Charter Schools Can Help Open Doors

Charter schools are a great way of expanding options for our children. While I wish there were more options available for special needs children, at least charter schools can give those children more options to look into other than the traditional public schools that may not service their needs.
However, currently, only Kansas City and St. Louis are allowed to have charter schools.

School Districts Need to Be Accountable

There is no question that parents, tax payers, administrators, and students know that school districts need to be accountable. Unfortunately, the level this should be accomplished is not agreed upon. Teacher unions, school boards, administrators, and especially tax payers all may have different views on the subject.
The Columbia School District, while it is casually thought of as being a great district, faces serious problems that should not be over looked. While this is not special needs specific, it is crucial to understand when a district is facing problems, all children are impacting especially special needs children.
This article was taken from the Columbia Tribune, discussing the budget issues in the CPS district.

Schools must fix budget, oversight issues

By BOB ROPER

Published Sunday, January 4, 2009

Credibility is the coin of the realm for any entity, public or private. Columbia Public Schools is certainly no exception, and the credibility of the district is in question. When credibility is not an issue, as has been the case with the district in the past, we residents do not have many concerns and raise few questions. We happily vote for bond and tax issues because of our confidence in the way the enterprise is being run.

Unfortunately, that is simply not the case at present. There is no need to go over the list of the problems in the recent past. However, the recent audit for the year that ended June 30 delivered another body blow to the district. Having reviewed the audit, let me pass on some statistics to everyone.

In 1999, there were 15,744 students enrolled in the district. By 2008, the number was 16,619, an increase of 5.5 percent. In that same period, per-student expenditures went from $5,950 to $10,150, an increase of 70.6 percent. Yes, district administrators can point to a lot of special reasons why expenditures went up so much faster than enrollment - keeping salaries competitive, special education programs, inflation and other increasing fixed costs.

Some other miscellaneous statistics of note:

● Students per administrator are 216-to-1, yet the Missouri average is 189-to-1.

● In 2008, the average student cost at the district was $10,109 per year, one of the highest in the peer group of the CPS. In 2002, it was $7,581.

● Full-time equivalent employees declined modestly from 2002 through 2005 but jumped from 2,143.15 in 2005 to 2,431.66 in 2008. This is an increase of 13.5 percent.

● Support services - non-teaching employees - went from 633.46 to 720.91, an increase of 13.8 percent.

● Meanwhile, collected revenues went from almost $61 million in 2002 to almost $83 million in 2007, an increase of almost one-third; 2008 numbers are not yet in.

All of these numbers tell me that the district has some explaining to do. There might be some very good answers to the obvious questions raised by these numbers, but so far we have heard little.

Another troubling aspect of the recent audit was the budgeting process with respect to personnel. For some reason, regular compensation, overtime pay and extra-duty stipends are all included in the same account. This has resulted in myriad problems. It results in an overstated budget inasmuch as retiring employees are replaced by less expensive employees. This allows the administration to include overtime costs and extra duty stipends in varying amounts and still "meet budget." Not only that, since all of this occurs within the context of one large account, it almost ensures that board oversight is almost nil. It even allowed the district to hire additional staff and pay them out of that account, albeit never having been budgeted in the first place.

The extra work stipends are particularly troubling since they have grown from $604,600 in 2003 to $1.4 million in 2008. Plus, these stipends went from being awarded to 1,966 employees to 3,494 employees. One has to wonder: Is this just a means of giving more money to employees for doing, in part at least, what they would normally be doing anyway?

After a review of these budgeting frailties, the auditors made the following statement: "We recommend the district change the process of budgetary approval for all functions to include separate accounts for other elements of payroll, such as extra duty pay and overtime." The auditors went on to recommend that the district’s budget officer be more intimately involved in the planning of all budgeted payroll costs, particularly the newly split-out extra duty pay and overtime.

So what should we citizens and taxpayers make of all this? Well, one thing is obvious: For the near future, the district will be looked at with a good deal of skepticism by the voting public in our community. This will be a good thing, and it does not need to be hostile.

It should be obvious also that the board of education needs to develop a renewed commitment to its collective job. As board member Ines Segert said, "It was lack of board oversight." I have served on many community boards over the years and observed public boards such as the school board and the city council. I know that their job is easy to say but harder to do. Board members should never micromanage or get into the business of trying to run things that the hired executive or administrator is supposed to do. On the other hand, clearly there is an oversight function and a right of inquiry, and I would hope that our board members develop a renewed passion for that part of the job. Hopefully with two board seats up for election in April, we will be blessed with candidates who will do just that.

Finally, I think interim Superintendent Jim Ritter is in a tough spot. While the search goes on for a permanent replacement for the position Phyllis Chase vacated, Ritter is doing the best he can, even when absorbing a body blow like the recent audit. He has outlined four possible scenarios with respect to choices for the upcoming budget year that starts on July 1. Two scenarios involve tax increases voted on by the public in April, and two involve belt-tightening. The voters of the district have always been very generous in the past, but in these troubled economic times, they surely want to be convinced that their dollars are being spent wisely. My guess is that it will be hard to get either of those tax hikes passed in the current environment, but we shall see. Let us wish everyone in the district well as they work hard to get where they need to be.

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Tribune columnist Bob Roper is a local banking and investment executive with a longstanding interest in public issues.