Budget Work Session
I attended the Budget Work Session on Wednesday. It was pretty sobering. Key facts:
Transportation thread to come.
- There is a projected deficit of $18.4M. I would love to explain it all to you (and I will try to at least get the PowerPoint up by tomorrow) but frankly, I look down at the paper version and I don't know what half of it is. Imagine my happiness (and surprise) to hear Board Directors say, "Now, what is this?" because they don't know either. I don't know if it is the Budget office trying to use smoke and mirrors or just too much jargon but if the people who will make the final decisions don't know what you are talking about, you're doing something wrong.
- By April 10th, we will have the Governor's budget, the House budget and the Senate budget. We were told that is when "the rubber meets the road." The Governor released his budget today and it seems quite favorable to K-12 ed (if not quite the amount everyone would want). He seems to be finding the money through closing many tax loopholes.
- KEY FACT: transportation may be cut back and big, big changes in the future for times and service. Between the boundary changes and the transportation changes, parents expect a seismic shift.
- Sequestration issues have not hit the district yet and it may be a year before the district feels it..
- one-time use of Unassigned Fund Balance
- one-time use of Assigned Fund Balance - Pension
- increase in Full Day K rate from $272 to $311 per month (that would be about 15% which one reader commented was about what they said would happen)
- Capital Transfer for Software Costs under BEX IV
- Maximize Current Year Underspend (hiring/spending freeze)
- Charge Stipends to TIF
- Transportation Saving - EEU (this one surprised me. This is talking about transportation for the UW EEU school program for ALL students. I had thought they only transported Special Ed children but apparently not.)
- withdraw 20% non-staff hold back from schools - apparently the district holds back 20% of a school's projected budget until October counts but could just withhold it longer. Apparently other districts don't allow this.
- savings through bargaining (I'm guessing they mean the teachers contract, good luck with that).
- Central Adm reductions (very funny - "eliminate second SE Ex Director")
- Hamilton staffing capacity costs - apparently Hamilton may need more teachers for capacity management.
- Int'l School Certificated Staff and Middle School Recovery - totally not explained but it was stated that at Beacon Hill and McDonald they may have a building situation where they have Japanese and Spanish classes together. I find this odd because it was not mentioned at ALL at the Board meeting where they were talking about funding staff. Hmmm. (The middle school recovery part is to pay for long-term suspended/expelled students to continue middle school reentry and get behavior modification counseling.)
- TIF Grant backfill - Ah, yes, districts love to take grant money but oh, is the devil in the details. Every grant has its costs to a district. Well, for TIF, our district may have to now pay for some TIF positions. Kay asked if they knew about this from the beginning and the answer was yes. So we took this grant knowing that, down the road, we would have a sort of "balloon" payment to come.
- Professional Development - at a whopping $5.9M
- Elementary math adoption
- Assessment changes (this has a question mark and you have to wonder if anything can change with MAP because there may be no money to make changes)
- Retrofit Crew Project (no idea)
- Elementary Counselors (looks like they would like to bring them back but it's $6.3M)
- International Schools - at $700k and I wonder what this is. No idea as we have been repeatedly told that the international schools get no extra money and I haven't heard of any new ones opening up.
- Wallace Foundation Arts Grant Match - this is not happening because we didn't get the grant
- HS College&Career Specialists - again, it looks like they want to bring these back but where to find the dollars?
- City Year Proposal - I love City Year but I don't know exactly what this is for.
- United Way Parent Child Home Program
- IB programs - this one has a question mark for its dollar figure. Betty Patu worried over this one and her concern was acknowledged.
Transportation thread to come.
Comments
Who truly has a grasp of the district's financial gestalt? From their questions, the board certainly doesn't.
And, when mentioning the SE Exec Dir, staff warned against further cuts to central admin thereby making it difficult to support those principals and making them into instructional leaders(!)
Nobody seemed to want to come right out and say what all that PD was for. S'funny, it's like somebody told T&L it's Christmas what on your wish list! My guess is it's for the Alliance's HR consulting teachers, to add to the consulting principals, like we have extra budget to build more mid-management positions.
Our district has spent many $M in TIF money for automating HR functions, many in personal service contracts to Brainbox Consulting and others for the "student growth" evaluation tool. Yet HR is still dysfunctional and not automated. How's that working out?
3-27-13 Budget Work Session Handout
Anyone care to interpret this stuff?
The TIF grant is an albatros around the district's neck. MGJ sought this funding. The initial amount was $12.5M. Funding was used for administration costs, data, career ladders, bonus dollars for teachers that wanted to teach in high need schools etc. Yes, the district will need to pick up these costs when the grant runs out. Each year, the amount will increase.
Blant Waste
So with the deputy and stable of assistant superintendents - that's half of JSCEE right there!
Frugal
Funding Per Student 2010
The amounts shown are inflated because it spreads SpEd and ELL dollars over all students in the building, which is not allowed but happens anyway.
That is what Rueven Carlyle (sp?) told me. He said over 13K per student.
Frugal
Frugal, as to why they run a constant deficit, I'd say they have internal and external issues. Funding has been cut, repeatedly. Costs have risen. Is the district a fiscally tight ship? Nope. And when they do dumb things like take on a grant that will end up costing more money to manage than it's worth, it's a problem.
What kind of investments will be necessary to support the required state summative assessement starting 2014-2015?
If each year about 1/2 of the K-12 enrollees take a state summative assessment, then SPS will need some 2000 computers among its 100 schools to test every SPS student once per year.
I wonder how many SPS currently owns can be used to support testing? How many new computers will need to be purchased?
I hope SPS decides to purchase the least costly instrument to support the need!
JS
This will be another politically motivate debacle.
Isn't it reassuring that SPS spent $2.4M in grant money (that'll it'll now have to backfill) for IT to hire consultants to program roster verification?
yeah, didn't think so.
Equity and Race Department
Professional Development Report to the School Board
Special Education Professional Development Update
As a Sped parent I would say that, on the latter, that is encouraging news - particularly with respect to disproportionate discipline of students with disabilities, something SEAAC has been focused on since last summer.
Is the roster identification part of the TIF project?
foroccupyingjsc
Their best case scenario hopes fill me with dread. It seems it's going to be another decade before anybody even notices we are utilizing the least effective "learn to read" methodology possible, one that was debunked by ALL research 15 years ago.
TIF was used to fund a lot of administration, career ladder positions, bonus dollars to get teachers into high end need schools, and endless amounts of data. Another Fed. grant with too many striings.