I know it's been a long time since I wrote a blog. I don't know if anyone will still want to read my blog. I have been very busy trying to survive in a very challenging business. I hope to get back on track writing this. The last few months meetings have also been mostly about policy updates, not the most exciting information.
This meeting we had more going on. Three of the board seats are up for election. Casey, April, and John. John has decided not to run again. I think Paul Jensen is running for John's seat, and April and Casey are running for re-election. I don't know if anyone else is running. I think John has served for eight years and has done a good job.
This meeting was very well attended mostly because of the visiting government class. The sports teams were acknowledged for their accomplishments. The football team went 11-1 and repeated as state runner-up. Coach Drake was voted the coach of the year. The wrestlers had a great year and finished with one state champion, and four others who placed at state. The wrestlers also have been academic state champions nine times. The girls team went 15-8. In the last nine years the girls basketball team has gone to state five times, coming home with four trophies and has been academic champions four times. The boys basketball team went 17-9. Coach Adams was the coach of the year. They have been district champions eight out of the last nine years. They have won four state championships over that time with a record of 108-8. They also have won two academic and two sportsmanship awards. I hope I got the stats right. All of these groups have done very well. They are a great group of kids, with great very dedicated coaches. I also don't think the kids get the credit they deserve for doing so well academically. During our board walk through a few days ago Jeff Gee said about half the student body is currently participating in sports, besides all the students participating in clubs. I think it's great to live in a small district where so many students have the opportunity to participate and they all do so well.
Mr. Kunz went over the safe busing plan and proposed putting a 1994 bus up for auction. It has something like 140,000 miles, not as many as I would think it would have. He really likes the new bus we bought last summer. It is a different make than the rest of the busses, and is a lot nicer to drive.
April had asked Sid to give us an update about the four day week. He gave us information comparing the ISAT test score from this year compared to the year before we switched. Overall there isn't very much difference. The overall cost savings is estimated to be about 50,000. The student attendance is up a little. Overall I think the four day week has worked out well. I asked the students in attendance how they liked it. A couple comments were they liked the three day weekend and thought it was easier to have the long weekend to do home work. We did talk a little about needing to work on a calendar for next year pretty soon. We might add a few days back to the year. I am very much against going past Memorial Day. It is hard on some students to have such long days. I also don't think it's good to add very many days either, because if we do it reduces our savings.
We also had an update about the soccer program. They had a successful first year. There were fifteen girls who participated. I don't think most of these girls would have participated in any other sport. They had very good support from their boosters, raising funds, and helping to work on the field and goal posts. The program was approved for two years and will be evaluated again after next season.
Sid also talked about the work being done to set up new tee-ball, little league backstops. They are going to put four fields in back to back east of the soccer field. This is a much needed improvement.
There was some discussion about legislative issues, but not a lot known yet. I think we need to consider having a levy a year from now. We have a deficit of $100,000 in our budget this year. Our bond on the middle school ends next year, and I think it would be a good time to have one. We need to start talking about the schools needs, so we can establish a levy amount that will put us back into a positive spending balance.
Thanks to all those who read this. I plan in writing another blog about the cottage meeting. If you have questions or comments let me know. Thanks, Brian
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Monday, October 15, 2012
October 15th My view on the Luna Laws
Our board meeting was mostly just about reviewing policies. One note Mr. Tubbs estimated we saved maybe as much as $70,000 going to the four day week.
At the end of the board meeting we were asked about what we thought of the three propositions. I said some of what I thought about it. After listening to a podcast from a KID radio show where Mr. Luna talked about the new laws, I felt compelled to write a letter to the Pioneer and Morning News. I had to reduce this in half to make it fit in the Morning News. I have not heard from the Pioneer. I get so tired of Luna blaming the school districts and teachers for many of the problems. He has a way of not telling the whole truth, so I thought I would tell some of the other side the way I see things.
After I wrote this I found out if these laws are repealed it will cause a lot of problems that will have to be resolved. The requirement for online classes and technology is now law. If the proposition is repealed it will remove the funding, not the law. I think they will have to pass new legislation to remove the law. Schools can not afford an unfunded mandate like this.
Another concern brought to me is about the pay for performance. With many plans in place setting up the guidelines, if the law fails, it will be very hard for schools to figure out what to do if their plan is under contract with the teachers, and then they don't end up with the funding. I can understand there will be challenges, but I still maintain these are bad laws. I compared it to what I think of Obama care. Some of Obama care is in place, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be changed.
I think if the legislature and the Department of Education would have worked more with teachers and school boards they would have come up with a better plan, and we wouldn't have all the conflict we are dealing with now.
If you have any questions after reading this let me know. Good or bad I guess I say what I think.
Propositions
I am on the Firth school board and wanted to address my thoughts about the propositions. I am basically neutral on Proposition one. I don't think this proposition effects our school very much either way. I want to mainly address the other propositions. I would strongly encourage a no vote on each of these. Prop. 2 pay for performance. They make it very confusing so it's very hard to understand. Basically all schools are evaluated and put on a bell curve, just like some grades are given out in school. The top of the curve schools get a full share of funding from the state. It works it's way down. The lower the evaluation goes the less money is paid, until the lowest get nothing. One thing to keep in mind. No mater what a district chooses to do, a teacher can only get one full share, no more. So if the school is at the top level they will all get the same amount of money. If a district wants to reward teachers for performance, the rewards have to go to a group of teachers teaching or doing the same thing, and only if the school as a whole does not qualify for a whole share. So for example you want to reward the school math teachers because they raised student achievement. But in this example the school only qualifies for half a share. The only way to reward the math teachers is to take away from the teachers who received a half a share, so they will get even less, and give part of their share to the math teachers. Is this fair? What if one math teacher is poor and the all the others are excellent, but because of the weak teacher achievement isn't high enough, then no one will get extra performance money. This can put teachers against each other. Administering this from the state must require a lot of extra time and expense that could be used to raise all teacher's pay.
Proposition 3. To me this is the worst one. Requiring all students to take two online classes will be a real challenge for a small district like ours. I have a hard time believing the state will really provide all the funding for this program. For one thing there is no new funding to replace the teachers we had to cut, because we received less funding from the state and federal governments. Our total funding has dropped $746,000 since the 2009-2010 school year. Now we are supposed to come up with the teachers to help with the online classes. I believe many students will struggle with this requirement. I think it would have been good to offer online classes to those who want to take them, but not to make it a requirement. Since the classes are going to be provided by teachers outside of the district, the funding for these classes will have to follow. There is some ways to mitigate some of this expense, but not all. I don't think funding will go back into the district to replace these lost dollars.
There are so many half truths out there clouding this issue. I recently heard Tom Luna on the radio. I want to set straight a few things he said. He talked about increasing school funding. Schools are paid by a unit of students, for the M&O budget. The older the kids the less kids it takes to make a unit. We used to get about $24,000 per unit. Last year we received $19,626. Each district's state funding for teachers had been based on the number of these units. If we chose to have less we wouldn't save any money, the state would just keep the money. If a district wants more teachers, they would pay for them through a supplemental levy. As the state reduced school funding they made some changes to how this works. The state didn't change the number of units, or teachers we qualify for. They gave districts discretion to lay off a certain percent of the teachers, and can now use the money saved to supplement the drop in the M&O budget and other budget cuts. So by laying off teachers, we look like the bad guys not the state. He talks about funding going up for this year. They raised this budget $80 per unit. Not much of an increase.
He claimed when the districts received federal stimulus funding, that we probably used much of these funds to hire more teachers. So it wasn't the states fault that since this funding is gone that now districts have to lay off teachers. We didn't hire anymore teachers. We used most of the money to help replace part of what I think was a 7% teacher pay cut the state imposed. The rest helped pay for an increase in insurance costs. He also doesn't mention some state funding was lowered when federal money came in.
He says class sizes are determined at the local level. He also says the Students Come First laws don't effect class sizes. Because of less state funding we have laid off I think four teachers. So some of our class sizes have gone up. The only way to maintain class sizes is through supplemental levies, which we don't have. Some of the reduction for funding of teachers may have come first, but most of the new money for education is going back to Students Come First, not used to restore teaching positions or our M&O budget. Others talk about funding for Proposition 3 as an unfunded mandate that will lead to higher property taxes. Well in this sense it is. Because the state chooses not to restore these funds, many districts are depending on supplemental levies, which in fact have raised property taxes.
I have nothing to do with any union. I am as republican as anyone can be. But these so called Luna laws are a big mistake. Thanks, Brian Esplin
At the end of the board meeting we were asked about what we thought of the three propositions. I said some of what I thought about it. After listening to a podcast from a KID radio show where Mr. Luna talked about the new laws, I felt compelled to write a letter to the Pioneer and Morning News. I had to reduce this in half to make it fit in the Morning News. I have not heard from the Pioneer. I get so tired of Luna blaming the school districts and teachers for many of the problems. He has a way of not telling the whole truth, so I thought I would tell some of the other side the way I see things.
After I wrote this I found out if these laws are repealed it will cause a lot of problems that will have to be resolved. The requirement for online classes and technology is now law. If the proposition is repealed it will remove the funding, not the law. I think they will have to pass new legislation to remove the law. Schools can not afford an unfunded mandate like this.
Another concern brought to me is about the pay for performance. With many plans in place setting up the guidelines, if the law fails, it will be very hard for schools to figure out what to do if their plan is under contract with the teachers, and then they don't end up with the funding. I can understand there will be challenges, but I still maintain these are bad laws. I compared it to what I think of Obama care. Some of Obama care is in place, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be changed.
I think if the legislature and the Department of Education would have worked more with teachers and school boards they would have come up with a better plan, and we wouldn't have all the conflict we are dealing with now.
If you have any questions after reading this let me know. Good or bad I guess I say what I think.
Propositions
I am on the Firth school board and wanted to address my thoughts about the propositions. I am basically neutral on Proposition one. I don't think this proposition effects our school very much either way. I want to mainly address the other propositions. I would strongly encourage a no vote on each of these. Prop. 2 pay for performance. They make it very confusing so it's very hard to understand. Basically all schools are evaluated and put on a bell curve, just like some grades are given out in school. The top of the curve schools get a full share of funding from the state. It works it's way down. The lower the evaluation goes the less money is paid, until the lowest get nothing. One thing to keep in mind. No mater what a district chooses to do, a teacher can only get one full share, no more. So if the school is at the top level they will all get the same amount of money. If a district wants to reward teachers for performance, the rewards have to go to a group of teachers teaching or doing the same thing, and only if the school as a whole does not qualify for a whole share. So for example you want to reward the school math teachers because they raised student achievement. But in this example the school only qualifies for half a share. The only way to reward the math teachers is to take away from the teachers who received a half a share, so they will get even less, and give part of their share to the math teachers. Is this fair? What if one math teacher is poor and the all the others are excellent, but because of the weak teacher achievement isn't high enough, then no one will get extra performance money. This can put teachers against each other. Administering this from the state must require a lot of extra time and expense that could be used to raise all teacher's pay.
Proposition 3. To me this is the worst one. Requiring all students to take two online classes will be a real challenge for a small district like ours. I have a hard time believing the state will really provide all the funding for this program. For one thing there is no new funding to replace the teachers we had to cut, because we received less funding from the state and federal governments. Our total funding has dropped $746,000 since the 2009-2010 school year. Now we are supposed to come up with the teachers to help with the online classes. I believe many students will struggle with this requirement. I think it would have been good to offer online classes to those who want to take them, but not to make it a requirement. Since the classes are going to be provided by teachers outside of the district, the funding for these classes will have to follow. There is some ways to mitigate some of this expense, but not all. I don't think funding will go back into the district to replace these lost dollars.
There are so many half truths out there clouding this issue. I recently heard Tom Luna on the radio. I want to set straight a few things he said. He talked about increasing school funding. Schools are paid by a unit of students, for the M&O budget. The older the kids the less kids it takes to make a unit. We used to get about $24,000 per unit. Last year we received $19,626. Each district's state funding for teachers had been based on the number of these units. If we chose to have less we wouldn't save any money, the state would just keep the money. If a district wants more teachers, they would pay for them through a supplemental levy. As the state reduced school funding they made some changes to how this works. The state didn't change the number of units, or teachers we qualify for. They gave districts discretion to lay off a certain percent of the teachers, and can now use the money saved to supplement the drop in the M&O budget and other budget cuts. So by laying off teachers, we look like the bad guys not the state. He talks about funding going up for this year. They raised this budget $80 per unit. Not much of an increase.
He claimed when the districts received federal stimulus funding, that we probably used much of these funds to hire more teachers. So it wasn't the states fault that since this funding is gone that now districts have to lay off teachers. We didn't hire anymore teachers. We used most of the money to help replace part of what I think was a 7% teacher pay cut the state imposed. The rest helped pay for an increase in insurance costs. He also doesn't mention some state funding was lowered when federal money came in.
He says class sizes are determined at the local level. He also says the Students Come First laws don't effect class sizes. Because of less state funding we have laid off I think four teachers. So some of our class sizes have gone up. The only way to maintain class sizes is through supplemental levies, which we don't have. Some of the reduction for funding of teachers may have come first, but most of the new money for education is going back to Students Come First, not used to restore teaching positions or our M&O budget. Others talk about funding for Proposition 3 as an unfunded mandate that will lead to higher property taxes. Well in this sense it is. Because the state chooses not to restore these funds, many districts are depending on supplemental levies, which in fact have raised property taxes.
I have nothing to do with any union. I am as republican as anyone can be. But these so called Luna laws are a big mistake. Thanks, Brian Esplin
Sunday, September 16, 2012
September 13th Board Meeting
This probably wasn't one of our most interesting meetings, but we did go through quite a few things. Casey was out of town so John conducted the meeting.
One of the main things we went over was the audit report. Mr. Morgan Hatt reported on the audit report. I haven't had time to go over it in detail. But I will go over some highlights. We had budgeted for a $232,357 deficit in our general fund budget. Our deficit ended up being $28,879 or a difference of $203,478, much better than what was budgeted. The non general fund budget revenue from property tax, state, federal and other local taxes exceeded expenditures by $120,747. This money will go into our contingency fund, leaving the balance at the beginning of this school year at $800,000. I think maintaining this amount in our contingency fund is very good considering that our general fund revenue is $646,866 less than it was at this time in 2009. The administrators and everyone else who helps manage our school expenditures have done a very good job. One item I noticed was that our transportation costs dropped $20,000. I asked now that our audit is done, if they can give us better information about how much we saved on the four day schedule. I think they will have that for us next month. A couple more things of interest. Our best average daily attendance over 28 weeks was 696 and we spent $7,083 per student. I think this is about an average amount for our size of school. Idaho is 49th with only Utah lower, in how much the state provides per student. I asked if the schools he audits spends this much per student without an override levy. He said either they have one or as one school did, they took $500,000 out of their plant facility fund to get by for a year. He questioned the legality of what this school did. The state lawyers didn't agree with the school lawyers. He has not done very many audits yet.
Scott Jolley presented the ISAT testing results. The elementary and high school met AYP. There are several segments of how they divide up the kids for testing. The middle school missed AYP for the economically disadvantaged in math by less than one percentage point. If Idaho gets exempted from No Child Left Behind laws like they think they will, this process will change. They will go to what is called the STAR Status program. Basically a scale from 1 to 5. Scott thinks if they go to this it will be easier to make improvements. They have plans now to improve where things are deficient. Some highlights of the test results. In the 3rd grade 96% were advanced or proficient. The middle school met AYP in the two categories they missed last year. The high school continues to reach 100% graduation rate.
We then went over several policy updates. We had gone over most of them at our work session. We needed to change the length of the school day. We talked about the use of electronic devises and other media. The absences allowed was changed from a number to a 90% attendance requirement. We spent quite awhile talking about our board goals. We will go over them more at our next meeting with Casey back. We are setting goals to have more work sessions. Setting a date each year to review the districts overall financial situation. I had suggested that we review our goals more often. I also suggested that we publish a district newsletter maybe quarterly. This could be put on the web site, and maybe have some to give out at the back to school night or parent teacher conferences. If you haven't checked it out the web site looks a lot better. There are more goals and details. If we get them set I will provide more information next month. One thing I don't think we have done very good at is, we should ask patrons, what goals would you like us to have? We need to evaluate ourselves as board members better and ask for suggestions of what things you can see that we as board members or the district need improvement on or goals you would like us to work on. If you have suggestions let me know.
There was a paper given to us by the teachers requesting us to add some things back into policy to define some things for their benefit or protection, since there is no real collective bargaining agreements anymore. We will probably have a work meeting to go over this in detail and will probably need to discuss some of their requests with a lawyer.
We then had public comments. There was a concern about soccer presented, but it was somewhat mitigated because April and I had responded to him and tried to answer his concerns since our last meeting and he thanked us for doing so.
I asked afterwords if anything had come up requesting a discussion about consolidation. I was told no. Maybe my letter to the paper quieted things down about this issue. I do believe trying to be proactive in communication does bring about positive results.
That is all I can think of for this blog. I am off to Chicago Monday for one of my other board meetings. I have a major issue at that meeting I will try to defend and will have to in front of about 100 staff and board members. If you have any questions or comments let me know. Thanks, Brian
One of the main things we went over was the audit report. Mr. Morgan Hatt reported on the audit report. I haven't had time to go over it in detail. But I will go over some highlights. We had budgeted for a $232,357 deficit in our general fund budget. Our deficit ended up being $28,879 or a difference of $203,478, much better than what was budgeted. The non general fund budget revenue from property tax, state, federal and other local taxes exceeded expenditures by $120,747. This money will go into our contingency fund, leaving the balance at the beginning of this school year at $800,000. I think maintaining this amount in our contingency fund is very good considering that our general fund revenue is $646,866 less than it was at this time in 2009. The administrators and everyone else who helps manage our school expenditures have done a very good job. One item I noticed was that our transportation costs dropped $20,000. I asked now that our audit is done, if they can give us better information about how much we saved on the four day schedule. I think they will have that for us next month. A couple more things of interest. Our best average daily attendance over 28 weeks was 696 and we spent $7,083 per student. I think this is about an average amount for our size of school. Idaho is 49th with only Utah lower, in how much the state provides per student. I asked if the schools he audits spends this much per student without an override levy. He said either they have one or as one school did, they took $500,000 out of their plant facility fund to get by for a year. He questioned the legality of what this school did. The state lawyers didn't agree with the school lawyers. He has not done very many audits yet.
Scott Jolley presented the ISAT testing results. The elementary and high school met AYP. There are several segments of how they divide up the kids for testing. The middle school missed AYP for the economically disadvantaged in math by less than one percentage point. If Idaho gets exempted from No Child Left Behind laws like they think they will, this process will change. They will go to what is called the STAR Status program. Basically a scale from 1 to 5. Scott thinks if they go to this it will be easier to make improvements. They have plans now to improve where things are deficient. Some highlights of the test results. In the 3rd grade 96% were advanced or proficient. The middle school met AYP in the two categories they missed last year. The high school continues to reach 100% graduation rate.
We then went over several policy updates. We had gone over most of them at our work session. We needed to change the length of the school day. We talked about the use of electronic devises and other media. The absences allowed was changed from a number to a 90% attendance requirement. We spent quite awhile talking about our board goals. We will go over them more at our next meeting with Casey back. We are setting goals to have more work sessions. Setting a date each year to review the districts overall financial situation. I had suggested that we review our goals more often. I also suggested that we publish a district newsletter maybe quarterly. This could be put on the web site, and maybe have some to give out at the back to school night or parent teacher conferences. If you haven't checked it out the web site looks a lot better. There are more goals and details. If we get them set I will provide more information next month. One thing I don't think we have done very good at is, we should ask patrons, what goals would you like us to have? We need to evaluate ourselves as board members better and ask for suggestions of what things you can see that we as board members or the district need improvement on or goals you would like us to work on. If you have suggestions let me know.
There was a paper given to us by the teachers requesting us to add some things back into policy to define some things for their benefit or protection, since there is no real collective bargaining agreements anymore. We will probably have a work meeting to go over this in detail and will probably need to discuss some of their requests with a lawyer.
We then had public comments. There was a concern about soccer presented, but it was somewhat mitigated because April and I had responded to him and tried to answer his concerns since our last meeting and he thanked us for doing so.
I asked afterwords if anything had come up requesting a discussion about consolidation. I was told no. Maybe my letter to the paper quieted things down about this issue. I do believe trying to be proactive in communication does bring about positive results.
That is all I can think of for this blog. I am off to Chicago Monday for one of my other board meetings. I have a major issue at that meeting I will try to defend and will have to in front of about 100 staff and board members. If you have any questions or comments let me know. Thanks, Brian
Friday, August 24, 2012
Consolidation Response Letter
The letter below is what I submitted to the Pioneer in response to the conversation I had with Mr. Price from Shelley who is encouraging consolidation, and from what was said in Wednesdays paper.
Another point I didn't state in my response was when I talked about how I did not think Firth patrons would support this idea in part because of the cost. I mentioned how when we tried to pass two different override levies, that were not for very much money compared to this, that they had both failed. His response back to me was something to the effect that. If the Firth board would approve the consolidation, then since Shelley patrons out number Firth patron by such a wide margin, it wouldn't matter what Firth wanted to do. Shelley would then have enough votes to pass whatever funding that was needed without Firth support. Needless to say that sure didn't go over well with me. And I think points out a big problem with the idea of consolidation. Losing control of how we are taxed, and how the Firth patrons would be treated. I think at some point unless the state comes through with more funding we will need to pass an levy. But I would never want to force the issue like he suggested. We will need to approve one with the purpose well defined, not through force or some kind of trick.
Consolidation
Being a person that doesn't shy away from expressing my opinion, I felt compelled to respond to the article about consolidation. I am on the Firth school board and I am one who would have to be convinced that we should consider consolidation. My wife and I met with Mr. Price a couple weeks ago where he presented his groups ideas and we discussed it for about an hour and a half.
To me there are many more negatives than there are positives, especially for the people from Firth. Talking with Mr. Price and reading the article I get the impression that they think it is a bad thing for Firth to be so small, and the outlook for slow growth, if any growth at all, is also a negative thing. To me that is a very positive thing. I guess I'm one who thinks if you want to send your kids to a big school then you should live in the cities, don't try and make Firth into a big city school.
During our discussion I mentioned that we had an AG program with some classes in welding. He seemed intrigued by the idea to make Firth into some kind of trade school. I tried explaining to him our program is small. The classes are held in a very old facility with very limited space. They have keep it pretty well maintained, but I don't think there is room for many more students. If the idea is to greatly expand Firth into a trade school, all new facilities would have to be built.
I know we don't provide every elective program they offer in larger schools, but that doesn't mean we don't provide a good education. Besides our success in athletic achievement over the last several years, we have won many academic awards also. Almost anyone who wants to participate in a school sport can. I would guess as a percentage Firth has a lot higher number of kids involved in sports, than have the opportunity to participate in Shelley. If you have ever attended a Firth state football or basketball game, you would think there are more Firth fans there than live in the district.
I think getting support from Firth to help fund the growth in Shelley is also very unlikely. In recent elections where Shelley and Firth have jointly voted on bonds, that were probably perceived to help Shelley more than Firth, they failed because of lack of enough support from Firth. Currently our school bond debt will be paid in full on June of 2014. I don't believe Firth patrons would like to bond for the level of debt to build a new library, auditorium, and community center. Let alone building a big technical school or future north Bingham county high school.
As we are now we have a lot of empty classrooms mostly in the elementary. So as far as facilities are concerned there is no pressure to build anything new, like they have had to keep doing in Shelley. Also most of our class sizes are small. There are very few classes in the elementary with more than twenty students, most have even less. I believe Shelley's elementary classes are quite a bit bigger.
I think it was a couple years ago the state was offering to fund a consolidation study for Bingham county. Firth's share to do the study was several thousand dollars. The state would pay for the study we just needed to agree to participate. There was no support from the board, even under these terms to participate in the study. They did the study anyway. I don't think the results from that study indicated many advantages for consolidation, and some obvious disadvantages.
One more area of concern, I could continue with more, is the matter of board representation. I don't know for sure how the numbers would break down, but I would think with a five member board, Firth area would have only one board member in a consolidated district. Maybe part of another. So if we agreed to consolidation, in most ways Shelley would have complete control over the former Firth district.
I was not invited to the meeting referenced in the paper, as the article claimed I was. Which went on to say because no one showed up no one was available to give their opinion about consolidation. Well now you now have mine.
As I say after the blog I write after our school board meetings. If you have any comments or questions let me know. If there are those in our district who support consolidation and you would like to tell me why you think it would be a good idea let me know.
Thank you, Brian Esplin. My school email is. besplin@d59.k12.id.us
Another point I didn't state in my response was when I talked about how I did not think Firth patrons would support this idea in part because of the cost. I mentioned how when we tried to pass two different override levies, that were not for very much money compared to this, that they had both failed. His response back to me was something to the effect that. If the Firth board would approve the consolidation, then since Shelley patrons out number Firth patron by such a wide margin, it wouldn't matter what Firth wanted to do. Shelley would then have enough votes to pass whatever funding that was needed without Firth support. Needless to say that sure didn't go over well with me. And I think points out a big problem with the idea of consolidation. Losing control of how we are taxed, and how the Firth patrons would be treated. I think at some point unless the state comes through with more funding we will need to pass an levy. But I would never want to force the issue like he suggested. We will need to approve one with the purpose well defined, not through force or some kind of trick.
Consolidation
Being a person that doesn't shy away from expressing my opinion, I felt compelled to respond to the article about consolidation. I am on the Firth school board and I am one who would have to be convinced that we should consider consolidation. My wife and I met with Mr. Price a couple weeks ago where he presented his groups ideas and we discussed it for about an hour and a half.
To me there are many more negatives than there are positives, especially for the people from Firth. Talking with Mr. Price and reading the article I get the impression that they think it is a bad thing for Firth to be so small, and the outlook for slow growth, if any growth at all, is also a negative thing. To me that is a very positive thing. I guess I'm one who thinks if you want to send your kids to a big school then you should live in the cities, don't try and make Firth into a big city school.
During our discussion I mentioned that we had an AG program with some classes in welding. He seemed intrigued by the idea to make Firth into some kind of trade school. I tried explaining to him our program is small. The classes are held in a very old facility with very limited space. They have keep it pretty well maintained, but I don't think there is room for many more students. If the idea is to greatly expand Firth into a trade school, all new facilities would have to be built.
I know we don't provide every elective program they offer in larger schools, but that doesn't mean we don't provide a good education. Besides our success in athletic achievement over the last several years, we have won many academic awards also. Almost anyone who wants to participate in a school sport can. I would guess as a percentage Firth has a lot higher number of kids involved in sports, than have the opportunity to participate in Shelley. If you have ever attended a Firth state football or basketball game, you would think there are more Firth fans there than live in the district.
I think getting support from Firth to help fund the growth in Shelley is also very unlikely. In recent elections where Shelley and Firth have jointly voted on bonds, that were probably perceived to help Shelley more than Firth, they failed because of lack of enough support from Firth. Currently our school bond debt will be paid in full on June of 2014. I don't believe Firth patrons would like to bond for the level of debt to build a new library, auditorium, and community center. Let alone building a big technical school or future north Bingham county high school.
As we are now we have a lot of empty classrooms mostly in the elementary. So as far as facilities are concerned there is no pressure to build anything new, like they have had to keep doing in Shelley. Also most of our class sizes are small. There are very few classes in the elementary with more than twenty students, most have even less. I believe Shelley's elementary classes are quite a bit bigger.
I think it was a couple years ago the state was offering to fund a consolidation study for Bingham county. Firth's share to do the study was several thousand dollars. The state would pay for the study we just needed to agree to participate. There was no support from the board, even under these terms to participate in the study. They did the study anyway. I don't think the results from that study indicated many advantages for consolidation, and some obvious disadvantages.
One more area of concern, I could continue with more, is the matter of board representation. I don't know for sure how the numbers would break down, but I would think with a five member board, Firth area would have only one board member in a consolidated district. Maybe part of another. So if we agreed to consolidation, in most ways Shelley would have complete control over the former Firth district.
I was not invited to the meeting referenced in the paper, as the article claimed I was. Which went on to say because no one showed up no one was available to give their opinion about consolidation. Well now you now have mine.
As I say after the blog I write after our school board meetings. If you have any comments or questions let me know. If there are those in our district who support consolidation and you would like to tell me why you think it would be a good idea let me know.
Thank you, Brian Esplin. My school email is. besplin@d59.k12.id.us
Saturday, August 11, 2012
August 9th 2012 Board Meeting
Missing last month's board meeting, makes it seem like it has been a long time since I have written a blog. I understand last month's meeting was over very fast, something like twenty minutes. I enjoyed my time with my wife and daughter in Orlando at the FCCLA competition. The girls did very well.
A lot of this month's board meeting was spent talking about the board training April and I went to August 2nd in Rigby. So I will mix in what happened at the board meeting with some information I received at the training.
Our first matter of business was to elect a Vice Chair, John Monson was elected. So in case you missed it last month Casey Park will serve as board Chairman and John will serve as Vice Chair for the next year.
Christine Nelson was presented as the new first grade teacher. Sharolyn Peterson, a former FHS graduate, will be the new high school English teacher.
The next topic was the board training. I first went over some information and mixed in some questions that April and I had that came up at the meeting.
Some of the information:
ISAT tests have a pool of 150 questions to choose 30 from. Core Standards testing will have 4000 questions. Grades 3-10 will be tested. Another reason to be prepared for Common Core is after next year the Pay for Performance will be based on Common Core testing. Some schools are adding as much as a week more to the school year to better prepare for this new testing. They told us about an Ap you can get for your smart phone or computer put out by MasteryConnect. It is very detailed, but anyone can look at it to see what will be expected.
At the training they talked about how we need to reinforce positive things going on at school. They recommended every year that each board member sign a Code of Ethics statement. I provided a copy of the ethics statement to each board member. We have not done this since I have been on the board.
They recommended we set our Board Goals in a June work session. Publicize our goals in July, ask for public input on what they think of our goals, and revise and adopt our goals in August. Then follow up in January and May to see how we are doing. It was also recommended that we connect our board goals with our agenda. This board meeting is the first time we have talked about our goals this year. I think the training recommendations are good, hopefully we can follow this process in the future.
Another recommendation was to be sure we re-ask questions to the administration that come up, even if we have been given the answer. That way we are proving we are doing our do diligence as board members, by informing the public. I have tried to do this most of the time, and think it is important and I'm glad they affirmed this procedure.
Now for some of the questions. We asked about Pay for Performance and if we are going to come up with our own plan, not the State's like we followed last year. If we want something different we need to decide this by September 1st. This will be talked about in a work meeting next Thursday, August 16th at 8:00 pm in the High School Library.
I asked when do we need to go over the Superintendent Evaluation Component for Pay For Performance. I think we usually go over his goals in January, but with changes coming I think we need to get started figuring this out. I gave Mr. Tubbs some information about this process. I'm not sure when it will be on our agenda.
I asked about the Idaho Leads Group, and if any consideration had been give to join this group of 49 districts involved. I didn't find out much about this at the training. It has something to do with helping to figure out the development of the new state standards coming. I didn't find out anymore about this, because Mr. Tubbs hadn't heard anything about it. He will find out more.
At the training I asked what is the best time to ask questions as a board member, if the topic isn't on the agenda? They recommended adding a Reports and Recognition Section to our board meeting. Casey was concerned that doing this might violate in some way open meeting laws. I stated and asked if I was right, that it's okay to ask questions and have some discussion, as long as no board action was taken by what was brought up. Mr. Tubbs said I was right. Most questions I have are about how we are doing on certain things and want an update, or items that I think should be discussed at a future time. Casey plans on contacting board members the week before board meetings to see if we have items we would like on the agenda. This would help and has never been done in the past. Many times we don't get our board meeting information until two days before our board meeting, which makes it hard to review and suggest anything for the agenda.
Another agenda recommendation was to add a Student Involvement Section, items like a presentation, success story, and awards. They also recommended a few minutes of board training. I guess they used to do this before I came on the board. I don't know if these agenda ideas will be incorporated.
I asked if we had a published List of Procedures, and if we did, could I get a copy. Mr. Tubbs said some are in our policy manual, but some are not. He is going to get that information. This also kind of goes along with the district Strategic Plan. They talked about this at training and April and I knew nothing about it. He was asked about this ahead of time and provided a copy for us. The committee has been given the responsibility of reviewing the Plan.
I handed out some more information at the meeting. There is two handouts about what every board member needs to know about Governance and Team Operations, and about the district. Some of the governance is about protocols. I don't know how all these things have been done, and would like to have more discussion about these handouts.
One last handout and information from the meeting was about doing a Board of Trustees Self Assessment. We are doing a lot more evaluations of everybody at the school, I think we should do this assessment. It was suggested to me that we fill this out how we think we as individuals are doing and how we think the board is doing. I suggested we use this to help come up with our board goals. It was determined that we fill this out how we think the board is doing, turn the assessment into the district office and have the board clerk compile the information anonymously. We will do this before our work meeting next week and talk over areas that we need to improve on. After looking this over, I think it won't be hard to find needed areas for improvement.
Well on to the rest of the meeting. Mr. Gee reported on what had been done to prepare for the Common Core Standards. He talked about some training and conferences the staff had participated in. They are working on this and will throughout the year to be ready to start teaching to these standards next year. I hope they will be ready. One concern I brought up is needing to know what curriculum we will need to purchase to be prepaired for this. Curriculum is very expensive, and we need to know this as soon as possible. They are not sure yet what we will need.
A few weeks ago I was looking through our Online Policy Manual. Most meetings we get policy updates from ISBA to consider. These policies are more generic state policies that need changed, by new laws or changing a little language. There are other things that are more district specific that we need to update. The policies we did update last year have mostly not been updated in our Online Manual. Mr. Tubbs said they would work on doing this. After reading through a lot of our policies online I came up with a list of policies that I think need reviewed.
-1. The length of day and teacher requirements of the school day need re-defined to match up with our current schedule.
-2. We need to either change our policy towards President's Day being a school holiday, or revise our calendar to take President's Day off.
-3. I think since it is likely we will need to move teachers around each year to accommodate changing class sizes with limited staff, we need to review policy how this should be done, with, if possible, a specified date each year to inform teachers when they will have to change to give them time to prepare for the changes. In our manual it just says before the start of the next school year. Sometimes it might not be determined until the beginning of the school year, but most of the time changes coming should be known long before then.
-4. As I understand it our policy states we are supposed to have new hire recommendations presented to us before they are actually hired. If this isn't how we want to do this then we need to change our policy accordingly.
The plan is to go over some policy changes at our Work Meeting, including our new Phone Use Policy. I think we need to figure out how to review our policies. They gave us ideas of how to do this at the training.
We then had Public Comment. There was some concerns expressed about having short term goals to reach our long term goals. Concerns about not having all the teachers at parent teacher conferences. It was suggested we send out emails to inform parents about the conferences.
Concern was expressed about what will be required for Senior Projects, a new requirement starting this year. I think we will go over this more in the future. Concern about our Common Core preparations. Another patron also expressed concern about the new soccer program. Mostly how this might impact other sports.
We then went into executive session and talked about some personnel issues. I think we left about 11:00, much longer than last time. I know this is very long, but if you like to know the details of what went on, now you know. I will probably write another update after our work session next week. As always if you have questions or comments let me know. Thanks, Brian
A lot of this month's board meeting was spent talking about the board training April and I went to August 2nd in Rigby. So I will mix in what happened at the board meeting with some information I received at the training.
Our first matter of business was to elect a Vice Chair, John Monson was elected. So in case you missed it last month Casey Park will serve as board Chairman and John will serve as Vice Chair for the next year.
Christine Nelson was presented as the new first grade teacher. Sharolyn Peterson, a former FHS graduate, will be the new high school English teacher.
The next topic was the board training. I first went over some information and mixed in some questions that April and I had that came up at the meeting.
Some of the information:
ISAT tests have a pool of 150 questions to choose 30 from. Core Standards testing will have 4000 questions. Grades 3-10 will be tested. Another reason to be prepared for Common Core is after next year the Pay for Performance will be based on Common Core testing. Some schools are adding as much as a week more to the school year to better prepare for this new testing. They told us about an Ap you can get for your smart phone or computer put out by MasteryConnect. It is very detailed, but anyone can look at it to see what will be expected.
At the training they talked about how we need to reinforce positive things going on at school. They recommended every year that each board member sign a Code of Ethics statement. I provided a copy of the ethics statement to each board member. We have not done this since I have been on the board.
They recommended we set our Board Goals in a June work session. Publicize our goals in July, ask for public input on what they think of our goals, and revise and adopt our goals in August. Then follow up in January and May to see how we are doing. It was also recommended that we connect our board goals with our agenda. This board meeting is the first time we have talked about our goals this year. I think the training recommendations are good, hopefully we can follow this process in the future.
Another recommendation was to be sure we re-ask questions to the administration that come up, even if we have been given the answer. That way we are proving we are doing our do diligence as board members, by informing the public. I have tried to do this most of the time, and think it is important and I'm glad they affirmed this procedure.
Now for some of the questions. We asked about Pay for Performance and if we are going to come up with our own plan, not the State's like we followed last year. If we want something different we need to decide this by September 1st. This will be talked about in a work meeting next Thursday, August 16th at 8:00 pm in the High School Library.
I asked when do we need to go over the Superintendent Evaluation Component for Pay For Performance. I think we usually go over his goals in January, but with changes coming I think we need to get started figuring this out. I gave Mr. Tubbs some information about this process. I'm not sure when it will be on our agenda.
I asked about the Idaho Leads Group, and if any consideration had been give to join this group of 49 districts involved. I didn't find out much about this at the training. It has something to do with helping to figure out the development of the new state standards coming. I didn't find out anymore about this, because Mr. Tubbs hadn't heard anything about it. He will find out more.
At the training I asked what is the best time to ask questions as a board member, if the topic isn't on the agenda? They recommended adding a Reports and Recognition Section to our board meeting. Casey was concerned that doing this might violate in some way open meeting laws. I stated and asked if I was right, that it's okay to ask questions and have some discussion, as long as no board action was taken by what was brought up. Mr. Tubbs said I was right. Most questions I have are about how we are doing on certain things and want an update, or items that I think should be discussed at a future time. Casey plans on contacting board members the week before board meetings to see if we have items we would like on the agenda. This would help and has never been done in the past. Many times we don't get our board meeting information until two days before our board meeting, which makes it hard to review and suggest anything for the agenda.
Another agenda recommendation was to add a Student Involvement Section, items like a presentation, success story, and awards. They also recommended a few minutes of board training. I guess they used to do this before I came on the board. I don't know if these agenda ideas will be incorporated.
I asked if we had a published List of Procedures, and if we did, could I get a copy. Mr. Tubbs said some are in our policy manual, but some are not. He is going to get that information. This also kind of goes along with the district Strategic Plan. They talked about this at training and April and I knew nothing about it. He was asked about this ahead of time and provided a copy for us. The committee has been given the responsibility of reviewing the Plan.
I handed out some more information at the meeting. There is two handouts about what every board member needs to know about Governance and Team Operations, and about the district. Some of the governance is about protocols. I don't know how all these things have been done, and would like to have more discussion about these handouts.
One last handout and information from the meeting was about doing a Board of Trustees Self Assessment. We are doing a lot more evaluations of everybody at the school, I think we should do this assessment. It was suggested to me that we fill this out how we think we as individuals are doing and how we think the board is doing. I suggested we use this to help come up with our board goals. It was determined that we fill this out how we think the board is doing, turn the assessment into the district office and have the board clerk compile the information anonymously. We will do this before our work meeting next week and talk over areas that we need to improve on. After looking this over, I think it won't be hard to find needed areas for improvement.
Well on to the rest of the meeting. Mr. Gee reported on what had been done to prepare for the Common Core Standards. He talked about some training and conferences the staff had participated in. They are working on this and will throughout the year to be ready to start teaching to these standards next year. I hope they will be ready. One concern I brought up is needing to know what curriculum we will need to purchase to be prepaired for this. Curriculum is very expensive, and we need to know this as soon as possible. They are not sure yet what we will need.
A few weeks ago I was looking through our Online Policy Manual. Most meetings we get policy updates from ISBA to consider. These policies are more generic state policies that need changed, by new laws or changing a little language. There are other things that are more district specific that we need to update. The policies we did update last year have mostly not been updated in our Online Manual. Mr. Tubbs said they would work on doing this. After reading through a lot of our policies online I came up with a list of policies that I think need reviewed.
-1. The length of day and teacher requirements of the school day need re-defined to match up with our current schedule.
-2. We need to either change our policy towards President's Day being a school holiday, or revise our calendar to take President's Day off.
-3. I think since it is likely we will need to move teachers around each year to accommodate changing class sizes with limited staff, we need to review policy how this should be done, with, if possible, a specified date each year to inform teachers when they will have to change to give them time to prepare for the changes. In our manual it just says before the start of the next school year. Sometimes it might not be determined until the beginning of the school year, but most of the time changes coming should be known long before then.
-4. As I understand it our policy states we are supposed to have new hire recommendations presented to us before they are actually hired. If this isn't how we want to do this then we need to change our policy accordingly.
The plan is to go over some policy changes at our Work Meeting, including our new Phone Use Policy. I think we need to figure out how to review our policies. They gave us ideas of how to do this at the training.
We then had Public Comment. There was some concerns expressed about having short term goals to reach our long term goals. Concerns about not having all the teachers at parent teacher conferences. It was suggested we send out emails to inform parents about the conferences.
Concern was expressed about what will be required for Senior Projects, a new requirement starting this year. I think we will go over this more in the future. Concern about our Common Core preparations. Another patron also expressed concern about the new soccer program. Mostly how this might impact other sports.
We then went into executive session and talked about some personnel issues. I think we left about 11:00, much longer than last time. I know this is very long, but if you like to know the details of what went on, now you know. I will probably write another update after our work session next week. As always if you have questions or comments let me know. Thanks, Brian
Saturday, June 16, 2012
June 14th Board Meeting
You can tell it's summer time by how few people attended our board meeting. I think besides staff there were only three others that attended the whole meeting. I hope more than that take the time to read my blog.
It was a very short meeting, but I have some follow-up information from our last meeting that I will include also. One of the first things we did was approve the resignation of Joe Rodriguez, the IT guy. He is going to Grangeville. He will be hard to replace. We also approved the FCCLA to go on their national competition to Orlando.
Julie Cederberg, the district secretary, presented the district budget for approval for next school year. She had a paper prepared with the budget outline. I won't get into all the details that I detailed in my last blog. If you haven't read it, please do, I spent a lot of time coming up with information and explaining every budget detail so all can better understand. Please encourage everyone who has an interest in our school funds to read it. The main thing that I haven't stated before is where it looks like we will end up and what is being budgeted for next year. Julie is estimating we will spend $100,000 of our last year's contingency budget. Last year we planned for a budget deficit of $232,000, so we will do much better than we planned. A couple reasons it is better is how well our budget has been managed by our Administrators and we had been told there might be another hold back of funds last year that didn't happen. It's always good to plan for the worst and have things turn out better. We will have more exact budget details of our last year's budget after our audit in August.
The budget for next year is very close to the same. We approved spending another $100,000 out of our contingency fund for next year, leaving at the end of next year about $600,000 in the contingency. One cost increase is a 3% increase in insurance, which I think is smaller than expected. The main reason we are able to cover the increased insurance cost is because a teacher left from the elementary and we chose not to replace her. As I explained in my last blog the state has plans to restore more funds back to the Maintenance and Operation's fund, if the economy improves enough. But I think we will all believe it when we see it. One fact you might find interesting. Our budget has dropped $746,000 since the 2009-2010 school year. It's amazing we still have a contingency fund balance.
I then reported on the last committee meeting. Basically we had talk about the district budget and I referred everyone to read my blog to get a detailed explanation. We will not have a committee meeting this month.
I emailed Mr. Tubbs some follow-up questions from our last board meeting a couple days before the board meeting, that I thought needed discussed, he then replied in an email back to the board the answers. None of this was on the agenda for discussion. I asked more questions at the meeting to again follow-up from the answers he provided.
I had asked if they had a chance to look at the drug use, cell phone, and dress policies. He said the management team has met twice to look at all three policies, but hasn't had time to get a committee together to review them. They plan on having recommendations back to us by fall. If anyone has ideas of how these should be changed let Mr. Tubbs know, he is very open to suggestions. I told him last night, whatever they come up with needs to be better enforced and uniformly enforced.
I asked if we are getting lined up for the Common Core Standards. He said yes that several staff members have had training concerning the common core. They are looking at the curriculum to see what we need to do when purchasing new curriculum for next year to cover any gaps.
I asked about Pay for Performance in the email and at board meeting. The administration is working with the teachers to figure out if our plan needs changed from the state plan we followed this past year. Mr. Tubbs plans to go over this at our August meeting. He asked for suggestions from us if we had any. Last night I made the suggestion that we reward someone, if they would take an aggressive role in writing grants. I think we could get more grants if this happened. I also suggested if possible for the teachers that are volunteering so much time for free, coaching and running other extra curricular activities, to get a little extra. I think there is still a lot to do before this issue is finalized for next year.
I asked about the technology. Basically we will watch and see how this works out for the other districts that are starting this program for this next school year, to help guide us in what we do later on.
I asked if we have received grants for the bleachers. He said not yet, but are still working on getting two of them. I asked if we are working on grants for other things. He said yes Keith Drake received a grant for a cooler to use in his class room. As I said before we need to have someone more involved with writing grants.
April and I are going to a regional board training in August at Rigby. I think it will be a good program. I wish the whole board was able to go. I will report on it after we attend. We also qualify for some free training that we might do after attending the regional training and can decide what we might like to learn.
I asked if we knew the results of the ISAT tests yet. The state has had some computer problems so the results are not out yet, but will be soon.
I also asked about the attendance issues with the state to find out if the problem was resolved yet. He thinks it should be, but is still waiting for more information.
I asked at our meeting last night if they had decided what repairs and maintenance to do. Mr. Tubbs gave me a list of all the projects and the cost breakdown, I won't list them all here, but there is a lot to do. A lot of painting projects. The total student occupied fund spending if everything is done adds up to $142,000. $120,000 of this is the new bleachers. Which by the way we were give a drawing of them, and they will look very nice. They will be mostly blue, with black and white seats spelling out on the upper side Firth and on the lower side Cougars. The projected expense for non student occupied is $17,700. A big part of this is for the berm work at the middle school and some asphalt repairs at the elementary and high school, and some repairs around the baseball field.
We approved a policy update regarding the evaluation of certificated personnel.
I have a feeling like I left something out, but can't think of what it might be. This blog starts the second year of me writing a blog about board meetings. Overall I think this is the 38th blog I have written. I hope many feel it is worth the read. It provides me with a journal of what happend in the past that I can go back and refer to. I will be with my wife and daughter in Orlando at the FCCLA competition during next month meeting. So if you want to know whats going on you will just have to go to the meeting and find out. I don't like missing meetings, but I need to support my daughter. Without me there the meeting will probably go a lot faster. I was kidding my wife with giving the committee report and all the other comments and questions I seem to almost always come up with. That they need to put an item on the agenda just for me to ask my questions and provide comments. I think July is when the board leadership is voted on. I hope you all have a good summer. As always if you have comments or questions let me know. I wish someone could write a blog about next months meeting so I could find out the details of what happens. Thanks, Brian
It was a very short meeting, but I have some follow-up information from our last meeting that I will include also. One of the first things we did was approve the resignation of Joe Rodriguez, the IT guy. He is going to Grangeville. He will be hard to replace. We also approved the FCCLA to go on their national competition to Orlando.
Julie Cederberg, the district secretary, presented the district budget for approval for next school year. She had a paper prepared with the budget outline. I won't get into all the details that I detailed in my last blog. If you haven't read it, please do, I spent a lot of time coming up with information and explaining every budget detail so all can better understand. Please encourage everyone who has an interest in our school funds to read it. The main thing that I haven't stated before is where it looks like we will end up and what is being budgeted for next year. Julie is estimating we will spend $100,000 of our last year's contingency budget. Last year we planned for a budget deficit of $232,000, so we will do much better than we planned. A couple reasons it is better is how well our budget has been managed by our Administrators and we had been told there might be another hold back of funds last year that didn't happen. It's always good to plan for the worst and have things turn out better. We will have more exact budget details of our last year's budget after our audit in August.
The budget for next year is very close to the same. We approved spending another $100,000 out of our contingency fund for next year, leaving at the end of next year about $600,000 in the contingency. One cost increase is a 3% increase in insurance, which I think is smaller than expected. The main reason we are able to cover the increased insurance cost is because a teacher left from the elementary and we chose not to replace her. As I explained in my last blog the state has plans to restore more funds back to the Maintenance and Operation's fund, if the economy improves enough. But I think we will all believe it when we see it. One fact you might find interesting. Our budget has dropped $746,000 since the 2009-2010 school year. It's amazing we still have a contingency fund balance.
I then reported on the last committee meeting. Basically we had talk about the district budget and I referred everyone to read my blog to get a detailed explanation. We will not have a committee meeting this month.
I emailed Mr. Tubbs some follow-up questions from our last board meeting a couple days before the board meeting, that I thought needed discussed, he then replied in an email back to the board the answers. None of this was on the agenda for discussion. I asked more questions at the meeting to again follow-up from the answers he provided.
I had asked if they had a chance to look at the drug use, cell phone, and dress policies. He said the management team has met twice to look at all three policies, but hasn't had time to get a committee together to review them. They plan on having recommendations back to us by fall. If anyone has ideas of how these should be changed let Mr. Tubbs know, he is very open to suggestions. I told him last night, whatever they come up with needs to be better enforced and uniformly enforced.
I asked if we are getting lined up for the Common Core Standards. He said yes that several staff members have had training concerning the common core. They are looking at the curriculum to see what we need to do when purchasing new curriculum for next year to cover any gaps.
I asked about Pay for Performance in the email and at board meeting. The administration is working with the teachers to figure out if our plan needs changed from the state plan we followed this past year. Mr. Tubbs plans to go over this at our August meeting. He asked for suggestions from us if we had any. Last night I made the suggestion that we reward someone, if they would take an aggressive role in writing grants. I think we could get more grants if this happened. I also suggested if possible for the teachers that are volunteering so much time for free, coaching and running other extra curricular activities, to get a little extra. I think there is still a lot to do before this issue is finalized for next year.
I asked about the technology. Basically we will watch and see how this works out for the other districts that are starting this program for this next school year, to help guide us in what we do later on.
I asked if we have received grants for the bleachers. He said not yet, but are still working on getting two of them. I asked if we are working on grants for other things. He said yes Keith Drake received a grant for a cooler to use in his class room. As I said before we need to have someone more involved with writing grants.
April and I are going to a regional board training in August at Rigby. I think it will be a good program. I wish the whole board was able to go. I will report on it after we attend. We also qualify for some free training that we might do after attending the regional training and can decide what we might like to learn.
I asked if we knew the results of the ISAT tests yet. The state has had some computer problems so the results are not out yet, but will be soon.
I also asked about the attendance issues with the state to find out if the problem was resolved yet. He thinks it should be, but is still waiting for more information.
I asked at our meeting last night if they had decided what repairs and maintenance to do. Mr. Tubbs gave me a list of all the projects and the cost breakdown, I won't list them all here, but there is a lot to do. A lot of painting projects. The total student occupied fund spending if everything is done adds up to $142,000. $120,000 of this is the new bleachers. Which by the way we were give a drawing of them, and they will look very nice. They will be mostly blue, with black and white seats spelling out on the upper side Firth and on the lower side Cougars. The projected expense for non student occupied is $17,700. A big part of this is for the berm work at the middle school and some asphalt repairs at the elementary and high school, and some repairs around the baseball field.
We approved a policy update regarding the evaluation of certificated personnel.
I have a feeling like I left something out, but can't think of what it might be. This blog starts the second year of me writing a blog about board meetings. Overall I think this is the 38th blog I have written. I hope many feel it is worth the read. It provides me with a journal of what happend in the past that I can go back and refer to. I will be with my wife and daughter in Orlando at the FCCLA competition during next month meeting. So if you want to know whats going on you will just have to go to the meeting and find out. I don't like missing meetings, but I need to support my daughter. Without me there the meeting will probably go a lot faster. I was kidding my wife with giving the committee report and all the other comments and questions I seem to almost always come up with. That they need to put an item on the agenda just for me to ask my questions and provide comments. I think July is when the board leadership is voted on. I hope you all have a good summer. As always if you have comments or questions let me know. I wish someone could write a blog about next months meeting so I could find out the details of what happens. Thanks, Brian
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Basics of our district funding
To all my blog readers, I am going to try and explain the school budget in a way everyone can understand, at least as close to as well as I understand the budget. I am starting to write this while I am on vacation in Jackson. I had hoped to publish this after our budget work meeting, but lacked some details I wanted to have before I could explain things very well. I called and got more answers to the budget questions that I had, but was advised to wait to publish anything until after the budget details are published on June 7th a week before the board meeting. There is some concern if I publish something different than what the final budget is, it would be inappropriate, and could cause some problems. So I will wait and publish this after that date, even though I am going to write most of the information while I have time, and then I will go back and edit numbers where it's necessary.
First of all I am not going to try and publish exact numbers. I don't think that is necessary to explain the budget. As with many budgets, especially my own business budget, no budget ever comes out exactly as planned. There are many variables in how we get our funding. When you depend on most of your funding coming from the state and federal governments, there can be many variables. Things like how many students we have and how high our attendance is can make a lot of difference. So consider the numbers I write as estimates, I will give more exact numbers and more details as I learn them later. Even the amount of students that qualify for free and reduced lunches effects our funding. We are going to get a grant again next year to pay for an afternoon nutrition break in the elementary, which really helps those kids make it through the longer four day schedule. We qualify for this because of the percentage of students that qualify for the free and reduced lunches. This also effects the money we get for aides under the federal funded title 1 program that helps educate disadvantaged students. So it is very important to have patrons fill out the paperwork to see if you qualify for this aide even if you choose not to participate. This fund is about $98,000 and can only be used to help disadvantaged students. These funds used to help pay for summer school. This fund is less than it used to be, and no longer is enough to cover the summer school program, so we were forced to cut it. I hope at some point we will be able to come up with the funding to bring this program back.
Since I started with federal funds I will continue with them. Another fund is called the Title VI-B School-Age fund. This fund goes to the students identified as having special needs. There are about 80 students identified for help under this program. Many of these students have problems reading. Students are tested to see if they qualify for help and a plan called an IEP is written to determine what help is necessary. The school is required by law to provide whatever help these students need even if we don't get enough federal dollars to pay for it. There are some students that require one on one aide that we have to pay for. The money we receive for this program doesn't cover all the costs we have, and can change from year to year depending on what the needs are. The funding for this program is about $167,000. There is another similar program for preschool children ages 3-5. This past year we had 11 students in this program. They have been identified as learning delayed. This funding has been about $17,000.
Another federal fund is called Perkins Vocational Education. This is a program for vocational education, or also called professional technical education. I understand many years ago we used to have certified nurses assistant education which was part of this program. This fund is only $8,000.
Another federal fund is called Title II-A Improving Teacher Quality. This fund helps to maintain small class sizes in grades K-3. It can also be used to better train teachers teaching those grades. The money we get is about $30,000. For us we use this money to help fund a teaching position.
The school food service is partly funded through Federal Funds. The lunch ladies do a very good job managing the lunch program. There has been a lot of changes in nutrition programs with more to come. With the Federal Funds and what is charged for the meals this is a self sustaining program. We used to have to supplement this partly with General Fund dollars, but that hasn't been necessary for at least the last two years. The only cost is the requirement by the state for us to pay the FICA taxes for the lunch employees. The cost of this is $6500.
All these federal funds can only go to their intended purpose, we can't use them in other areas, and in some cases require us to supplement them from our general budget funds.
Now on to the state and local funding. There are two Plant Facility Funds. One for Non-Student Occupied Funding and one for Student Occupied. We are required to put 2% of the value of our buildings and I think other fixed assets into these funds. I'm not quite sure how this is calculated but it amounts to somewhere between $165,000 to $180,000 each year. Part of the funding comes from the ten year Plant Facilities tax levy we passed last year for $95,000 each year. The major expense out of this fund is for buying buses. A bus costs over $80,000. We used to buy one bus a year, but in recent years have bought one every other year. Last year's audit report listed the Non-Student Occupied Fund at $650,000 and the Student Occupied Fund at $290,000. The Student Occupied (SO) Fund is what we used to buy our high school bleachers. They cost around $121,000. Each year the Administrators come up with a wish list of repairs and replacement projects, that are funded with these funds. Other examples of SO funds are desks and tables for class rooms, new carpeting and painting. There are many projects that need done in restrooms and locker rooms. There are also some projects that need done in the school kitchens. We try to maintain a good balance to cover major expenses that might come up like roof repairs or replacement, or what you might call the dreaded elementary boiler failure.
Some examples of Non-Stuendent Occupied expenses are work that is needed around the baseball and football fields. Whatever we decide to do with the area between the high school and seminary building and any work on asphalt, or painting asphalt. The elementary needs work done around the play grounds. The middle school needs work around the berms to prevent water from getting into the school. These items will be prioritized and it will be determined which projects to complete this year. But to restate, we are required to fund it at these levels, and the fund can only be used for these type of projects. The Plant Facilities Levy money makes it a lot easier to fund this account, so the $95,000 doesn't have to come out of the too little general funding we get.
Another state fund is called the Vocational Technical Fund. This fund helps pay for the Professional Technical Education programs, like the Ag programs, clerical, consumer homemaking and child care programs. It also includes technology and informational training, and the equipment to run these programs. We get $34,000 from this state fund. Not near enough to provide all the funding necessary for these programs, but it helps.
We also have some funds that help support the Drivers Education Program. We get $125 per student and charge the students $75. This has been provided three times a year. Years ago we used to have a car provided rent free from a car dealership, but no more. I think this is basically cost neutral, but the car is very old and I don't know what we will do when it's too worn out to use anymore. I understand the cost for private lessons is around $300.
We also have a Property Tax Bond for the middle school. It is for about $250,000 each year, and pays off in June of 2014. As I have stated before I had hoped we could get by on our budget without trying for another levy until our bond pays off. At that point I hope we can propose a levy for about the same amount to better restore our funding, maybe bring back programs we have cut like summer school, and to bring our contingency funding back up to better levels.
The major part of our state funding is for our teachers and administrators. We are funded 1.1 teachers for every unit of students we have. I have explained what consists of a unit in the past. We have 41.5 units that can fund about 45.5 teachers. But because of funding cuts, the state allows us to reduce our teachers by, I think, up to 9% and use that extra money to help fund our Maintenance & Operation budget. This next year we will have 41.5 teachers. We are funded 3.1 administrators and have 3. Our teacher payroll is about $2,232,000. Our administrators are funded at $182,000 and we pay out $208,000. Because we have tried to keep from dropping our teacher, administrator, and other staff salaries too far. We pay out a total of about $78,000 more for all our staff than we get reimbursed for. I think the staff has had a series of pay cuts over at least the last three years, because the state keeps cutting the funding. We have tried to cover the cut from last year of about 1.67%, partly by reducing staff and using some of that funding to supplement the rest.
Now I finely come to our General Maintenance & Operation fund. This is an area where we have had major cuts from the state. This is only about 10% of our total budget. This is used for general funding, salaries, benefits, supplies, training, textbooks, classroom equipment, administrative costs, utilities, maintenance, general upkeep, and transportation. We used to be funded about $24,000 per unit. This past year it had dropped to $19,626 per unit. If you heard on the news from Tom Luna that they have funded our schools better for next year, this funding will go back up by only $80 per unit or a grand total of $3,320. Shouldn't we all be grateful, but I digress. The M&O estimate total for next year is about $818,000. This is often referred to as our discretionary funding. But in reality most of this isn't really discretionary.
The state provides us a benefit apportionment that provides the FICA and Persi benefits for our staff which is estimated at about $403,000. We have to pay for the rest of the benefits, like insurance, from the general fund and that amount is about another $460,000.
Another big chunk of the M&O budget is for electrical and other utilities. Also for garbage removal and janitorial services. The budget for these services for next year is estimated at about $360,000. This fund is also used for textbooks, computers, and other things I mentioned earlier. So as you can add this up, the M&O budget isn't nearly as high as it needs to be. As I have said in the past, Senator Bair says they will eventually get this funding back up to the $24,000 it used to be. But if they don't increase it more than $80 a year it will take a long time to get there.
We are also projecting a transportation allowance from the state of $185,000. The state reimburses us 85% of the cost from home to school, and only 50% for shop supplies and other costs. They don't provide any funding for field trips, athletics, or any other activity.
We get a token amount from the state that is supposed to replace some of the property tax funding we used to get through AG taxes. This amount is estimated at about $17,500, and is added into our M&O Budget.
As far as I know this is the total funding and where it goes. This is very long, but I hope for those interested you found this informative and now better understand our budget. There are other things like depreciation and other details I still don't understand, but this should explain most things. Last year we had a deficit budget of $232,000. I don't know the details of how we ended up, and until our annual audit in August we won't know the final numbers. But I can say we did much better than projected. Everyone needs to give our management team a lot of credit in how the budget was managed. We have a history of being conservative as a board and administration and being that way has really helped prepare us for these lean times. I can't forget the help we get from the PTO and all the teachers and patrons that donate their time and money to help our schools. We will still have a negative budget, but not really bad. If I remember right from what I have read, we are one of only a handful of districts that don't have a levy. One comparison to make is with Aberdeen. I think they have close to the same number of students that we have. I think for at least the last two years they have approved a $600,000 levy for each year, and are projecting a contingency fund of only a few hundred dollars. We started the last school year with over $800,000 in our contingency fund. Thanks again for your support. If you have any questions let me know and I will try and answer them. If you have comments or other input, I would welcome that also. I wish I could publish this tonight. Other than some editing I actually finished this at 12:30 a.m. on May 30th. I don't think what I have said would be a problem, but since I told them I would wait I will. Brian
Last night I received the budget notice from the district office. If there are differences in what I was given last week and what was sent to me last night, they aren't much different. I have provided a lot of details to explain our budget, but keep in mind all my numbers may not be exact. I was given an estimate of what we will use out of our contingency fund and about where our budget ended up this year, but I will wait until after our budget meeting next week to provide those numbers, in case the board does something different that might change our budget for next year. This information is something I have wanted to understand and share for a long time. Thanks again. Brian
First of all I am not going to try and publish exact numbers. I don't think that is necessary to explain the budget. As with many budgets, especially my own business budget, no budget ever comes out exactly as planned. There are many variables in how we get our funding. When you depend on most of your funding coming from the state and federal governments, there can be many variables. Things like how many students we have and how high our attendance is can make a lot of difference. So consider the numbers I write as estimates, I will give more exact numbers and more details as I learn them later. Even the amount of students that qualify for free and reduced lunches effects our funding. We are going to get a grant again next year to pay for an afternoon nutrition break in the elementary, which really helps those kids make it through the longer four day schedule. We qualify for this because of the percentage of students that qualify for the free and reduced lunches. This also effects the money we get for aides under the federal funded title 1 program that helps educate disadvantaged students. So it is very important to have patrons fill out the paperwork to see if you qualify for this aide even if you choose not to participate. This fund is about $98,000 and can only be used to help disadvantaged students. These funds used to help pay for summer school. This fund is less than it used to be, and no longer is enough to cover the summer school program, so we were forced to cut it. I hope at some point we will be able to come up with the funding to bring this program back.
Since I started with federal funds I will continue with them. Another fund is called the Title VI-B School-Age fund. This fund goes to the students identified as having special needs. There are about 80 students identified for help under this program. Many of these students have problems reading. Students are tested to see if they qualify for help and a plan called an IEP is written to determine what help is necessary. The school is required by law to provide whatever help these students need even if we don't get enough federal dollars to pay for it. There are some students that require one on one aide that we have to pay for. The money we receive for this program doesn't cover all the costs we have, and can change from year to year depending on what the needs are. The funding for this program is about $167,000. There is another similar program for preschool children ages 3-5. This past year we had 11 students in this program. They have been identified as learning delayed. This funding has been about $17,000.
Another federal fund is called Perkins Vocational Education. This is a program for vocational education, or also called professional technical education. I understand many years ago we used to have certified nurses assistant education which was part of this program. This fund is only $8,000.
Another federal fund is called Title II-A Improving Teacher Quality. This fund helps to maintain small class sizes in grades K-3. It can also be used to better train teachers teaching those grades. The money we get is about $30,000. For us we use this money to help fund a teaching position.
The school food service is partly funded through Federal Funds. The lunch ladies do a very good job managing the lunch program. There has been a lot of changes in nutrition programs with more to come. With the Federal Funds and what is charged for the meals this is a self sustaining program. We used to have to supplement this partly with General Fund dollars, but that hasn't been necessary for at least the last two years. The only cost is the requirement by the state for us to pay the FICA taxes for the lunch employees. The cost of this is $6500.
All these federal funds can only go to their intended purpose, we can't use them in other areas, and in some cases require us to supplement them from our general budget funds.
Now on to the state and local funding. There are two Plant Facility Funds. One for Non-Student Occupied Funding and one for Student Occupied. We are required to put 2% of the value of our buildings and I think other fixed assets into these funds. I'm not quite sure how this is calculated but it amounts to somewhere between $165,000 to $180,000 each year. Part of the funding comes from the ten year Plant Facilities tax levy we passed last year for $95,000 each year. The major expense out of this fund is for buying buses. A bus costs over $80,000. We used to buy one bus a year, but in recent years have bought one every other year. Last year's audit report listed the Non-Student Occupied Fund at $650,000 and the Student Occupied Fund at $290,000. The Student Occupied (SO) Fund is what we used to buy our high school bleachers. They cost around $121,000. Each year the Administrators come up with a wish list of repairs and replacement projects, that are funded with these funds. Other examples of SO funds are desks and tables for class rooms, new carpeting and painting. There are many projects that need done in restrooms and locker rooms. There are also some projects that need done in the school kitchens. We try to maintain a good balance to cover major expenses that might come up like roof repairs or replacement, or what you might call the dreaded elementary boiler failure.
Some examples of Non-Stuendent Occupied expenses are work that is needed around the baseball and football fields. Whatever we decide to do with the area between the high school and seminary building and any work on asphalt, or painting asphalt. The elementary needs work done around the play grounds. The middle school needs work around the berms to prevent water from getting into the school. These items will be prioritized and it will be determined which projects to complete this year. But to restate, we are required to fund it at these levels, and the fund can only be used for these type of projects. The Plant Facilities Levy money makes it a lot easier to fund this account, so the $95,000 doesn't have to come out of the too little general funding we get.
Another state fund is called the Vocational Technical Fund. This fund helps pay for the Professional Technical Education programs, like the Ag programs, clerical, consumer homemaking and child care programs. It also includes technology and informational training, and the equipment to run these programs. We get $34,000 from this state fund. Not near enough to provide all the funding necessary for these programs, but it helps.
We also have some funds that help support the Drivers Education Program. We get $125 per student and charge the students $75. This has been provided three times a year. Years ago we used to have a car provided rent free from a car dealership, but no more. I think this is basically cost neutral, but the car is very old and I don't know what we will do when it's too worn out to use anymore. I understand the cost for private lessons is around $300.
We also have a Property Tax Bond for the middle school. It is for about $250,000 each year, and pays off in June of 2014. As I have stated before I had hoped we could get by on our budget without trying for another levy until our bond pays off. At that point I hope we can propose a levy for about the same amount to better restore our funding, maybe bring back programs we have cut like summer school, and to bring our contingency funding back up to better levels.
The major part of our state funding is for our teachers and administrators. We are funded 1.1 teachers for every unit of students we have. I have explained what consists of a unit in the past. We have 41.5 units that can fund about 45.5 teachers. But because of funding cuts, the state allows us to reduce our teachers by, I think, up to 9% and use that extra money to help fund our Maintenance & Operation budget. This next year we will have 41.5 teachers. We are funded 3.1 administrators and have 3. Our teacher payroll is about $2,232,000. Our administrators are funded at $182,000 and we pay out $208,000. Because we have tried to keep from dropping our teacher, administrator, and other staff salaries too far. We pay out a total of about $78,000 more for all our staff than we get reimbursed for. I think the staff has had a series of pay cuts over at least the last three years, because the state keeps cutting the funding. We have tried to cover the cut from last year of about 1.67%, partly by reducing staff and using some of that funding to supplement the rest.
Now I finely come to our General Maintenance & Operation fund. This is an area where we have had major cuts from the state. This is only about 10% of our total budget. This is used for general funding, salaries, benefits, supplies, training, textbooks, classroom equipment, administrative costs, utilities, maintenance, general upkeep, and transportation. We used to be funded about $24,000 per unit. This past year it had dropped to $19,626 per unit. If you heard on the news from Tom Luna that they have funded our schools better for next year, this funding will go back up by only $80 per unit or a grand total of $3,320. Shouldn't we all be grateful, but I digress. The M&O estimate total for next year is about $818,000. This is often referred to as our discretionary funding. But in reality most of this isn't really discretionary.
The state provides us a benefit apportionment that provides the FICA and Persi benefits for our staff which is estimated at about $403,000. We have to pay for the rest of the benefits, like insurance, from the general fund and that amount is about another $460,000.
Another big chunk of the M&O budget is for electrical and other utilities. Also for garbage removal and janitorial services. The budget for these services for next year is estimated at about $360,000. This fund is also used for textbooks, computers, and other things I mentioned earlier. So as you can add this up, the M&O budget isn't nearly as high as it needs to be. As I have said in the past, Senator Bair says they will eventually get this funding back up to the $24,000 it used to be. But if they don't increase it more than $80 a year it will take a long time to get there.
We are also projecting a transportation allowance from the state of $185,000. The state reimburses us 85% of the cost from home to school, and only 50% for shop supplies and other costs. They don't provide any funding for field trips, athletics, or any other activity.
We get a token amount from the state that is supposed to replace some of the property tax funding we used to get through AG taxes. This amount is estimated at about $17,500, and is added into our M&O Budget.
As far as I know this is the total funding and where it goes. This is very long, but I hope for those interested you found this informative and now better understand our budget. There are other things like depreciation and other details I still don't understand, but this should explain most things. Last year we had a deficit budget of $232,000. I don't know the details of how we ended up, and until our annual audit in August we won't know the final numbers. But I can say we did much better than projected. Everyone needs to give our management team a lot of credit in how the budget was managed. We have a history of being conservative as a board and administration and being that way has really helped prepare us for these lean times. I can't forget the help we get from the PTO and all the teachers and patrons that donate their time and money to help our schools. We will still have a negative budget, but not really bad. If I remember right from what I have read, we are one of only a handful of districts that don't have a levy. One comparison to make is with Aberdeen. I think they have close to the same number of students that we have. I think for at least the last two years they have approved a $600,000 levy for each year, and are projecting a contingency fund of only a few hundred dollars. We started the last school year with over $800,000 in our contingency fund. Thanks again for your support. If you have any questions let me know and I will try and answer them. If you have comments or other input, I would welcome that also. I wish I could publish this tonight. Other than some editing I actually finished this at 12:30 a.m. on May 30th. I don't think what I have said would be a problem, but since I told them I would wait I will. Brian
Last night I received the budget notice from the district office. If there are differences in what I was given last week and what was sent to me last night, they aren't much different. I have provided a lot of details to explain our budget, but keep in mind all my numbers may not be exact. I was given an estimate of what we will use out of our contingency fund and about where our budget ended up this year, but I will wait until after our budget meeting next week to provide those numbers, in case the board does something different that might change our budget for next year. This information is something I have wanted to understand and share for a long time. Thanks again. Brian
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