The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has issued preliminary school funding numbers. A summary chart showing foundation enrollment, foundation budget, Chapter 70 aid, and required local contributions for each school district including our own can be found here.
District DARTMOUTH
Enrollment 3,964
FY12 Foundation Budget $34,643,309
FY12 Required local contribution $27,284,947
FY12 Chapter 70 aid $8,983,576
Net School Spending 36,268,523
The complete calculation spreadsheet can be downloaded as an Microsoft Excel spreadsheet from this link
Last fiscal year these figures were ...
FY11 required local contribution $26,783,708
FY11 Chapter 70 aid $8,935,606
FY11 Net School Spending $35,719,314
The end result is about a $500K increase in school spending.
Not a large increase at all, which is good and bad. Good because the town won't have a large increase to fund. Bad because the school department won't get much to work with.
What do you think?
Monday, February 7, 2011
Preliminary school funding numbers
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12 comments:
Bill
The U.A.W. caused the auto makers to go under. These guys are not retired on 401K. Obama threw them a life line. Too big to fail. Time for Obama to throw a life line to cities and towns, not the states. State laws mandating town expenditures for schools, have caused the town to go broke. Too much social spending has caused the state to go broke. The biggest social program is public education. Great idea when it first started but the unions have made too many demands and the elected state fools are intimidated by the teacher unions. I would say public education has more employee's than any other state, town, government funded social program. Do away with the current public school educational funding and provide a certain amount of money (vouchers) to parents with school age children and encourage charter schools.
There is such a host of problems with the school system here and everywhere else. Of course, the unions and their memberships deserve most of the blame. Escalating compensation and pension plans costs, outdated seniority regulations, and resistance to cost savings, are but a few of the issues. I would love to see the entire system privatized. Restore costs to a fair days pay for a fair days work.
You did a great job chairing your committee at Monday night meeting, between select board, school board, and fincom. During your 10 months as the select board chairman you have not always been on your game. Last night you took full control and performed wonderful. You have a firm understand of town department budgets, and I agree that an override of 200,000 thousand dollars is necessary. I'm still not certain that the youth advocate position is necessary, as it relates to duplication of services. The town schools have certified counselors and they provide for children in crises. The Dartmouth youth advocate is a unknown service. Within the Dartmouth area are social youth services, such as the child in crises department of social service.
Someone mention the use of enterprise money to be used towards employee benefits. Don't believe this is the intent of the enterprise systems. I like your mentioning the additional wind turbines for saving town money. Where would we put them?? Combining all town departments to provide maintenance services is a great one, hope the school department leads the way on this one. Many Cordeiro was right when he mentioned the schools hire maintenance workers who are licensed, and not political. I don't think he mentioned political, but he did mention licensed. LOL
The new financial director is a good example of quality. Soft spoken, bright, and understands finances, another great appointment. Where did you find this guy, or more important, don't let him get away.
You may need to stick a gag cloth into the mouth of Mike Watson. The fincom, schools, and selectmen agree to put 10% of total town budget money into the reserve account, they all settle on 7.5% and mike Watson wants to spend 2.5% on town road repairs. I don't know what Watson is smoking, but 1.75 million dollars to repair town roads sounds numb. Put the 6.5 million into the reserve fund.
When will the selectmen be meeting with the town department heads to discuss their budgets? Will the meetings be on DCTV??
To be clear, I am not advocating for an override at this time. I was pointing out the underlying reality of the town budget which is not sustainable over time. There are avenues that can be pursued now which will delay the need for an override for several years. I spoke about several of those last night. For the past few years, we have been wringing every conceivable dollar out of operating budgets. The result has been balanced budgets, however that squeeze cannot go on forever. We are near the point where we cannot further reduce town operating budgets without risking deficits at the end of each year which would need to be supplemented from reserves. As evidence of this trend, I point to the reduction on available free cash over the past few years. Free cash has fallen from over $4 million to just over $1 million. A million dollars sounds like a lot but consider that is about 2% of the town's operating budget. Put another way, 98% of all appropriations are being spent. That's a thin margin. There are also several disturbing trends, one being the reliance by the school department on one time revenues to update their teaching materials. What happens when that money is not available?
But in the end, I believe that in order to maintain services and a balanced budget, an occasional resort to a modest override will be needed.
Of course, the town may decide to reduce services or increase fees rather than pay more tax. That remains to be seen.
I would like to clarify for anon 7:35am. I suggested that we start costing out the retirement benefits used by enterprise funds and having them contribute that amount to the Post-Employment Benefit Trust Fund. In no way did I mean to use the enterprise revenues to pay for any employee benefits other than those that are a direct expense of the respective enterprises. Rates for Enterprises(water, sewer, waterways etc) should ONLY reflect the expenses of the enterprises. In fact, it is illegal to pay general government expenses with enterprise revenues. Conversely, ALL enterprise expenses should be reflected in the rates.
To reiterate my point from last night's Select Board Meeting, we need to see if there is the political will to consolidate functions. The consolidation arrangements can be worked out. I gave several examples of a town department doing an exemplary job in one aspect or another of their mission and Mr. Cordeiro chimed in with several others. My point is that if a department has figured out how to do something well, why not apply that across other departments. Whether that something is building maintenance, vehicle maintenance, accounting, payroll, HR or whatever. If we have a department that does it well, let them do more of it and charge the other departments for the service.
But the first order of business has got to be to assess whether there exists among the policy makers, the commitment to carry this through. If not, we are spinning our wheels. I think there is on the Select Board. I am not so sure about the School Committee.
The U.A.W. caused the auto makers to go under??
Really explain how FORD managed to stay in business and not take a loan. Further please explain how Japanese NON UNION automakers in America can pay their employees more than UAW workers and not need a bailout.
The UAW didn't create any problem, stop believing people make 36 dollars an hour to put bolts on tires. IT ISN'T TRUE!
Buying time is the goal here, if I am not mistaken. Reducing expenses without reducing services is the benchmark, is it not? Ultimately, we will not be able to afford the services we have, barring massive overrides. Obviously, the will to push overrides does not come from the average taxpayer. The challenge the SB has is to somehow find ways to absorb the escalating expenses that will far outstrip Prop 2 1/2 revenue increase limitations. I applaud the initiative. I remain as concerned about the will that exists beyond the SB. In the end, each town department is a special interest group. Groups that have historically gotten their ways.
Maybe I'm just stupid, but when two or three committee's join together to discuss town monetary system I hear people make references to CIP, STAB, the watching public has no idea what language your using. Example: What does CIP represent. When using such titled committee's please explain what they are. Thanks
Ford motor company became the envy of other auto manufactures, the money (borrowers) needed to be bailed out. The Japaneses manufactures offer employee's revenue sharing. No union needed. Quality workmanship is equal to more money as it relates to sales. Union auto manufactures have strong UAW workers who get more money for less work and this will encourage poor auto quality. Ford is the leading auto manufacture, with a UAW work force. But they selected a bonus plus union wage if Ford motor company improved quality machines. Auto, truck, economy vehicles, bigger and small auto's. Greater section and a solid product. While driving the US roads ways, you see more fords that are environmentally friendly, than any other vehicle, except Toyota.
Gm and Chrysler should have gone under. WE have people in town, small businesses that are closing shop. They are too little to worry about, but the US bails out big companies. GM is building the “Omamabile” it promises to be environmentally friendly, every person shall own one, and no money needed to buy it. A redistribution of money will make all this possible....yes we can.
Bill is correct in the need to build the political will to accomplish consolidations. The ultimate savings will come from reducing payroll while at the same time maintaining services.
The trick is to gather the financial facts about savings that will support consolidation before you start talking about specifics. This will be a hot button issue that will drag the old guard out again to oppose it.
You will need a neutral third party to conduct a thorough examination of the entire town (to include schools) whose only goal will be to come back with proposed measures that will increase efficiency and lower the cost of government.
We have to determine where are duty lies. Is it to ensure that all our employees remain fully employed or is it to deliver services to the tax payer in the most cost effective manner possible?
Once you determine to whom this duty lies then you can proceed but town government cannot serve two masters.
The CIP that was discussed the other night is the Capital Improvement Plan. There is a CIP committee that studies requests for Capital from the various town factions, then prioritizes them and makes recommendations on what to support. Part of the discussion was also about just what is a Capital purchase and what qualifies to be in that category. This was defined in the Financial Policies document that Greg Barnes has been putting together, and asked for document acceptance from the Select Board, Fincom, and the School Comm.
This is not to be confused with the other CIP, which is Commercial, Industrial, and Personal Property, which are tax classifications and usually pops up when tax rates are being discussed. Residential is the other class but CIP are usually grouped together.
Stab is the the Stabilization Fund which is the town's long-term savings account. This fund is primarily for "rainy day" situations. Town Meeting approves transfers from the Stab Fund.
The other major fund in town is the Reserve Fund, which is more like a checking account to fund things that pop up during the year, such as DPW salt and sand overages, or unforeseen dept. overtime expenses. The Fincom administers this fund and hears requests for transfers from it.
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