Posts Tagged ‘school budgets’

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School Mandates Reform, a Golden Apple Worth Pursuing

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Summer vacation is half-over and students are still learning.  Sports camp, computer camp, theatre arts camp, science and math camp for girls, and newest of all, half-blood day camps for boys, who learn the Greek mythology stories while pursuing gorgons and Medusa in search of the Golden Apple.  Glory for all.  See New York Times, July 16, 2010, “What I Did at Camp: Followed Plot, Killed Gorgon, Saved World.”

If only the California Superintendent of Schools could climb Mt. Shasta-the local Mt. Olympus– to ask an oracle to speak with Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, dispose of nay-sayers with a swat of the sword, and snatch the Golden Fleece in order to save teachers from lay-offs when school begins-for some as soon as the second week in August.  The closest any state will come to finding the Golden Fleece is to win Race to the Top funds in the second round of federal grant disbursement.

If you were the Oracle what would you suggest to states in order to bring short term support for schools?  Remember, California alone has 6 million students with 174 districts financially distressed (San Jose Mercury News, July 5, 2010).  It is 44th lowest in dollars spent per student, and somewhere between 45-50th ranking in number of students per teacher-depending on how the ratio is determined.  No one option will be a magic cure.  Soon, all sources of funds for the state must be equitably reallocated.

Here are some options collected from various blogs, news articles, and reports.  The list emphasizes saving money.  Which options also do no harm to students and curriculum?  Suggestions were found in articles collected by Edsource.

Large school districts shorten the school year calendar, increase class sizes and lay off teachers.  The money saved supports the program left.  This is already happening.

Halt any facilities improvements to public schools, e.g. solar panels which initially cost a bunch although they save money over time.

Pass more parcel taxes to make up for lack of property taxes.  In the Los Altos area, one parcel tax to continue benefits to the high school district was passed in June and 2 more are proposed for the November ballot, one for the elementary district and one for the community college district.  The thought is that homeowners are more likely to support taxes for schools close by rather than taxes frittered, supposedly, by the state.  If only legislation would pass designating a 55% majority instead of a 2/3 vote.

How about the governor’s fix?  End the elected position of the Superintendent of Public Instruction and his/her department.  Only keep the governor-appointed position of Secretary of Education.

Drop sports from the budgets of the University of California and State University.  Lots of money saved to support liberal arts and engineering.

Finally, in February 2010 the California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) distributed a proposal to reform unfunded school district mandates which eventually must be paid by the state.

Some mandates serve a purpose and are fundamental to the education of students, such as protection of student health and provision of essential assessment and oversight data.

Otherwise, the abundance of mandates legislated over the years should be eliminated; the reimbursement process simplified; or a different far-less-costly process designed to achieve the objective.  An example of a mandate to be eliminated is the requirement to submit physical education data which is already collected during financial audits.

It is estimated that this one reform measure could save the state $350 million or more a year and instead be used to address school needs that have statewide interest, produce results, and are worth the cost.

Here lies one substantial piece to reform school finance.  It may not be the Golden Fleece but surely a  Golden Apple is waiting to be picked up.

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Posted in California budget crisis, Edsource, Race to Top, public schools, school finance reform |
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No blood in those state turnips

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Means no $ for Ed

School districts are beginning negotiations with their unions based on their 2010-2011 budget numbers, which are depressing.  If it’s impossible to draw blood from a turnip, just try to wring money from state legislatures for education.

The Colorado legislature is about to claw back $250 million+ from public schools for the ‘10-’11 year.  It will probably take back just as much, if not more, for ‘11-’12.  If school districts don’t have enough reserves, and no one does, they will be going backwards in funding for years.

Money saving tricks

Some districts are freezing salary - no COLA, no steps and levels.  Others are doing furlough days.  Others are charging for transportation.  Others are ending all technology purchases.  Others are emptying administration - no more professional development for teachers or curriculum support!  Others are increasing classroom size by one, two, or three children.  Last but not least, some districts are closing buildings.

No more investing in education!

Investment in education has stopped.  Districts that have made progress in student achievement will probably freeze in place or will start drifting backwards.  After all, if no one is in charge any more of managing the voluminous data underlying each student’s progress, how will the analytical process thrive that supports achievement?

Schools going backward in funding

The largest district in Colorado is about to cut $60 million from a $670 million budget.  The district estimates it will make the same size cut in ‘11-’12, and possibly again in ‘12-’13.  That means that by ‘13-’14, unless miracles happen, the district will be at a budget starting point roughly $180 million below where it is today.  And yet the District is supposed to get every student to meet annual growth targets.

Colorado calculates annual growth against student peers.  Proficient students are measured against proficient students, barely proficient against barely proficient, etc.  So the only good news for schools is that all students in the state are in the same hole, so the lack of annual achievement growth should be relatively similar.  This prediction will assure funding remains at about the same dismal level for all schools in the state.

Not enough tax dollars for education today

Colorado is almost last in state funding per student, at about $7300, even though the state has one of the highest college education levels.  This “Colorado paradox” happens because educated out-of-staters like to come and live here for the mountains.  The state is also reasonably affluent.  But like other western states, including California, citizens prefer to keep their money in their pockets.  Colorado has one of the lowest state income tax and sales tax levels in the country.

How’s that Obama money doing?

ARRA money has bailed districts out in 2010, but now everyone is headed towards a cliff.  What kind of help is the Obama administration offering?  Race to the Top, of course, or as some wags say, slow jog to nowhere.  Really, the $4 billion will go to schools doing education Arne Duncan’s way, which means pay-for-performance and closing non-performing schools or turning them around or starting over.

What does any of that do to help districts whose schools aren’t completely in the doghouse yet (but may be after two or three years of these budget cuts)?

What would you do if you could?

And will pay-for-performance really do the trick with teachers? Schools definitely need something beyond steps and levels, but what should that look like?  Do schools need a more streamlined way to move bad to mediocre teachers out?  Yes.  Do schools need more money for entry level teachers, so education can compete at least marginally with law and medicine for top graduates? Yes.  Do schools need a way to pay off student loans to encourage teachers to work in challenging schools?  Yes.

How about a little extra money for some teacher career tracking - giving teachers money for online course development, professional development of peers, etc.

Get your 30 in and retire

It’s true that some relationship needs to exist between compensation and how well kids learn, but that’s not the whole package.  And frankly, in Colorado, teachers and districts are going to be so busy plowing money into their PERA pension fund, they may not get a raise for years.  They are mostly going to be working for that glorious final moment when they stagger over the 30 year finish line and can get out of education altogether.  Not very pretty, is it?

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Posted in Colorado Budget Crisis, Race to Top, public schools, school accountability, school resources |
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Winter Push

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

Now is the time for the big push in a long month to move through the 4th grade curriculum.  Students are in class with few vacation days until mid-February.  How to keep things lively when the days are dark and dreary (and this is California, not wind-swept, snowy Minnesota) is the question.

Part of my gloom comes from the continuing bad news from the district office, preparing teachers for the sad, sad state of affairs in the district’s school budget for next year and probably for this year at “pink slip” days in March.  So far, the gap has widened by another $500,000 just since September.

A letter from our superintendent just before the holidays, illustrating the funding dilemma, suggested going to the Education Coalition website, supported by all the education organizations in the state, to see news from California’s 989 school districts, almost all concerning school finance.  What else to talk about?

I read an article in the Sunday paper that named “public schools, once the nation’s best, … now among the worst” as the first of many problems facing this state.  I think, like ours, most school districts are just trying to stay afloat, reducing the number of teachers, custodians, classified staff; cutting summer school and special programs like GATE; using the parcel tax funds agreed to by the local community to offset huge state budget cuts; then cutting counselors and library funds.

The article advocated a constitutional convention to reorganize the state government, the goal being to untangle the horrible budget fight in the legislature that takes up almost the entire session each year.  Trouble is we have to wait until the November 2010 election to vote just to agree to have a convention.  In the meantime, the fury over public schools keeps building.

(See “”Time for a constitutional convention?” by John Grubb, San Francisco Chronicle, January 3, 2010.)

I suppose the best thing is to remember the humorous picture book I read to my class by the well-known New Yorker cartoonist James Stevenson called “It Could Be Worse!”

With that aphorism in mind, my class is in the middle of studying California missions, certain to lift the gloom of January.  Almost every 4th grader takes a field trip to a mission and learns how California grew into the wealthy agriculture and cattle country of the west, even before gold was discovered.

It’s a wonder how wealthy California now finds itself in such an abysmal fix.

Before the holiday, we finished studying functions, pre-algebra preparation.  Now we’re in the middle of the practical mastery of 2 and 3 digit multiplication, learning to estimate to see if the answer is reasonable.

Should I tell my students that the school district budget is an estimate? Maybe a sudden unrestricted grant will be passed on to our district, resolving some of the bad decisions we must make.

Maybe a rich uncle will endow the district.

Maybe the state legislature will learn to cooperate, like 4th graders are asked to do every day.

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It Gets Dark Early

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Autumn days have zipped by.  I’ve met with the parents of every student in my class and sent home report cards for the first of three evaluation periods.  We’ve been to Mission San Juan Bautista, the culmination of the first unit of California history, from the Native Americans to the explorers to the Californios, settlers governed from Spain and later Mexico.

This year, writing process procedures have been established much earlier than I managed last year.  Most are busy writing the third or fourth in a collection of pieces, non-fiction personal narrative or reports on, for example, the Miwok, California Native American tribe.  “How to Annoy the Teacher,” is a composition that seems to be loved by all, even the most conscientious, well-behaved students.  They can fantasize by leaps and bounds.

Not long after the latest update on our district school budget problems was presented at a staff meeting, I read an article on the front page of the Sunday, November 15, New York Times, “Selling Lesson Plans Online, Teachers Raise Cash and Questions” by Winnie Hu.

While I can find an abundance of lessons and teaching ideas to download on the Internet, this was the first I’d heard about selling lesson plans.  I suppose, in a free market society, teachers can sell their plans, just like a book or a better potato masher.  It may make sense if the money is used to upgrade the materials in the classroom, but when I read that someone had used the cash for new kitchen countertops, I thought enough is enough.  Want to see the new thing?  Check out Teachers Pay Teachers.

Just shows, though, the problem for teachers who wish to be innovative and have access to the best for their students and the inability of taxpayers, even those wishing schools well, to bring themselves to pay for the success of public schools in this country.

Here’s another school budgets issue. I was talking to my sister-in-law who has a six-year-old in a Los Angeles charter school because the local public school is too big and too overwhelmed by second language and poor families.  She didn’t think her child would get enough attention.  Funny thing, the charter school uses classrooms in the public school building which leads to complaints on both sides about space, storage, and access to the playground.

My cousin sent a series of articles from the September 2009 Denver Post on charter schools, detailing the sunny-side-up viewpoint of the League of Charter Schools and the down-side views of longtime public school educators.  A “Letter to the Editor” from Louise Benson, Broomfield, Colorado, way back on Sunday, September 20, suggested my point of view: improvement for public schools means “teachers and staff buy in to programs known to increase achievement, and… avoid some union work rules that impede better instruction.”

Late November my class started its unit on earth science, analyzing rocks from each strata of the earth’s crust, delving down to the core of burning magma, always enjoyed by fourth graders.

What got in the way?

My jury duty summons from the Santa Clara County Superior Court arrived in the mail.  Same problem for every working adult, it came just at the wrong moment.  I spent my time writing lesson plans that will disrupt the class as little as possible, while doing my citizen’s duty checking on the Internet daily to see if my number had come up.

I never had to go to court, we spent our days looking at rocks and using all the strategies I know and the lesson plans I’ve gathered (without paying a penny) to make sure my students are achieving.

I feel lucky.  The parents in my district are happy with its highly-qualified teachers, innovations, and facilities; not asking to set up a charter school with funds from my strapped district.

Next is the Gold Rush unit.  Nuggets of shiny metal from the dark earth glittered in men’s eyes, a symbol of California wealth, hidden right now in the dark of the state legislature.

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Tough decisions for school districts, and it’s not all money

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Jefferson County Public Schools (known as Jeffco Public Schools) is the biggest district in Colorado and one of the largest 50 districts in the country.  Its 80,000 students attend schools from the north, still part of the Denver metropolitan area, to the southern most hamlet of Deckers in the national forest near the headwaters of the South Platte River, and over to the front range Rockies at the west.

Like so many other suburban school districts in the western United States, it’s becoming a place for students of many ethnic backgrounds. The changing demographic began about 10 years ago and is accelerating.

At the same time, the whole district is now “mature” and built out.  Little new construction will occur, but plenty of re-construction of older buildings in less affluent parts of the county will be necessary.  School closures are also a possibility as some facilities are under capacity by over 50 percent.

The biggest long-term challenge the district faces is how to handle this transition from primarily white, suburban schools to a diverse population of kids speaking many different languages.  To make the problem more complicated, some of the district in more affluent areas is still primarily white.  And the resources to bring kids up to proficiency on the exams selected by The Colorado Department of Education are most necessary in the poorer parts of the county.

Jeffco Public Schools will probably lose about $11 million in January, 2010, when the state legislature pulls budgeted money back into the state’s general fund.  The district faces about $40 million in deficit financing from property taxes and state contributions in 2010-11 and another $40 million in 2011-12.  It has roughly $160 million in reserve, some of which will be applied to the budget deficits.

Based on the demographic demands and the budget deficits, how should the district allocate resources?

Should it hunker down and keep on trucking as it has?

Or should it take bold steps to attack school improvement of student math and writing deficiencies and reduction in the 25 percent high school dropout rate?

Are we in a time when bold is impossible because there is no money to fund it, even when the facts on the ground require bold action?

Jeffco Public Schools is not the only district facing this dilemma in Colorado or across the nation.

The time is here to make tough decisions, and they will affect the lives and education of many little kids depending on the adults to make the right ones.

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*The school community wants to talk about this dilemma? Take Care!, showing ways for the school community’s adults to resolve problems successfully may help. See the website for this blog.

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Posted in Colorado Budget Crisis, Jeffco Public Schools, public schools, school reform, school resources |
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