I was hoping to get a little bit more information from the schools website about what is being discussed concerning the funding issue.
 
For instance if you open the pdf file called "Reduction_Ideas_Revised (PDF)
 
You will find the first item

1

Cut ROTC

$145,000

 
During the Funding Workshops one member of the audience asked about the details behind the $145,000.  The School Treasurer indicated she would send that person an email with the details.  This is nice but not a very effective use of the treasurer's time and by communicating this way only two people in the community know what is going on.  I believe it would be more likely of our coming up with solutions if instead of sending an email to individuals, the school board would make this kind of information available as links.  How much better would it be if the PDF was like:  

1	Cut ROTC	$145,000
7	Pay (cuts 1%-3%) with levy passage	$415,000 per 1 %
10	Out of district students/Open Enrollment	$5,780 per student
11	No more step increases (freeze for now)	$540,000

 
Imagine this is the page that opens up when you click on one of the links in the Table: 




1.
ROTC discussion:  The question was asked, "is the $145,000 in savings based on what the school would save because they would no longer be paying the instructor salaries?"  By following the link above this is where the school should provide the information the public needs in order to understand the issue.  This could be a copy of the email response or a white paper. 

I would like to see a white paper so we can see the level of detail the administrators are using to come up with the figure.  For instance if the $145,000 in savings is based on the instructor salaries what will the kids be doing instead of going to this class?  Will the school day be reduced?  If it is not reduced, will the school be paying for instructors for other classes or for study hall teachers?  If they are paying for study hall teachers does the $145,000 reflect the net difference between what the school pays for ROTC instructors minus what they pay for study hall teachers?  This kind of white paper / background would help us understand the administration better.  For instance they tell us they have cut more than $8 million from the budget since 2010 but when we look at the a Five Year Plan on the Schools website and subtract actual expenditures, we don't see anything close to an $8 million decrease. 

Up until I started writing this post, I had been telling people that the reduction is a subtraction from proposed budgets.  With those budgets no longer available on the website it is hard to tell if this is actually the case.  Now I think it may be equally as likely that the school thought they would save $145,000 on a program but forgot to compensate for an increase in cost caused by the cut.

Actual expenditures as conveyed by the Five Year Forecast.

	2010	2011	2012
Total Expenditures	65,059,606	67,027,341	65,648,898
Total Expenditures and Other Financing Uses	67,206,823	67,530,257	66,471,561

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7. 
Link Pay cut with yes vote on levy: I was wondering more about this person's idea.  In fact there were many lines that involved talking with the Union and teachers about pay.  I think many people would be interested in knowing if the school board was planning to ask the union to come to the table prior to contract end or if the school board was going to wait until the end of the contract.  As an aside - From my (Tom McMasters') prospective I think the law that tells us that contract negotiations between the school board and the unions are required to be done in private and then revealed to the public after they have no say should be changed.  It should be just the opposite.

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10. 
Can the school really earn $5780 through open enrollment.  This seems like a deceptive number since there would obviously be costs associated with teaching that student.
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11. 
Just another example of information the school could give that would help the public understand the working of the school.

Back to table

First let me say that I was impressed by the community turnout at the school board meeting Thursday night.  I was impressed that everyone was civil in their comments.  I thought Mr. Combs did a good job in maintaining structure to the meeting in a way that provided for an appropriate amount of community comments and a decent amount of board member discussion.

I was surprised to hear during the meeting that the tier four reductions had been posted on the city's website for the past three days.  I had been on the website in the past couple days and wondered how I missed it.  Looking at the site this morning there is a  "Latest News" that was posted sometime Thursday.  

There were two items on the agenda items that I think should have gotten more discussion, the levy and the TIF.  Of course the agenda was not published on the website prior to the meeting.

Concerning the levy, I don't know why the board just didn't go for broke and request what they think they need to run the schools properly.  I can't imagine a 10 mil levy has any more chance of passing than a 13 or 14 mil levy.  In fact, I would bet going forth with a smart plan that kept the school solvent is a better strategy than hoping there are enough people that can be fooled into believing 9.95 is so much smaller than 10.

Concerning the TIF, I had a brief discussion with a couple of the school board members.  I did not get a good feeling that they understood how the TIF districts affect their revenues.  I personally don't know.  But I do know they affect the school and if I were a school board member I definitely would want a good briefing from staff.  If the board got this from staff, it didn't sink in very well.  I have been thinking for some time I needed to investigate how the TIF works.  These conversations make it necessary for me to begin that research.  (update - I started to assemble TIF research.  You can review what I found in the Galleries / Issue Timeline. The links are on the left panel)