like on the first day of school).  Historically July 21st counts are off by one or two hundred students in a few specific areas of the district, namely the Wilmington area schools and secondary schools.  This year is an outlier in a big way. Enrollment counts are off by about 900 students District-wide and not in the usual areas of low student counts.  The low numbers are at all grade levels in the city and in the suburbs.  900 students is a HUGE number and by far eclipses the usual couple hundred.  Such low enrollment right now translates in to 78 fewer teaching units.  Without students, the State sends no money and the District cannot carry those positions solely on local funding.  

So what’s the reason for such a drop in enrollments?  We’re not sure. The choice period is closed.  We know more students are migrating to charters but definitely not 900. 

As far as the budget?  The cliffs notes version: District has compiled $9.1 million in reductions which cuts the structural deficiency from $14 million next year to around $3 million.  There are major decisions that will need to be made in the next 3 months surrounding what the District needs to look like to get it out of the red.  Program elimination, realigning schools, any number of cost saving measures.   I’m going to go through the notes I took at last night’s CBOC meeting and try and translate it into some meaningful chunks of info.  Lots of vital information shared last night.  

By the way, if you have friends, neighbors or family members that have school age kids in the district, please give them a friendly reminder to make sure they are registered with the district!  Teaching jobs depend on registration and enrollment!

Belting it Out

About the line item detail expenses for a school district in Delaware, where do you find them?!  The answer is:

1. A myriad of sources supply funds for just about everything and everyone in the district, there is no “single” stream of revenue. Example: $100 of a teacher’s salary may actually be $60 from the State of Delaware and $40 from local property taxes.  Or depending on the type of teacher or program they are in that $100 might be: $45 State, $45 Local, $10 Federal.  Those funding splits change all the time.  So it’s darn near impossible to continually list the splits in every document published.
2. The way the State reports District expenses is not exactly how the District reports and expends money. (That online checkbook?  Garbage. Don’t even look at it).  District Data is substantially more accurate than the State’s.
3. Different departments and operating units in the District spend funds on the same services and each unit must report its own expenses individually so they may then be rolled up to final budget totals.

Ever wonder why the federal government’s budget is thousands of pages long?  Let’s hit point #3:  Everyone has to report everything they plan to spend money on.  Money is only spent on things listed in the final budget for the district that is approved by the Board of Education every year.

Stay with me here:   Let’s visualize how Christina School District is organized in terms of the purchasing things.  Think of a tree from the trunk on up to the very tippy top branch.  Now, turn the tree upside down so the trunk is at the top and all the branches are below.  The trunk is Christina School District.  Where the trunk first divides into the real thick branches are the largest operating units within CSD:  Education, Finance, and Facilities.   We’ll climb down the Education branch called the Chief Academic Officer (Deputy Superintendent).

Following down the branch it divides into 4 smaller branches:  Elementary Ed, Secondary Ed, Special Services, Enrichment.   Down the Elementary Ed branch it divides into 24 smaller branches called Elementary School Principals.   Now we’re at the bottom of the upside down tree.  At any dividing point along the tree from the trunk on down to last branch, money can be expended and it can be expended on many of the same things (copy paper, for example).  Where each branch divides is a purchase point.

To help keep all those branches straight, we’ll assign a 5 digit account code to each one so we know which branch is which.  Now, let’s say every single account code (branch) needs a ream of paper.  How does CSD (the trunk) keep track of who needs the paper, where to send it and how much is needed?  Each branch sends a requisition for paper  with their account code up to the trunk.  The District sends out for the paper and it’s brought to the branch that ordered it.  Now apply that process for absolutely everything purchased in the District.   Requisitions sent from individual account codes to the District, District converts to purchase orders (read: buys the stuff) and it is delivered to the account that ordered it.

Keene Elementary requires copy paper.  The building leader sends a requisition for copy paper to the Director of Elementary Ed, then it goes to the Deputy Superintendent (these steps happen quickly) and over to the Chief Financial Officer.  If the requisition is for something listed in the Board approved budget (copy paper is definitely in there), it is changed to a purchase order and Keene gets its paper delivered.  If it is NOT for something in the budget or is for a larger than normal quantity of something in the budget, a conversation happens between the CFO’s office and the building leader regarding the need for the requisition.   That’s how it goes for everything, including things like contracted services and consultants.

The Final Budget is all the individual account code expenses rolled up into a relatively short list of annual totals.  Monthly financial reports are the monthly expenses of that relatively short list of items and account codes.

You still don’t know exactly where to find individual line item expenses yet, do you?   That’s not a coincidence.  There’s WAY more to this than meets the eye.  Which is why I shoot down the argument comparing School District finances to household budgets or personal checking accounts every single time I hear it.  Just cinch the District’s belt, right?   Which belt?  There are 267 of them. Ok, there may not be that many but there are a lot!  Stay tuned!

 

Budget Me Some of Your Time

By now, everyone knows of the failed second attempt at a referendum by the Christina School District and its supporters.  In the last 6 months we have had many, many more residents beginning to look into the way our public schools are funded.  Even with the referendum failures, one silver lining is the renewed public interest in public school finances.  On a personal note, I am absolutely thrilled that anyone is taking even 5 minutes to look at a financial report for the District because that is 5 minutes more than they were spending on it prior to the referenda.

What I’d like to do going forward is use this blog (and anyone who might share my posts) as a platform to start bringing public school financing, particularly CSD’s, in to the spotlight and transforming it into “the real world”.  Let’s be honest, a 25 page financial report is going make 90% of the people who read it go cross-eyed.  It is chock full of numbers and terms many do not understand and does not really contain the level of description and clarity members of the public want and need to see.  I’d like to begin changing that right now.

Let’s start off by explaining what the Final Budget reports you can find on Christina’s website are not.  They are not low level, highly descriptive, line item lists of what is being spent where and why.  They are not intended to give anyone reading it information on “how much money goes to textbooks?” or “how much money is going to classroom supplies like pencils and paper” or any specific line item expense information.  They are not intended to give anyone reading it an understanding of exactly where the final destinations of all funds are.  They are not, by nature, able to be easily understood by anyone who has not committed some amount of time to learning about the processes that go into creating the document itself.

Then, what ARE the final budgets? The final budget report is intended as a decision making tool to help the Board of Education identify the main sources of revenue for the District, how much revenue is projected to come in, why, and how it will be allocated to the departments/areas within the District and whether the revenue is sufficient to cover all projected costs and if not, what is causing the revenue deficiency.  Its second major purpose is to identify any external or internal factors that will significantly impact the revenue streams or expenses of the District.   A third major purpose is to give the Board of Education an early picture of what District finances will look like at the conclusion of the next fiscal year.  All of this is for the Board’s decision making process about what changes may need to be made to revenue and/or expenses.  The final budget is voted on by the Board of Education as the District’s spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year.  Any expense the District Administration makes that is contained in the budget after receiving final approval from the Board of Education is considered “authorized and appropriate”.

You may be thinking, well where do I go to find out specific information about exactly what the money is being spent on?  Great question.  Stay tuned.

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.