BOE should do more
The Board of Education abdicated its responsibility to the taxpayers when it voted to support the school budget without any substantive changes. It did nothing more than move one item from the operating budget to the capital budget and reduced a few numbers that are based on estimates.
The taxpayers deserve more from the Board, but never seem to get it. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a Republican or Democratic majority. No one ever seems to review the budget. If they had reviewed the budget, they would know that they could eliminate wasteful spending in a number of ways, such as:
1) CONSERVING ENERGY – The Board could open only one school in the evening for use by community groups. This could save on both the energy bill, as well as the cost to staff the buildings while they’re being used; and
2) REMOVING THE FLUFF - Line items could be removed from the budget. Some budget line items are never used, such as:
A/c 330 (Research & Development)
A/c 430 (non-contract cleaning)
A/c 590 (storage services / microfiche services)
A/c 610 (K-12 computers)
For the three most recently completed fiscal years (02/03, 03/04 & 04/05), the “research & development” budget was $7,000 each year. Yet it spent only $2,756 of the $21,000 three-year total. “Non-contract cleaning” was $15,000 each year. Yet it spent only $938 of the $45,000. “K-12 computers” was $8,000 each year, but used only $1,474 of the $24,000 total. And then there’s “storage services / microfiche services.” It’s had $5,000 in the budget each year, yet has spent a grand total of $0 (zero). Those four line items have had budgets of $35,000 annually, yet have required only $2,000 each year. This year, those four line items total $43,500. Perhaps the Board could cut another $40,000 from the budget and still cover all our costs? Or maybe we could hire another teacher?
But some may argue that cutting (the fluff out of) the budget is not the responsibility of the Board of Education. Perhaps instead, the Board should consider acting responsibly by requesting an increase for the budget. If spending money today means saving money tomorrow, shouldn’t they consider a spending increase today that will save taxpayer money in the long run? Shouldn’t they consider any option that helps focus dollars on putting teachers and textbooks in the classroom?
Back in September, during a BOE Planning Committee meeting, I suggested the BOE invest in energy efficient items. I suggested the Board request money from the Council for energy efficiency improvement projects. Even before CL&P’s 22% rate hike, oftentimes the payback on such projects was four to five years (the same holds true for your household, if you’re trying to save money at home). However, no funding request has come to the Council from the Board. The Board does not seem interested in finding ways to save money.
These are just some of the areas in which the Board could find real savings. But instead, they cut the pension plan funding – the height of irresponsibility. Haven’t the recent lessons of Ford and GM taught us anything?
There are many other savings opportunities that people have suggested to me, such as with estimates of number of teacher retirements and healthcare costs. But those are a bit more complicated to explain. My intention here is to simply show the Board of Education could, and should, being doing more with the school budget.
Tim White
Town Council, Budget Committee
TimWhite98@yahoo.com
17 comments:
I believe many residents belive the BOE is not acting with the proper fiduciary responsibility they have been entrusted with. To literally be handed a budget and not spend time in detailed review, trusting what was handed to you is not repsonsible.
Here are a few questions to ponder and ask the BOE members and the Supt.,concerning the year that was called the "Zero Budget Year." Remember the intial budget request was about 2.6 mil and trhey actually received $234,000.
1.If money was so tight and there was no fluff, what financial mangement decisions were made to savemoney and still meet all of the union contractual agreements and the medical benefits cost?
2. What was cut out to make these savings happen?
3. If money was so tight how did $367 get transferred into the medical benefits trust fund?
4. Why did the BOE not suggest to hire the 2 teachers at Dodd with the 234k received. The 234k would have hired two teachers at Dodd and funded the Dodd and freshman sports programs. That school year the demand for the 2 teachers was significantly greater than now. The Dodd student population is dropping.
Could it be that not to hire the 2 teachers and cause parents to pay for sports that was a more inflamatory decision to get parents on their side?
Finally, an elected official who questions exactly how our tax contributions are being spent!
Why do annual taxes and spending increase at DOUBLE the rate of inflation? Are we receiving twice the quality of education and services we received last year? Or are these increases so much fluff in the name of "improving education"?
Bravo, Councilman Tim White for actually scrutinizing the budget (and tax increases). Too bad the Board of Ed does no more than rubber-stamp the Superintendent's proposed budgets every year.
I'm not advocating that we hire more teachers. I'm advocating elimination of the fluff and adoption of a budget based on actual historical trends, not budgeted historical trends. Truth is... while the Board has provided me with a copy of the budget (incl. # of teachers!), I still haven't asked the Board members yet "so how many teachers do we have?" I wonder what answer I'll get this year. And I do have more questions than that, as you can see based on this post.
Hopefully this year the meeting won't be immediately adjourned if I ask the Board members a "tough" question.
Keep in mind... I'm an accountant/auditor. Before I advocate any increases or reductions in taxes or services, I want to know the facts.
Are you suggesting that the BOE consider options that minimize spending? I doubt they would. Or they would have already removed the fluff that I mentioned in my post. I doubt any R or D Board would ever consider real reductions in spending requests.
Brickwall, I will take issue with something you said. Teachers in Cheshire "average" $62,000 per year, but are you aware of how many years they need work before attaining such salary levels? Additionally, they spend on average thousands out of their own pockets for supplies and continued educational expenses for classes which they are required by law to take to maintain their certification. That comes from their own pockets as does the cost of earning a CT required Masters degree to maintain certification.
Lets be honest here, in todays economy these folks are not overpaid. Additionally you mentioned the 185 day work year. The average american works 237 days a year (according to labor department statistics). That 185 only reflects the in session time. It doesn tinlcude the time spend before or after school starts during the day for lesson planning, it doesnt include the preperation typically required 4 weeks prior to the beginning of the school year formalizing lesson plans. They work alot harder than folks give them credit for.
Befor you ask, my wife is a teacher, we have friends whgo are teachers, however that doesnt taint my view. I am as fiscally conservative as anyone. The problem isnt teacher pay and so called short work year...its in the exhorbitant benefit costs, unnecessary overabundance of classes to please every parent and child, athletics and other discretionary spending.
Brickwall, I guess we can agree to disagree. I am not sure how we can classify someeone with 9 years of work experience and a masters degree responsible for educating our children as overpaid. Yes there certainly are those who dont desrve it as their performance doesnt dictate as such but the overwhelming number work hard and care about teaching our kids. In todays economy, $62,000 isnt a whole lot of money.
As for athletics I certainly support it, but is it necessary to fund every sport. growing up we funded football, girls and boys basketball, baseball, softball,track,lcarosse, swimming and hockey. I am not sure what others sports we are funding in cheshire, although skiiing seems a bit much.
I also thinkg the number of elective courses at CHS are excessive and unneccessary.
One last point, I absolutely agree with you however that the level of salary increases is unreasonable as they should certainly not outpace the 3.3.5% we are seeing in the private sector. I dont have a problem with overall pay, just how fast they are rising.....
I couldn't agree more. We need to change binding arbitration, but want to clarify... binding arbitration applies to all municipal employees. However, the rules are not uniform among the various bargaining units. Police and teachers play by different rules. I say we make one simple change... take the "deadline" out of the BA rules that applies only to teachers, and they would be on the same playing field as the police and public works. Even before addressing costs, we should do this to simply be fair.
The budget process that is used by the BOE is less than sufficient. The members of the BOE that believe it is not their job to cut the budget are being fiscally irresponsible. Having the BOE fall back on the position it is the Town Council's job to cut, becasue we don't know how much money the Council will give to the BOE is a chicken way out and evading responsibility.
The two major line items with large expenditures are Salary and Benefits. Unless structual changes to the education process are made, such as reducing electives, headcount will continue to increase.
An area of potential savings is the medical benefits package. The Supt states we are a "self funded minimum premimum" group and we pay all of our medical costs, including adminstrative services, profit for Blue Cross, sales commissions and other costs. There is a large difference between "self funded minimum premimum" and actual "self funded."
With a true self funded group many of the overhead costs are not required or paid. We would pay only for administrative costs. The profit s are eliminated and the brokers commisison is now negotiated.
I take issue with the statement by the Supt that true claims experience is not known at this time an as we get closer to April we will know more. That statement by itself it true, here is the other part. Claims experience is known at the end of every month and can be easily tabulated to provide a running 12, 18, or 24 total. From this one can extract the past running 12 months of claims data. How much more accurate could one want the data?
As the insured group is over 500 employees, the renewal rate or projected increase in costs is developed on the groups claims experience, not measured against or placed with another group. We control our own destiny and medical costs based on our own medical claims experience.
Last year the Town went out for other quotes on the business, the problem is they used their medical consultant as the person to get the quotes. The medical consultant is the same guy who sells the medical insurance to the Town and the BOE. The exisiting broker was asked to get quotes from his competition and give to the Town to demonstrate the broker was giving the Town the best deal. Does anyone see anything wrong with this picture? Why would the guy currently selling his medical insurance programs tell the Town his competition would supply a lower cost? The excuse given that other carriers cannot provide the same coverage is incorrect. It is a known fact that the otrher guys can provide equal to or better coverage.
The reasons for a reluctance to change is based on strictly a financial level of comfort by management. A true, open RFP process whereby all potential medical insurance carriers can come in and publically present their proposals is required.
The other alternative is to stay with Blue Cross and change from "self funded minimum premimum" to "self funded." At a minimum the savings would be several hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.The research shows, other Towns are doing this and saving large sums of money. Under the current projram every time the State mandates new medical coverage, we have to provide it. Under the "self funded" program it is not required, the changes become a point of negotiation in the next teacher contract.
We want, we want, but nobody wants to try to save money by doing the tough work and make the tough decisions. It is easier to raise taxes and blasme the State or increased medical costs as the culprit.
The annual discussion and debate about the Education Dept.'s budget is NOT about teachers, and it is NOT about teacher salaries. It is unfortunate that teachers are even dragged into this conversation.
The real problem is the lack of any fiscal oversight by the Board of Education. This leaves all of the decision-making in the hands of the Superintendent. I for one believe that the Superintendent is a well-intentioned individual, who only has the best interest of the students in mind. However, it is necessary that the BOE provides some balance to an otherwise one-sided point of view, and to represent the interests and concerns of the entire Cheshire community.
While Mr. Massey and other members of the BOE may not feel that it is their job to provide budget oversight or to question the budgetary judgement of the Superintendent, experience elsewhere contradicts that point of view. Just today, the newspaper is reporting that the Amity Regional school system is reporting a $1.1m surplus which will be returned to the town coffers. And they have an annual budget of $37m vs. Cheshire's $52m. And let's not forget Roslyn, NY last year, where the entire Board was forced to resign after having failed to provide any oversight of financial matters, resulting in the theft of millions of dollars from the town.
If I had to give a grade to the BOE for Budget 101 - I would have to give them an "F". As my son once told me, "Dad, it's really hard to get an F, you really have to do absolutely nothing."
Anonymous... I LOVE your son's quote!! Good stuff!
About Amity... I'm fairly certain that you're comparing apples to oranges. Amity is a high school only. It is comprised of Bethany, Orange & Woodbridge. However, each of those towns have their own elementary school systems. And the middle school has a different setup. So I think you're comparing 4 yrs of education ($37m) to 13+ yrs of education ($52m). I'm not absolutely certain about this, but I'm pretty sure there are significant differences b/w Amity and Cheshire. Any other bloggers have a firmer grasp on this?
As for this discussion not being about teachers, I agree. I went thru the Cheshire schools and think very highly of our teachers. (Heck... my dad was one!) But to suggest that the binding arbitration rules that govern their union contract negotiations is not part of the difficulty is, I believe, unreasonable. I firmly believe that those rules should be changed... at minimum, there should be a reform to create uniformity among municipal employee unions.
Tim, my only reason for bringing up Amity is that they were able to run under budget - to the tune of $1.1m --- presumably because of strong fiscal oversight!
Brickwall: In order to compare spending per pupil from one town to another, you need to be certain of what constitutes spending. In Cheshire, capital projects such as the CHS renovation and Dodd expansion are reported under capital debt... not education. In some towns, annual debt payments our borne by department, rather than as a separate line item. Cheshire has over $10mm per year in debt payments now. If 60% of the projects were education-related, conceivably the annual spending per pupil could be $1,000-$1,500 higher than reported.
Anonymous, you make a very good point. And I cannot speak to Amity's debt burden, but I do know Cheshire's debt burden. (It's quite a sore point for me... per the CT Office of Policy & Mgt, as of Jan '05, of the 169 municipalities in the state, Cheshire was the 15th most indebted per capita. And that's too high for my taste.)
To see a more accurate picture of the debt burden related to our schools, you should "add back" two items: Capital Non-Recurring (a $500k annual expenditure, included in the town's operating budget) and, as you mentioned, the schools portion of the overall debt burden held by the town. And that number is not 60%, but (and I'm going off of memory here) about 33%. Overall, the town has about $75,000,000 in debt, including about $25,000,000 in school-related debt. Again, these numbers are off of memory... but I'm comfortable with them. If anything, the school number may be as low as $20m and the total number may be as high as $80m. So the schools probably have between 25% and 33% of the $10,400,000 annual debt payments.
Assuming it's on the high end, that would be about $3,500,000 in debt payments + $500,000 in CNR money or $4,000,000 total. If you divide that by 5200 students, you get an additional expenditure of $800/student. Yet Amity spends an additional $1800/student (per Brickwall's numbers).
Anonymous... very good point, but I still think Brickwall's point is very interesting... and still not yet fully explained. (And of course, this doesn't address if Amity includes capital expenditures in their school budget.)
I am convinced that Amity's numbers must include capital debt. Unlike any other expense for the three towns, the educational expenses are shared. I don't see how the capital expenses for the Education department could otherwise be accounted for.
I agree that, based on these numbers, Amity probably does include capital expenses.
But based on the numbers that have been included above, there's still a $1000 difference. And barring some new information coming to light... I think that Brickwall's guess (that high school has more expenses than elementary school) is probably right.
And if that general assertion is true, it raises another question in my mind: what are the sources of that additional cost?
Some sources of costs at CHS:
a/c 440 (sports rental) $50k/yr
a/c 510 (busing Wilcox, etc.) $100k/yr
(private school-St. Bridgets??) $200k/yr
a/c 590 (sports services) $60k/yr
a/c 117 (student activities) $400-500k/yr
But that's only $800-900k. And if you assume an equivalent (final six year) student population of 2300 students w/ a cost differential of $1,000, then I'm thinking that Cheshire is "absorbing" that $1,000 difference among the lower grades... say 3,000 students. So there may be a couple million dollars there being spent at the high school that is not spent at the elementary level. And if my numbers above are fairly close to accounting for all extracurricular activities, then there still would need to be other significant costs at the high school & Dodd levels.
I completely forgot that St. Bridget's ends in 8th grade. So perhaps you could eliminate both the $100k for Wilcox busing (and other vo-ag/technical schools) and the $200k for "private schools" busing. (I presume that St. Bridget's represents the lion's share of that busing number.)
I say this because if Wilcox is 4yrs for $100k and St. Bridget's is 8yrs for $200k, then it stands to reason that these numbers are consistent across the 12yrs and therefore would not skew the "spending per pupil" figure being discussed here.
So knock that $800-900k figure down to $500-600k.
Busing definitely would be part of the difference in per pupil cost, but not the $1,000+ difference.
Brickwall... I've tried to use the State of CT Ed website, but be careful. Consider that their numbers are based on our numbers. And for years, our BOE has not known how many teachers we have... last year was no fluke. Their "historical" numbers have changed every year for years.
As for how many teachers we have, our own 05/06 BOE budget has the "historical" number of teachers listed as 362.55 for the 04/05 year. However, teachers are often broken down into 3 categories (classroom, special ed & pupil servies). It's entirely possible that your number of 329 teachers represents one or two of these three categories. Or it may not. At this point, I'm still not sure the Board knows how many teachers they have.
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