Ladies Logic

Monday, November 12, 2007

Education Open Thread

WOW! I think I tapped into something this weekend with my post Levy Fall Out. Since I am going to be very busy today and will have little time to blog, I am going to leave you with this Education Open Thread. Call your friends and neighbors and let's start an open, respectful discussion on what ISD 719 can do, moving forward, to solve their current budget crisis. I will be inviting members of C-A-G to the comment thread and I will issue an open invitation to anyone from the school district or the Stand by Me Committee to comment as well. The ONLY thing that I ask is that comments are respectful. Random snark and insults do nothing to further dialog and will be deleted!

Have a great day and a great discussion. I will check in with you all later!

Labels: ,

posted by The Lady Logician at 8:30 AM

19 Comments:

  • Ladies Logic,

    I hope that our Superintendent of Robbinsdale School District #281 follows your Superintendent and doesn't return at the end of his contract. It will be interesting how the Superintendents and School Boards react to the their losses and our lawsuit.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 1:06 PM  

  • To be honest, all ISD 719 can do in the short term is to make cuts and not open Redtail Ridge. I know that's been labeled a scare tactic, but I can assure you with all certainty the building will not open.

    To make the cuts the district will go through a bottoms up approach where each cost center identifies places for cuts. This will be submitted and approved by the school board. This is a very open process with public input welcome and invited.

    I truly invite everyone on all sides to participate and engage in this process. I don't want to reopen the referendum debate, but please believe me when I say there were some assumptions made regarding finance during the campaign that were not totally correct. I have studied this in great depth for years and know that to be true.

    People also need to know that the Business Director employed by this district is widely regarded as one of the top 20 school finance experts in the state. We do have people that know what they are doing.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:58 PM  

  • Numbers Guy -I hope you don't have to go that far. It is not necessarily a good thing for a district "in flux".

    Anonymous - cuts in WHAT? One of my biggest beefs with this district (aside from how they handled the HS naming debate) is the fact that their idea of making cuts is to cut teaching staff while adding admin staff! If the district really wants to show it's good faith to the community it would cut admin staff before it cuts a SINGLE teacher. I realize that talking about cutting staff is not what anyone wants to do. You are talking about REAL PEOPLE and not just numbers on a page. Heck - I know exactly what the staff is feeling because I went through the same thing 5 years ago! It's brutal, it's nerve wracking but in business it has to be done.

    The school district needs to remember that they are in the BUSINESS of educating children - not administrating them!

    LL

    By Blogger The Lady Logician, at 9:39 PM  

  • I keep hearing that the district added administrative staff. Please advise why you say that and what these positions were.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7:40 AM  

  • I will have to check to be certain which meeting it was, but there were a couple of board meetings this summer where there were adminsitrative new hires on the agenda and the new hires were approved.

    LL

    By Blogger The Lady Logician, at 8:30 AM  

  • LL, you talk about cutting teachers like it was a bad thing. What if, as in our district, there were 500 teachers that could not be "explained" by the average pupil-teacher ratio? Isn't it possible that class sizes could increase and that learning would continue? (Actually, that's a rhetorical. All the studies say it doesn't much matter, above the 3rd grade.) I applaud the bottom-up, community-involved approach. Unfortunately, I don't think our school districts have enough hard-nosed analysts to do it right.

    J. Ewing

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 5:37 PM  

  • "What if, as in our district, there were 500 teachers that could not be "explained" by the average pupil-teacher ratio?"

    Could you please explain what, exactly, you mean?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:43 PM  

  • Jerry - I'm not sure about your district, but the teachers that we have here are needed. We are most assuredly administration heavy. We have district offices (a former school) that is FULL of employees. I'm sure we could cut that staff and make up quite a bit of money on salaries and benefits there! Open discussion is a necessity here!

    LL

    By Blogger The Lady Logician, at 7:58 AM  

  • Please provide specific details of what administration you would cut. I find these broad statements such as "I'm sure we could cut that staff and make up quite a bit of money on salaries and benefits there!" as irresponsible without details.

    The District Services Center includes finance, curriculum, human resources, maintenance, operations, payroll/finance, communications, and community education (funded separately). I would like specifics of what you would cut.

    What we do know is this. An independent audit has determined that our district has the LOWEST administration costs in the Metro area. Please provide specifics of where the 'extra's are.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:34 AM  

  • It's very simple, LL. Take the "official" pupil/teacher ratio that the District claims to have and divide it into the number of students, giving you total teachers. Check that against the number of teachers you have in the district. Dollars to donuts you've got far more teachers than you need.

    And if by some miracle you do NOT discover a discrepancy here (which the district will be loath to explain), then consider that any classroom that is not physically FULL is using more very expensive "licensed professional instructional staff" than it needs.

    J.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:50 AM  

  • Anon - I think we should be asking YOU to back up your assertions. For the MDOE website and the school districts own websites run contrary to your claims.

    I said that we need to have open access to the budget so that intelligent decisions can be made. The district is not giving the public that data and they are legally required to. If the board wants our cooperation, a little cooperation from them would go a long way toward getting them the voters help!

    LL

    By Blogger The Lady Logician, at 9:37 AM  

  • Ok, not be be difficult but this does strike me a bit as "Guilty before proven innocent", but here goes. The report that shows PLS as having the lowest administration costs in the Metro area is: Metro ECSU 2005-06 Annual Funding Study in May of 2006. Where on the website does it show excessive administration costs?

    Honestly, I'm not trying to be difficult here, however, to really advance this argument and come to a resolution all can be happy with I do think we need to discuss these topics in specifics, not broad generalities.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:07 AM  

  • Without even looking at the numbers, I can tell you that "lowest administration costs in the Metro area" does not mean "no excessive administrative cost".

    In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.
    or
    Even a smaller pig is still a pig.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:20 PM  

  • Anon - As far as administrative spending goes, that is one of those things where the numbers are deceiving. Admin costs can (and usually do) include things like bus transportation and food service staff - something I think we can all agree are necessary services.

    However, if you look at the district website you see a lot of things that make you wonder. Like the fact that there are three assistant principals and an activities director at the High School. Why do we need three assistant principals, an activities director AND a campus supervisor (sorry Chris)? Back when I was in school we had assitant principals that were mostly guidance councilors! Teachers who were not in class monitored the halls (campus supervisor).

    In the district office, do we really need a district accountant, a payroll clerk an accounts payable clerk AND a purchasing specialist? Don't you think that the CFO (Margo), the finance secretary and the accountant can handle all of that?

    Just about every campus has at least two secretaries? Is that really a necessity? Couldn't schools that share facilities like (WestWood/EdgeWood or Twin Oaks/Hidden Oaks among others) share secretarial staff?

    Just about every business under the sun has gone through something like this. When the telecom that I used to work for went through bankruptcy the first thing that they did was lay off redundant staff - mostly sales managers - and left the rank and file service staff (in the districts case the teachers) in place. Yes there was some hardship, but we all banded together and made sacrifices for the health of the company.

    I think that is something the taxpayer has yet to see from ISD 719.

    LL

    By Blogger The Lady Logician, at 5:00 PM  

  • Not sure if anyone noticed, but ISD719 just received an OUTSTANDING report from the independent auditors. The district was applauded for its professionalism and accuracy. With respect to efficiency, the district was recognized for beating their budget forecast by $110,000. Fantastic stuff! Everyone needs to know that the district is well on its way to a positive fund balance by the end of this school year. How did this happen? By very difficult budget cuts and fiscal responsibility. I would expect CAG to applaud these accomplishments and thank the district for their efforts. That would be fair minded thing to do, wouldn't it? I've been waiting for something fair to come out of CAG. We'll see, won't we?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:36 AM  

  • Once again, beating budget forecast and having a sensible budget are two different things.
    If I have a budget that has $200,000 in waste in it and come in $100,000 under budget, should I be applauded for being fiscally sound?

    Or put another way,
    Way to go, you didn't waste as much money as you could have.

    First place to start cutting - Sports - Do we really need a lacrosse team?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:36 AM  

  • Hey great idea. Cut sports and we'll watch tons of kids open enroll to other districts and take their state revenue dollars with them. You lose just one kid and you just lost double the dollars it costs to run the program. Brilliant idea.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 1:09 PM  

  • Really - Take a look at the number of kids on say a baseball team.

    16, that's right 16 kids and we spend how much?

    And I though the reason #719 needed a referendum was too many kids and a need to lower class sizes.

    Seem this solves two problems.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:31 PM  

  • Anon 1 - I would like to see the report and analyze the criteria before making a comment on it. Is this report available to the public or is it someont the board has?

    I have to agree with Anon 2's comment "If I have a budget that has $200,000 in waste in it and come in $100,000 under budget, should I be applauded for being fiscally sound?" but I don't agree with the idea of cutting sports. Physical education is part of educating the kids and the competition angle is also part of the education process. As I have said before, I would like to see some redundant admin costs cut before they start hitting student services.

    LL

    By Blogger The Lady Logician, at 9:53 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home