[Vision2020] MSD financial condition

[Mike Curley]

Mr. Courtney:

Just to correct a couple of facts before you share your 
thoughts about the MSD budget:

1.  The 2001 $1.1 M supplemental levy is also "indefinite" as 
were the earlier levies.

2.  Unless you have seen something that I haven't, there 
has been no request for an increase to the levy (at least 
not yet).

3.  Last year, teachers, administrators and all other staff 
members did indeed have a pay increase--even in the 
face of the district having to ask for a levy increase that 
did NOT include any announced "salary component;"  and 
even in the face of having to reduce staff and consolidate 
West Park and Russell elementary schools into a single K-
6 program.

4.  You asked the question:  "... how you can have a 
decrease in 2.7%enrollment per year for 7 years (12.9% 
since 1996) and need to have a bloating budget?"  Possible 
answers to investigate:

	a.  bad management:  failure to suck it up and do 
what needs to be done to reduce staff where necessary 
and deal with the wrath of the union, and parents, that is 
bound to follow.

	b.  cost of services increase.  The 15% of the budget 
that gets spent on curriculum (including books, 
worksheets, and other instructional materials), technology 
(computers, software, servers, security equipment), and 
buildings (vehicles to plow the snow, desk replacement, 
roof repairs, etc) suffers from cost of living increases over 
7 years.  If a vehicle wears out today it will cost more to 
replace it with a similar vehicle than it would have 7 years 
ago.

	c.  salary increases:  note that salaries and benefits 
account for about 85% of the MSD budget.  On a $17M 
budget, that's $14,620,000.  That means of course that 
every 1% of salary and benefit increase costs the district 
$146,200.  Check the salary and benefit increases per year 
over the 7 years you cited, apply 85% to each year's full 
budget, and add the annual results to figure out 
approximately how much increase is attributable to salary 
and benefit increases over the period.  


And, perhaps not "fact," it might nevertheless be useful to 
acknowledge some other considerations.  Related to point 
c. above:  of course, if the teacher/administrator/staff pool 
had declined over the period, the salaries-to-total-budget 
ratio would have been smaller.  In fairness, one must note 
that since all the students are not in the same building and 
not in the same grade, it is not possible to automatically 
reduce staff proportionally with student population 
decreases.  For example:  let's say there are 125 classes in 
session at any given time in MSD.  If student population 
declines in a perfectly random way (and I'm not 
suggesting it does), we lose one student per classroom.  
What teacher do we "cut" next year, and from which 
building.  I am not suggesting that everything was done 
over the last 7 years (or any time period for that matter) 
that could have been to appropriately reduce staff.  But it 
should be clear from the illustration that the problem is 
not as simple as it might seem.  What may also be clear is 
that to cut staff and consolidate classes means larger 
class sizes and more children being moved from their 
attendance area elementary buildings each year, and 
more teachers being reassigned to new buildings.  
Teachers and parents don't like any of those results, they 
pound on the school board not to do that, and so the 
budget has to be larger to accommodate those desires.  
So far a majority of the voting community has supported 
that philosophy--or perhaps they created it.  The school 
board is left in the position of going to voters and saying in 
effect:  "if you want things to continue to run as they have 
in the past, we need more money."  One can reasonably 
argue that the board would have abdicated their 
responsibilities had they cut staff in the face of voters 
continued funding of exisiting staff size.  It is not yet clear 
either: 1.  whether increased  funding will be necessary to 
maintain current operations; and, 2.  whether voters will 
continue to increase the levy to meet those needs.


Mike Curley