School E-mail January 16, 1997

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Subj: Chair, Sup't search, Budget
Date: 97-01-16 17:48:06 EST
From: James.C.Klagge@bev.net (James C. Klagge)
To: school issues@vt.edu

Dear Voters,

Hope the weather has not set you back too far in beginning a peaceful and productive new year. The school board has hit the ground running.

CHAIR: We reelected Annette Perkins as chair for another year. The vote for chair was 5-4, Perkins defeating Barry Worth. In December the newspaper ran an article about the frequent 5-4 split on the board. Some people have suggested that a different chair might have avoided these splits, but I don't see how. Though split votes are not ideal, I think they genuinely reflect differences of opinion that leadership can't change.

The key is whether we can continue to work productively despite them. The newspaper gave the impression that all our 5-4 votes are the same 5 against the same 4, but that is not true. For example, the BMS renovation vote and the vote not to rehire the superintendent were both 5-4, but I was in the majority on both votes, voting with different people each time. I think there are a lot of independent thinkers on the board, who tend to cluster in blocs, but not always. I think Annette did a fine job in a difficult year. (After Worth and Vickers declined to be nominated for vice-chair, David Moore was unanimously elected.)

SUP'T SEARCH: We are in the process of interviewing search firms to assist us with finding a new superintendent. The total cost of a national search could well be $35,000 to 40,000. That's a lot of money, but I think it will be well spent. We considered cheaper alternatives, such as assistance from the VA School Board Assoc., but we didn't feel they could recruit as good of an applicant pool. Some people have expressed the concern that we should consider internal candidates as well. We will certainly do this, but as part of a full-scale national search. One of the important steps in the search is to get input from the community as to what they want in a superintendent, and I assume these meetings will occur in the next month. We are starting at a very good time for getting a new person in place by July.

BUDGET: The board is meeting twice weekly this month to formulate its budget. The superintendent proposed a budget which we will work from to formulate our own proposed budget. After we formulate a budget, there will be a public hearing where you can make comments on it at Christiansburg HS on Tuesday, January 28th at 7pm. Then we have to foward our final proposal to the board of supervisors by early February, and they will begin the process of deliberation over how much money to give us.

To help you understand my position on the budget, I will briefly review what happened last year. Last year, as well as the year before, the school board's proposed budget was driven by the recommendations of the Focus 2006 study. The study's goals for 2006 were broken down into parts so that they could be achieved gradually over the intervening years. (Obviously they couldn't be achieved all at once.) The budget proposal then included the steps for that year needed for meeting the goals eventually. When some steps from the previous year remained unfunded, they were added to the next year's budget request. This led to a proposed budget that kept us on target for achieving the 2006 goals but required a 12% increase in funding. Some of this increase would come from the state, but full funding would have required significant new resources from the county. Some estimated a need for as much as 18 cents in new taxes (per $100 assessed property value). I did everything I could last year to motivate people to express their views on education to the supervisors, including taking out advertisements in the newspaper. But when it came down to it, even some of education's strongest supporters had trouble advocating such an increase in taxes for themselves. Whatever its educational merits, in my opinion we advocated a politically unrealistic budget. Some would say that our job is only to concern ourselves with what is educationally necessary, and leave the political issues to others. I disagree. In any event, though we did get an increase from the state, we got virtually no increase from the county. Despite an increase in tax revenues from economic growth (with no new taxes) of well over a million, and a 1 cent tax increase that brought in over $200,000 to the county, the schools received an additional $70,000 from the county. I.e., the schools received about 4% of all new tax revenue brought in to the county last year. (This should have shocked those who feel that new taxes are justified only when they will go primarily for education!) In my opinion our request for a 12% increase so alienated a majority of the supervisors that they responded by giving us almost no new money. (Another way to look at what happened may be that the supervisors were seeing that we would be getting a lot of new money from the state, so they felt that they could treat that as local tax relief and not worry about having to put forward any additional effort for education at the county level.) In the end we got a 4.57% increase in our budget for last year (virtually all because of increased state support). No matter what the explanation for lack of additional county support last year, I feel the county should have done better and more than it did. However, I think that we exacerbated the problem by taking ourselves out of the realm of realistic politics. Like it or not, elected school boards are political entities, and since we do not control our own purse-strings, we have a responsibility to engage in the politics of securing a reasonable budget.

That brings us to this year. The first thing to note is that this is the second year of the biennial state budget. It always happens that increases in the second year of the biennium are smaller than increases in the first year. So we know we won't get the same kind of increases from the state as we did last year, and will consequently be more dependent on what we can get from the county in the way of increases. Over the last year we have been talking informally about the possibility of an arrangement with the county according to which the school system would get a set proportion of all new tax receipts for our operating budget, based on the portion of current tax receipts that already go to the school's operating budget. This strategy was mentioned at one of our joint meetings with the supervisors in the fall. There was supposed to be a further meeting between the county and school finance directors to examine this idea, but apparently this has not happened. One difficulty that was raised was how to treat debt service on school buildings. If this were included in the fixed portion, then the building program we are undertaking would simply cut into funds for operation, which would not be acceptable. It seems best to treat debt service separately from the operating budget. There are other complications with this proposal, but that's the general idea.

With these ideas as background, the superintendent this year has proposed a budget that is based not primarily on keeping on target for the 2006 goals, but based on the above idea that we should get our fair share of new county tax revenues, without making inordinate demands. Thus the outlines of the budget are guided by what would be a fair and politically realistic request; the details, within those constraints, are guided by our highest priorities from 2006. Each fall the county finance director makes a forcast as to expected tax revenues for the coming year based on economic growth in the county. These estimates have always proven to be conservative, but they are an appropriate starting point. Without going into the details, the county is estimating roughly $2.3 million in new tax revenues from economic growth (without any tax increase). The superintendent's budget is based on our expectations as to what new money we will get from the state, plus our fair share (roughly 69% depending on how you calculate) of the new money that will be coming into the county without any tax increase. (The superintendent's budget treats new debt service as a separate category, costing $283,555.) Using estimates we have available, the proposed budget seeks an additional $1.9 million from the supervisors, and would amount to a 6.75% increase in our budget. (Compared to last year, when we sought $6 million in total additional money--a 12% increase.) The superintendent's budget does not include many things that would be valuable to the school system, but it does include some things, such as 19.5 additional teachers and employee raises of 3%. I don't necessarily agree with the particular choices made by the superintendent for where to allocate increased funding, but I do agree with the general idea that we should propose a budget within the constraint that it be politically viable. And I am persuaded by the superintendent's argument that a 6.75% increase is politically viable. It is specifically designed so that it does not require local tax increases. (Tax increases may be required for funding debt service for the school building program--but that is a separate issue that should not be held against the school's operating budget. We should not be asked to sacrifice improvements in the day-to-day teaching program for the sake of building and renovating school buildings.)

As I see it, an important issue in debating among the school board members as to the final shape of the budget should be whether we want political viability to be a constraint on our budget. I think it should be. If it is, then the issues are not simply: do we want x, y, and z in the budget, but rather, would we prefer x, y and z instead of a, b and c in the budget? I think that every time someone proposes a new item, he or she should also have to propose what would be eliminated to make room for it. Otherwise the budget begins to look like a wish-list and eventually balloons beyond the realm of political viability.

We have not specifically discussed this issue at the board table yet. But I am interested in what voters think, and I encourage you to let your school board representative know your views.

I'm also interested in where you think new money should go. Basically this budget allows for $2 million in new spending. Teachers cost about $40,000 apiece (including benefits), a raise for employees costs about $400,000 for each 1% raise. Buses cost about $50,000 apiece. Mobile classrooms cost about $30,000 each. Etc. How would you want to spread out the new money? The one initiative that I have been pushing since last year is increased planning and preparation time for elementary school teachers. As it stands, high school and middle school teachers have designated planning time every day of about 1 hour or more. Elementary teachers have virtually none. This is an unfair imbalance from the start, and I think high school and middle school teachers recognize that. Early release days have been traditionally used to allow elementary teachers to have planning time--and this works especially well since it allows elementary teachers to meet together in teams for interdisciplinary planning. However, high school and middle school teachers don't have the same need for and benefit from early release days, and a number of people in the community are unhappy with early release days (often because they upset family schedules). Based on community input the calendar committee last year proposed ending (or significantly decreasing) early release days. I opposed that because it would eliminate the only real current source of planning time for elementary teachers. Various arrangements are possible for dealing with these problems. I've asked the MCEA to survey the teachers about what solutions they would prefer. We could hire aides for elementary schools to provide teachers with more released time during the school day (e.g., let aides supervise playground time instead of teachers).

If this would provide enough planning time to allow us to decrease or eliminate early releases, then this idea would solve two problems at once. I think it is the best solution, but it costs the money necessary to hire aides--last year estimated to be some $77,000. Another possibility is to have early release days for elementary students but not for middle and high school students. That would keep or even expand the planning time for elementary teachers, while eliminating the unneeded early release days for middle and high school, and not cost any additional money. But it doesn't meet the community concern that early release days upset family schedules. How do you think these issues should best be resolved?

CHALLENGE: Finally, you may have been hearing a lot of controversy still going on over the interpretation of test scores in the county. It pains me that parties to these disagreements seem unable to find common ground and mutual trust. Once the budget is out of the way at the end of this month, I expect we will return to this issue, and the larger issue of appropriate academic challenge for all students in our schools.

-Jim Klagge.

p.s., If your e-mail address is changing, please let me know. If these messages depress you and you want off this list, please let me know. If you know others who would like to be on this list, please let them know.

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