Wrong Side of the Tracks, Part IV

This is the fourth in a series of posts concerning the ethnic imbalance in our schools. The first of the series can be found here.

As their term ended in June, the US Supreme Court released a number of decisions. If you have been listening to the news of the past couple of weeks, you know that an unusual number of those decisions were 5-4, very much along philosophical lines. There has been much concern expressed in the mainstream media that this particular Court is embarking on an effort to reverse many cases which define the liberal position in America. One of those was the Brown vs Board of Education decision which ordered the desegregation of public schools in America.

This year, the case of Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1 was brought before the Supreme Court, and in one of those 5-4 votes, the Court decided that discrimination on the basis of race, even when intention is to promote racial balance, is inappropriate. Since this decision was announced, every single news report I've seen or heard has said that this decision reversed Brown.

I'm not a lawyer, so I won't pretend to say whether this is true or not. But as I have found to be the case so many times, you have to dig past what the press and the politicians are saying and get to the unadulterated facts if you want the truth. It's not hard at all to get on the website for the US Supreme Court and read the text of their decisions. Here is the opinion for this case.

If you have read the rest of this series, you know that I believe that Hilliard Schools are becoming increasingly segregated, and that there is more to it than just the luck of the draw based on where your home is located. So in listening to what the mainstream media was saying about this case, I thought that those who support this resegregation had won the day.

But Justice Kennedy said something interesting in his concurring opinion:

School authorities concerned that their student bodies' racial composition interfere with offering an equal education opportunity to all are free to devise race-conscious measures to address the problem in a general way and without treating each student in different fashion based solely on a systematic, individual typing by race. Such measures may include the strategic site selection of new schools, drawing attendance zones with general recognition of neighborhood demographics, allocating resources for special programs, recruiting students and facilty in a targeted fashion; and tracking enrollments, performance and other statistics by race.

Therefore, as I read it from a layman's perspective, the option remains open to adjust attendance boundaries as long as there is no intent to target individuals.

I understand how difficult it is to change attendance zone for our schools, having served on the Redistricting Committee this last time around. But I also heard enough folks on that Committee use language such as "those people" and "they live there because they want to" to know that racism and elitism exists in our community.

The education we give our kids isn't just what they learn from their teachers in the classrooms, it's also those things they see us parents do and say as members of a community.

The battle to end discrimination in America is NOT over. If anything, we're regressing as new waves of immigrants pour in.

Amendment Supporters Predict Failure to Qualify

First heard from Pho's Akron Pages:

The "Getting It Right For Ohio's Future" team (GIRFOF), the folks who have been driving the campaign to get the proposed school funding amendment on the November ballot, announced today that they did not think sufficient signatures would be collected to qualify.

I have not been a fan of this proposed amendment, for two primary reasons. First is that it takes a good deal of control from the people of the local school district and the elected representatives and places it in the hands of panels appointed at the state level. This is not a solution because the system for allocating state funding has never been the problem. It's that the General Assembly repeatedly has failed to fund schools to the level the current formula requires. We can't fix that problem with an amendment, as the General Assembly can refuse to fund a new system as well.

But my primary complaint has been the misdirection of the conversation by the groups who authored and support the amendment -- the educators themselves. They want us to think this conversation is about Johnny in some dilapidated school in Appalachia not having his own desk.

It's not. The key cost in the operation of a school district is the salaries and benefits of the teachers, administrators and staff -- typically 80% or more of total (it's 87% in Hilliard). This amendment is all about placing control of the funding that pays those salaries in the hands of the State Board of Education, and putting this funding at the head of the line at budget time.

GIRFOF has not actually withdrawn the amendment proposal; they've just said that it looks like they won't get enough signatures by August 8th, when the petitions must be submitted to the Secretary of State (only 150,000 have been collected of the 400,000 required). But who knows, maybe this announcement will motivate rather than demotivate the volunteer solicitors (mostly teachers and administrators), and they'll get the job done.

The debate would have been interesting had this amendment proposal qualified. But not nearly enough people would pay attention to the debate or investigate for themselves. For that reason alone, I'm glad it's not likely to appear on the ballot.

Teacher Salaries: A Primer

For the past couple of years, the focus of attention in our community has been getting the levy passed for the construction of the third high school. We can all grasp that this is a commitment of tens of millions of our tax dollars. The final cost of construction for Bradley High School is still a developing number, by the way. It will be interesting to see how close it comes to the estimates given us when the bond levy was passed.

The collective bargaining agreement of the union representing Hilliard Teachers, known as the Hilliard Education Association, will expire December 31, 2007. The impact of this will be much greater than the construction cost of the high school. While the final price tag on the school might end up being $40 million or more, this is a one time cost. But we pay our team every year.

According to the Five Year Forecast submitted by Treasurer Brian Wilson to the Ohio Department of Education, in 2006 we paid $85.7 million in salaries and $28.5 million of retirement and insurance benefits, for a total of $114.2 million. Total expenditures for the district was $131.7 million, meaning that salaries and benefits represent 87% of all expenditures.

The teacher's contract includes a built-in 4.15% across the board annual salary increase. So for starters, this means the $85.7 million goes up $3.6 million, to $89.3 million if nothing else changes in the new contract.

The Westerville teachers' union just signed a new agreement with their school system. A key provision is a 2.65% increase of the scale for each of the next two years. Note that this is different than saying teachers are getting a 2.65% increase, and for once The Columbus Dispatch was sharp enough to pick up on this angle. Here's what it really means:

Let take the example of a teacher with a Masters degree and ten years of service. According to today's contract, that teacher would have a base salary of $59,050. If nothing changes in the contract whatsoever, next year that same teacher is now one with a Masters degree and eleven years of service. Simply because of that one year's additional service, this teacher's new salary will be $61,500 -- the 4.15% annual increase built into the contract.

However, if the entire pay scale is also bumped 2.65%, as was won by the Westerville teachers, the salary for a teacher with a Masters and 11 years would be $63,130, for a total increase of 6.9%.

The Westerville agreement calls for the scale to be bumped another 2.65% the following year. Without this second increase, our example teacher, who would now have 12 years of service, would be paid $65,750 (it would have been $64,053 under the current contract). However, with the second bump to the pay scale, this teacher would get paid $67,493. Over these two years, the teacher's salary would have increased from $59,050 to $67,493, which is the same thing as a 6.9% annual increase (you are invited to check the math).

Okay, so in 2006 we paid $85.7 million in salaries (let's ignore benefits for the moment). Given the built-in 4.15% increase in the payscale, the salaries for 2007 should be about $$89.3 million. If our teachers negotiate the same deal as the Westerville teachers, the 2008 salaries will increase by both the 4% years-of-service step and the 2.65% across-the-board increase of the payscale. Collectively, those two increases will add $6.2 million to total salaries, to $94.5 million.

The following year, both increases would happen again. The effect would be to add another $6.6 million to total salaries, to $102 million.

So, without adding a single teacher, the annual salary cost would increase from $85.7 million to $102 million, a change of $16.3 million, or 19%. On top of that would be added the increase in benefits costs, which includes the school district's share of the teacher's retirement contribution, currently 14% of base salaries, adding an estimated $2 million to the current expense.

This means that the additional money spent on salaries in 2008 and 2009 could be on the order of $35 million, or about the same as the projected cost of the new high school.

The point here is not to say that our teachers are overpaid. It takes a special person to walk into a classroom every day and face a couple dozen kids who are expecting something meaningful from you. I couldn't do it. Blessings on those who can.

Yet, somehow we've gotten into this mode around here where this kind of financial information is placed behind a fog of obscurity -- and I think it's on purpose. I bet the Westerville teachers told the public they were asking for a 2.65% increase for the next two years, and the Board concurred. Most would say, "gee, that's pretty small - what a good deal for the community!"

But we have to dig past these kinds of numbers to the truth. In this case, we need to remember that whatever percentage the overall payscale is lifted, there is also a built-in annual increase associated with the length of service step-up. The teacher's request might not seem so small to folks once it is realized that two are combined. In this example, it's really a 6.9% increase.

Lest we forget, none of this takes into account the cost of opening Washington Elementary and Bradley High School. Add another chunk for that. The aforementioned Five Year Forecast estimates that overall salaries and benefits will increase $14 million in one year, from 2009 to 2010, the year Bradley opens.

By 2o11, salaries and benefits are projected to total $163 million, a whopping $50 million per year more than now. That's over $600 additional per year for every man, woman and child in the District.

Why doesn't our Board, or the Citizen's Finance Committee talk to us about this?

Dispatch on Growth

The Columbus Dispatch today published an interesting article about suburban growth.

Note especially the part that says that in Pickerington, the mayor and a city council member were elected by the public specifically to get control of residential growth. They "limited housing starts, toughened building standards, and levied impact fees" in that effort.

In Hilliard, on the other hand, we have a pro-residential-development mayor (running unopposed) who has now recruited Dan Nichter, the former Director of Development for Franklin County, to run for City Council. Mayor Schonhardt has craftily maneuvered the School Board into spending over $800,000 for the water line to the new high school so that Homewood Homes can put hundreds of additional homes in our school district. I can't wait to see what kind of deal is struck for the sewer line.

There is a chance that the School Board has struck a good deal. Maybe the school district is paying for the water line, and Homewood is paying for the sewer line, with both parties getting free tap rights. But don't you think that if such an inventive deal were crafted, they would be bragging about it to the community? My suspicion is that all of us will end up paying for Homewood's sewer line as well.

A new contributor!

I'm pleased to announce that my friend Amelia McCarty will begin writing articles for this blog in the near future. Amelia is a fellow resident of the Hilliard School District, and a corporate attorney. She and her husband Bill are parents to three beautiful young girls.

My concentration will continue to be the financial, business and political concerns of the school district; Amelia will be writing about the educational experience. I'll let her tell you her story.

Welcome to the team Amelia!

PL

Dispatch on the School Funding Amendment, Part II

The Columbus Dispatch offered an editorial this past Sunday which makes much the same arguments against the proposed amendment as were made in this blog nearly two months ago. I'm glad to see the Dispatch take this stance -- the more people who see this reasoning the better.

Executive Sessions, Part II

I spent some time today looking at the meeting minutes for the Upper Arlington Board of Education to see how often they entered Executive Session. For the 2006-2007 school year, they had these meetings:

• 8/10/06: Executive session from 7:10pm to 7:35pm (25 mins)
• 9/15/06: Executive session from 9:05am to 10:25am (1 hr 20 mins)
• 10/9/06: no executive session
• 11/13/06: Executive session from 7:20pm to 9:24pm (2 hrs 4 mins)
• 12/4/06: no executive session
• 12/11/06: no executive session
• 1/10/07: Executive session from 7:10pm to 7:45pm (35 mins)
• 2/12/07: no executive session
• 3/5/07: Executive session from 8:10pm to 9pm (50 mins)
• 3/12/07: no executive session
• 4/9/07: no executive session (draft minutes)
• 5/7/07: no executive session (draft minutes)

So in twelve Board meetings, the UA Board of Education entered Executive Session five times for a total of approximately five hours. In each case, they selected the specific section of the Ohio Revised Code which applied to their reason for Executive Session. They also post draft versions of their meeting minutes promptly, prior to formal approval by the Board.

Compare that to the record of the Hilliard Board of Education, which nearly always enters Executive Session typically for periods of two hours or more, and lists an Executive Session on the agenda for every single Board meeting, "just in case they need one." As of 5/28/07, the most recent minutes published on the Hilliard Schools website is for the 4/23/07 meeting.

It is the norm for the officials of this school district to keep critical information out of the public eye. I have long contended that the Board was maneuvered into selecting the site for Bradley High School by real estate development interests who own property in Brown Township. The consequence is that we end up with highly questionable business deals, such as the most recent easement agreement with Homewood Homes in which the School Board agreed to install a 16" water line to the schools, costing us taxpayers over $800,000, and letting Homewood tap off of it for free when they build hundreds if not thousands of new houses on their property adjacent to Bradley. When I formally asked for a copy of this agreement, I was told that the verbage of the easement was in the Board resolution published in the minutes. I knew this wasn't true, and pressed the issue, at which point the actual contract was provided to me.

Some good friends of mine recently felt they had to sue the Hilliard school district to get appropriate instructional service for one of their children. I find it very interesting that their settlement agreement with the District restricts these parents from telling anyone the specifics of the settlement. In fact, all they can say is that it was resolved to their satisfaction. Why should this be a big secret?

It's a shame the school district acts this way. At a time when our community is undergoing stress in so many dimensions, one would think that being more open would serve them better.