Press Release
Rochester School Department Budget
The Rochester School Board had its first look at the School budget on January 26th at a Special Board meeting. Mrs. Linda Casey, Business Administrator, and Mr. Michael Hopkins, Superintendent, presented the information about the budget proposal to the Board. The Board will begin reviewing portions of the budget in sub-committees and set priorities based on the recommendations of the management team. The budget proposal is available online at: http://www.rochesterschools.com/SAU/board/budget2010.html .
This is the first budget presented under the tax cap requirements. The budget as presented is $54,604,160, an increase of expenditures of 6.5%. This budget proposal will allow the current programs to remain in place, and with the proposed State Education aide increase of 2.9 million dollars, remain under the tax cap requirements.
The tax cap calculations are based on local tax dollars of $21,691, 706 in FY 2009. The CPI average has increased 3.8% and the tax cap would allow the FY 2010 local tax calculation to be $22,515,991. The proposed budget, with State Revenue does not require all of the local tax increase to fund the proposed budget.
Mr. Hopkins and Mrs. Casey presented several options, based on the uncertainty of the State increase in adequacy funds. Option #1 is a budget increase of $824,285. This is based on additional revenue from the State. The District will need to plan for this possible scenario, since the Board may not know about the State Revenue until June of 2009.
Option #2 is based on the possibility of State aide and a local tax increase under the cap. This option would allow an increase in the budget expenditures, equal to the 3.8% CPI increase, using State adequacy aide to keep the local tax under the cap.
Option #3 is based on enough additional State aide to fund the expenditure increase equal to the 3.8% CPI, but without using any additional local tax dollars.
Option #4 is $54,168,435 is based on the increase in the State Aide of $2,900,000 without any increase in local tax dollars.
The Board will consider adjustments to budget proposal over the next two months, with a budget presented to the City Manager and the Council by March 25, 2009.
The budget as proposed has the following areas of significant change: Wages increased $1,571,787 or 3.1%, Health Insurance $455,407, or .9%, Retirement, $378,910 or .7%, General Supplies/books, $203,755 or .4%, Cash CIP program, $202,500 or .4%, Other Benefit increases, $150,521 or .3%, plus some other small increases.
I was disappointed that this budget included a 2.8% pay increase for non-union workers…in a time where 10’s of thousands of job are being lost each week, this is insulting!…public employees have lived in a bubble long enough…it’s time to share the burden with the taxpayers of Rochester…significant government operation reform needs to happen…business function consolidation, outsourcing and measures to significantly redice the $2.6 million dollar labor cost increase for 2010 have to be implemented by our School Board & City Council…
When we prepare a budget we provide the Board with a budget that includes how we have been operating this year. It is important for the Board to understand what is included in the budget to start. As we work through the process, some items will be removed from the proposed budget and some added. We are prepared to meet the tax cap requirements, and the Board and administration will need to set priorities on spending.
We will have a proposal to eliminate $2.2 million from the proposed budget to meet the tax cap requirements.
At last nights School Board Personal Committee meeting 2 options were presented that offered a varying degree of staff reductions…mostly teachers and not one administrator (although a few administrators will need to teach classes ½ of their time)…
This proposed budget represents the same old school of thought…so far, there’s no creativity or innovation going on…just make it hurt and the people will give over more of their hard earned money…
While the school department has made very good progress in energy conservation, there is certainly more that can be done with labor costs and cooperation with the City (only if the political will exists between the Council sand the School Board)…The RCTA presented creative suggestions to the School Board and City Council, but it was apparent last night that Peggy Parker and Audrey Stevens (both School board members) either never read the document or simply forgot about it…instead of trying to engage in a meaningful dialogue, they wanted to attack the RCTA members present for being harsh and non-specific in our language…we were neither harsh nor non specific…
The reality is simply…find inefficiencies and cut them out…work with the City to consolidate functions, outsource everything that makes sense and anything that doesn’t directly support sustaining/improving education is suspended or eliminated…these can be both short term and long term solutions…everything is on the table to include freezing wages & reducing wage increases to avoid making kids suffer…no one has to take a pay cut or lose a job if the unions were willing to suspend their pay increases…something that a lot of people in the private sector would do in a NY minute if it meant they would not lose there jobs…but it seems, for now, that the idea of sharing the burden and really protecting the interests of the children is not there…that can change though!
If the Teachers union, paraprofessional union, food service union and janitorial union alone agreed to not take their wage and benefit increases that would amount to approximately $1.9 million…under option #1 presented last night the School Board would have to come up with $2.2 million in decreases to their increase…option #2 is $1.4 million…option #1 is without an additional $2.9 million from the state to fund and “adequate” education…option #2 is without the additional money from the state…Superintendent Hopkins received word that Gov. Lynch will include the $117 million to fund an “adequate” education and that the NH legislature is likely to pass the extract funds…
The long and the short of this is, that the taxpayer should not continue to bear the entire burden in these most difficult times…demanding our elected leaders to approach local governance with innovation and cooperation is reasonable and doable…
Anyone who knows me knows that I am not opposed to differing viewpoints. I appreciate the input that various people have recently contributed at our committee and board meetings. Many of them have inspired second looks and deeper looks into a number of areas, especially related to the budget. I do take exception, however, to assumptions and inflammatory statements being made while we are trying to succeed in working together to resolve dealing with increasing costs all around us, not just in the field of education. Any comments I made to Mr. Leonard at the Personnel committee meeting were to him and him alone. They were in response to specific negative comments that he made, in my opinion, without basis. I will continue to welcome any contributions that Mr. Leonard would like to make in working together with the school board. But I reserve the right to disagree or ask for further explanation when I believe it is warranted.
I’d like to address some areas that Mr. Leonard brought up at the Personnel Committee meeting. Many times he said that the district and the city should consider consolidating resources where possible to reduce costs. This is very sound advice. But when the city and the school district broached the idea of combining the talents of our IT departments, Mr. Leonard was our most vocal critic.
He also has said that the school administration should think outside the box in finding ways to offer a quality education to our kids without increasing costs. Mr. Shea proposed the idea of investigating the possibility of adding another high school, funded primarily with grants. Mr. Leonard again was the most vocal opponent to this idea. He warned that it may be a ‘fad’ and that it showed signs of some kind of connection with William Ayers and ACORN.
You express a desire to work with us in resolving our issues, so please, Fred, go the extra mile. Negativity, tension and animosity are not the roads to success in this case. We are all trying to do what is best for the community. We are all spending a great deal of our own personal time to do it. So why all the hostility?
I guess years of high spending increases and lack of performance has soured me on the ability of the current school board to do what is right…simply throwing money at the problem has not worked…
Our HS continues to have the 4th largest dropout rate in the state (nearly 22% for at least the last 10 years)…while some progress has been made with NECAP and NCLB, our schools still underachieve in math and reading in particular…
READ MY WORDS CAREFULLY…I acknowledge some academic progress has been made…I’ve also acknowledged on several public occasions that my family has had a mostly positive experience with Rochester schools…I’ve also publicly acknowledged that the School Department has done an excellent job with energy conservation and transparency…witnessed the latest passing of the posting of the School Department’s check register online…an idea that came from the public I might add…
With regard to Mr. Shea and his efforts to look at revolutionizing HS education, I have expressed optimism with concerns…everyone that was at the recent forum can attest to that…a lot of the “buzz” words used by Mr. Shea have direct links to UNESCO and their global view on education which organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation support…a potential source of funds Mr. Shea has mentioned…
It will be a cold day in hell before I’m told what to be concerned about, especially when I’ve done some research in this area…I’ll also continue to sound alarms when I believe it is right…oh, you might want to check with Mr. Shea, he admits that there is not a lot of research done on the small school concept too…so while it was said that “it may be a fad”, it really might just be that, and with no preconceived notions going into his 16 month discovery, we should expect that if small schools are found not to be the best way for Rochester to go, then he will tell us that…
Open concept cost Rochester taxpayers millions of dollars and it was an abject failure – Community Center is no longer the HS and the E Rochester School has make shift walls…block scheduling and team teaching was suppose to improve test scores and it has not…being over critical and over cautious is more than warranted when the resources we will have to bring needed improvements to our school system will become increasing scarce…an unfortunate reality when 70% (9755 people) of the voters in last November’s election determined that our local government was spending too much money…and considering spending was going up at an average 8.8% year while household incomes in Rochester were only going up 2.5% a year, I understand why people felt that way…of course the economy and a reduction in overall revenue make it extremely difficult too…this is why we, as taxpayers, expect our elected politicians to find answers and not excuses…
What Mrs. Parker has issue with is simply a matter of ideological difference…I’m not concerned with what she and the other liberal thinkers on the School Board think about me…I have 2 children in the Rochester School system and I’ll do what I believe is in their best interest – I don’t need their permission to care for my kids!…if it means upsetting the delicacies of politicians and school administrators, then that type of collateral damage I can live with…no one will remember who’s feelings were hurt when we fail to provide the best education for our children…
I believe I live in a country where less intrusive government leads to more personal freedoms…that means I decide what I choose to fight and how I fight it…I don’t want an educational system, for instance, that only shows an “Inconvenient Truth” from a hypocrite like Al Gore as the absolute on global warming…I’d also prefer to know that the HS I send my kids to requires them to be in class in order to pass…not to mention that when we do send our kids to school it’s a bit of a comfort to know where they are…It would also be nice to know that our HS students assistant principles and guidance councilors actually conference about the kids they work with…they each know a little something about the kids, but they fail to share this information, which to me was a bit of a surprise…I’d also like to understand what the nearly $1 million dollars for curriculum coordination gets me when I click on the curriculum link on the Rochester School Districts website and it sends me the State of New Hampshire’s Education Department curriculum…a curriculum that provides a rationale that closely mirrors that of UNESCO who’s goal it is to take away local control of education all over the world…I don’t make this stuff up…I suggested that people become informed and make their own mind up…I even provided several links to get started with…
Mrs. Parker seems to only want to personally attack me because she doesn’t like the harsh words I use?…ask me and I’ll tell it is because I asked Pam Hubbard (in particular) and Bill Brennan to resign from the school board because as state reps they supported making it easier for our kids to do drugs…an idea I think only works against parents who are trying to raise their children in an increasingly difficult world…
I challenge Mrs. Parker to a debate about school spending, collective bargaining choices, new ideas that would lead to greater efficiencies across city and school department, leadership or basic liberal versus conservative educational choices – discipline, accountability (parental as well as student), etc…or maybe we can discuss how if we use nice words and ignore the problems no one will know they are there and we can all just blissfully go through life believing most of the misfits running our city and schools have all the answers…
I’ll leave time and place to you Mrs. Parker…
I nearly forgor this…Mrs. Parker accuses me of being a vocal opponent to the scool department and the city combining IT departments…ask her what she did when the issue came up at a regular school board meeting and no one motioned for the issue to come off the table…no one!…You, Mrs. Parker are the elected official here…if you believed in this issue so badly, why did you do nothing?…for me it was a matter of increasing an individuals pay…I felt the consolidation of the departmens was a good idea, but I objected to the the IT manager getting an additional $10,ooo a year…
Offering the Best Price for Learning Supplies: Free
http://www.exclrecycles.org/
This is only available in Boston, but it looks like something that would be worth trying to get going in Rochester?…I’d be willing to get involved in something like this..anyone else?…
Does Public Higher Ed Funding Drive Economic Growth?
“Everyone knows that people who graduate from college earn more than those who don’t. It’s also widely understood that technology drives economic growth, and university research drives technology. Finally, it seems clear that in a rapidly evolving world workers will need to transform their skills, and higher education provides the means to do so. In light of all this, shouldn’t we provide public funding for higher education to keep college cheap and innovation going, especially during a recession? Not necessarily.”
http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=5646
Many States provide greater financial support for in State students. Those States then force private colleges to keep their rates lower to compete for better students. Also, States that support community colleges, provide a very cost effective education for the first two years. I had a friend that saved the equivalent of two years of college by attending community college. He said it allowed him to be less in debt after law school.