Letter to the Editor
Last evening I spent a few minutes with the School Board at its budget forum. I was afforded more than 4 minutes, but nevertheless hurried along, so the Board could get to “its” business at hand.
Over the years I have watched this annual ritual and it does not change much, other than this year there is a larger than normal informational abyss on the upcoming budget. However, there is considerable historical information and dated projections for anyone with the mind to mine the data.
Being so inclined, I did this and shared some of my findings with the board.
A. Since 2001, total school district expenditures have outpaced inflation, measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), by about 23%.
B. In school year 2012 – 2012 alone, this “delta” totals more than $12,000,000.
C. While expenditures have continued to grow, enrollment has continued to decline. In 1978, district wide enrollment was 7,131 students. The most recently available projections from the PA Department of Education, project 2021 enrollment at 4,753 students; a 33% decline for the period.
D. The increasing expenditure demands have required increasing tax support from residents. Earned income revenues have grown commensurate with the CPI, while real estate taxes, which “balance” the budget, have grown much faster. Since 1978, the CPI has grown by a factor of 3.6. Gross Real Estate Revenues for the school district, by a factor of 5.5. Adjusted for the declining enrollment, real estate revenues on a per student basis have grown by a factor of 7.4.
My primary point to the Board is that this trend is not sustainable. They may not be able to fix it this year, but they must recognize the devil in the details, demonstrate some leadership, and chart a course for our collective future.
I have absolutely no interest in hearing about PSERS, the need to “invest” in our infrastructure, or who last kicked the can down the road. These are all lame rationalizations for spending and taxing more.
When elected officials take office, they do so with the intent to make a difference. They come armed for battle with either leadership and good ideas, or OPM (other people’s money). It seems more often than not OPM carries the day.
ps
But for being politely “gaveled” down, I intended to share some positive observations, including:
1. Our students, supported by their families and our talented faculty continue to achieve and make our Community proud.
2. While achievement does come at some cost, we are far more efficient than most of Pennsylvania’s school districts when you analyze achievement with expenditures.
3. In fact, many districts spend bunches more money per student.
4. Who deserves the credit – see point 1.
11 comments:
Mrs. Cappucci and friends need to learn some humility in my opinion.
Her leadership, especially on the HS renovation have dropped our district in the position it is today.
She missed her claim that the HS would come in 17% under budget by millions and is one of the reasons we're looking at cutting librarians, programs and raising fees. This group under the direction of Kubit, Posti and now Cappucci has done more damage to MTL's reputation, education standards and financial position than she'll ever realize.
The least she could do is give the guy that has tried desperately to educate her more 5 or 10 minutes. If he wants an hour he should get and if Cappucci or any other board member doesn't have time to hear him out they should resign. We can live without them!
Hell, he can't be any more wrong than that guy that thinks a .55 mill tax hike is like a zero mill tax hike.
Bill Matthews material is always fact-based, which is far more than I can say about most of the remarks of school board members.
The facts produced in Bill's graphs and charts came from MTLSD annual reports to the PDE in Harrisburg.
Yep, Bill always does his homework, which is more than we can say for the board.
Posti said that Jan's raise has been inaccurately reported (due to a Post gazette article, imagine that) yet she couldn't point Elaine to the PG'a retraction or get anyone to say what the actual raise percentage was.
Wouldn't you be prepared if you were going to correct someone's statement.
At the least Jan ought to know what her raise was!
I am still looking for the retraction, 12:59 PM. I can't seem to get my fingers on it.
Bill's comments just finished airing on TV. When Cappucci said that Bill was WELL over his time, the clock had just run out. She did correct herself, but she couldn't wait for him to finish. Did you catch Timmy counting the pages? Unfortunately, we are wasting our time with this group. They aren't looking for feedback.
An FYI, you can click on Bill's charts to enlarge them.
Elaine
12:59, Jan got a bonus over and above her 3% raise.
In Mt. Lebanon, the Blue Devil is in the details.
http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/us/in-a-budget-gesture-obama-will-return-5-of-his-salary-681940/
How much would be saved if administrators returned 5% of their salary?
Elaine
And 12:42 PM should have added that the CPI data is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, the only official source of inflation related factual data.
Wonder where school board actors like Cooper & Remely in the districts theater of the absurd get theirs ?
Remely speaks with a classic forked tongue. As a school board candidate one should know he has never voted no to a tax increase. As a state rep candidate, his campaign platform is that he will cut taxes. Seems to me he has both feet firmly planted in midair.
Cooper has never worked in the real world, the private sector, and the largest budget he has likely tried to manage is his household budget.
I watched most of the meeting last night but unfortunately missed the start when there were citizen comments.
A couple of things struck me:
1. Remely's "outburst" at having only educational cuts to look at versus paper clips (his words not mine) and the back and forth with Cappucci saying we looked at paper clips ten years ago and Dan saying maybe it's time to look again. Dan then alluded to a line item budget the board at looked at long ago and thought to the camera that maybe they should be looking at that again. Really, Dan? Here we are at the third to last meeting about the budget and now you want to go over a line item budget.
1a. Related to the above, Dr. Tim was hired in part to bring a zero-based budget to the school board. On this account he has failed miserably. In fact, if I recall correctly the zero based budget was part of his first year goals. Clearly Jan Klein won that battle.
2. The failure of Cappucci to understand that fees are fees was mind boggling to me. She thought increasing parking fees by $50 was completely out of the question while one moment earlier arguing that a $45 student activity fee was perfectly reasonable. I guess this is how you can hide increases in cost to students...instead of being blamed for an increase in a fee, you just keep adding new ones! The justification for these additional fees was universally cited as the fact that parents ALREADY pay fees for the students to participate in sports so this is nothing new.
2a. I think it is safe to conclude that we have reached a new paradigm here where students and parents can expect now to be charged fees for going to school, attending classes, extra curricular activities, labs, books, whatever. This Pandora's box has been blasted wide open the last few years by this school board.
3. There was absolutely NO discussion or none that I heard about how this budget will affect floating bonds later this year. We have a structurally high budget. Imagine trying to shove a million dollars of debt service into this budget this year. It would be impossible to do without a referendum. That leaves the discussion for wrapping, capitalizing or level floating bonds for next year with no budget preparation this year.
4. PSERs gets blamed for everything. Dan, your high school project and the way you financed it is at least as culpable as PSERS. This was pointed out by Ostergaard, Fraasch, Hart, and any other fiscal literate who paid attention.
The budget is more or less bone dry. There isn't much meat to cut. Someone should put together a list of cuts the last few budgets. You'll find sheet music, supplies, all the stuff that makes school fun. But what you won't find (outside of the sorely needed supervisor reorg) is staff reductions or salary freezes. While this board has instructed Timmy to go talk to the Unions, I would expect they would say loudly, "YOU FIRST" when it comes to reductions in raises or salary.
Once upon a time … a plant manager was conducting his annual budget review for his vice president.
One of the early items included next year’s proposal for employee salary increases. The plant manager had previously conducted the appropriate market studies and internal equity reviews before arriving at his 5% average increase recommendation. To the surprise (and relief) of the plant manager, the VP did not raise an eyebrow.
More than an hour passed, until the two got to the bottom line: total costs were going up in the year-over-year comparison.
This raised both eyebrows of the VP – who asked, “How could this happen?”
The plant manager immediately began to explain the cost escalation, starting with the 5% increase to base pay he had earlier proposed and which went uncontested.
The VP interrupted: “I was cool with the 5% salary increase, it was based on a solid review of your labor market. However, I never, ever indicated I would approve an increase in year-over-year costs.
In the end, the plant manager implemented the 5% salary increase recommendation and the VP continued to be cool with the operating plan, including the 0% increase in year-over-year costs.
Moral of the story: Leaders do what cannot be done all the time.
(this posting is based on real events)
After studying Mr. Matthews excellent presentation something he said struck a chord.
He presented: "A. Since 2001, total school district expenditures have outpaced inflation, measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), by about 23%."
I found Bill's comment odd, because I remember Mr. Cooper at some point in the budget discussions commenting that the district, and he was quite stern in comment, "keep place with inflation!"
Bill, of course as his usual MO, cites evidence to back up his claims. Unfortunately, Mr. Cooper did not. Was he shooting from the hip, conjecturing, or does he actually know whether the district is keeping pace or under or over pacing inflation. Perhaps he's making decisions based on faulty or misleading numbers and because of such he is not providing our kids with the best education possible.
Maybe it is time that we cross-examine our school board directors. They're not any more infallible than any other resident. It's possible that they've just come up with a wrong conclusion. They're not monsters for doing so, but just as a teacher or a professor wouldn't accept a wrong answer on a students test, why should we be content to let a director's assumption or conclusion go by uncorrected?
In the budget meeting an option to quit televising the board meeting was discussed. Perhaps Ostergaard is right, save the (he says $8,000 - Cappucci days it's more like $9,000) bucks and do the follow.
When the board has an important decision they post it the district site and channel 19, something like this:
We intend to hire Pursuant Ketchum to direct a fund raising campaign. If you don't agree, stop is if you can!
Why the harsh tone you ask, it's like this.
When the PK initiative was first brought up, there was great debate, I think several hours worth. A couple of directors, Remely for one had reservations about if it was worth the money or appropriate. But despite that the majority approved $43,000 to do a study.
In the course of the study, the goal dropped from $30 million to $15 million. Then at the final PK presentation, PK speculated that they might raise net... $5.2 million... maybe.
So after much more debate, and the declaration of director reservations what they do? Of course, they approved the PK fund raising drive!
It was iffy at $30 million, it was iffy at $15 million... It's still iffy at $6 million and what was the vote... Let's do it.
Why didn't they save a lot of time and just approve it in the first meeting?
We had the same thing with the HS. They decided on Celli's boondoggle and told the public it would most likely come in 17% under projections. Well it went to bid and actually came in OVER projections. Did that alert them that something was faulty in their plan, that may be they were clueless. Nah, they never err.
They just had some stuff taken out, minor stuff like water feeds to the boilers and chillers and proceeded to do what they wanted to do in the first place.
So yep, save the $9,000, Dale. Bowman can type a screen on channel 19 like-- this is our next plan... (expletive deleted)!
PS: Student planning to park at the HS, your $100 permit fee is due NOW!
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