There was a big turnout at Wayne Thursday evening. The Board chose to table the school administration's recommendation on $6.3 million of cuts. The board chose to ask the voters to approve a 9.95 mil propery tax increase. Ms. Gunnell will respond to the State's letter by the Dec 31st deadline. In that response she will tell the state the school administration created a plan to cut $6.3 million and the school board has tabled the proposal.
I may add more commentary at the end but let me say it again - attending city committee meetings and school board meetings is infinitely more interesting than watching television - you should do it more often.
From the School's website:
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Tier 4 Reductions Draft
Board of Education to take action on proposed reductions and millage for levy at Board of Education Meeting, 6 p.m. Thursday, December 20, 2012 at Wayne High School Auditorium. Staff and community invited to attend.
Draft Tier 4 Reductions 12-18-2012 (PDF)
-------origninal post -------------Board of Education Meeting (Wayne High School - Auditorium 6:00 p.m.)
It appears the Board expects a large turnout since they will be having it at the Wayne Auditorium. Those of us that attended the latest Funding Workshop know that the agenda will include details about the next school levy they will propose. Also on the agenda will be details about the response to a letter from the state requiring them to outline a plan to rectify budget shortfalls. In addition to the levy,this should include what programs and staff will be cut.
Below is the latest information I could find on the school's website. During the last Funding Workshop the board expressed there would be additional documents posted. A quick look today and it appears there is a revision of the Reduction_Ideas document. I believe they have done more background work than is available on the website today. Join me in asking them to make it available on the website.
Funding Workshop
The following suggestions have been generated by individuals attending Board Workshop Sessions, Staff Meetings, and through Community communications to the Superintendent. The purpose of the list is to generate ideas. Not all suggestions will be able to be implemented due to compliance with State and Federal laws or other limitations.
Edited
Comments
Post Meeting Commentary
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)
Could the school provide better information?
For instance if you open the pdf file called "Reduction_Ideas_Revised (PDF)
You will find the first item
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:
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.
Back to table
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.
Back to table
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.
Back to table
11.
Just another example of information the school could give that would help the public understand the working of the school.
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