RESERVES AND THE BUDGET

A completely new team is now in place to develop next year's school budget; this time from scratch and more transparently, so we are told.

As we learned from the MTA's negotiations with the transit union, changes to positions can be made up to the last moment by either party under the Taylor Law, not at all as two new members of the Board were given to understand during negotiations led by Mr. Maimone a year or so ago. Unfortunately the three newer members of the Board now have to join in absorbing the costs of the new contract. The cost of this contract has not yet been exposed to the public, but must be in order to establish the budget. Hopefully, the incremental costs will be identified soon for each of the contract years. This would help in developing a long-range budget plan as well.

In mid December the Board's new outside auditors gave their report for the year ending June 30, 2005 (school year 2004-05), the year of the Contingency Budget. You will remember the weeping and gnashing of teeth as we began that year. No money – lack of supplies -- programs would be cut -- the children would be harmed. Under Mrs. Donno's leadership, the Board then asked for $66.4 million. When the budget failed to pass twice, a Contingency budget of $65.1 million was imposed. The final budget of $66.0 million was UNDER EXPENDED by $2.6 million (3.94%). We could complain that the Donno-Bozzomo team padded the budget requests. More importantly, we can thank the Maimone-Gavin team for beginning to control expenses. The auditors also found errors in the June 30, 2004 financial statement amounting to a CREDIT of $1.3 million.

Thank goodness for a new set of auditors. Their report shows that the general fund balance grew by $3,672,225 to a new total of $4,885,019 in the unreserved-undesignated category. The total reserve fund balance is now $12,328,735, or 18.1% of this year's budget. I am told many districts stay between 5 and 10%. Income from this money (about $300,000 at 2.5%) is not clearly identified in the budget. Some one must have known it was there. The questions now are; what is an appropriate level for these reserve funds; and, how should the excess funds be applied?

This undesignated fund will continue to grow if the school authorities are diligent in controlling costs. Can the new teachers' contract could be accommodated without new funding; and if not, how much is needed? The school authorities should continue to economize where programs will not be affected. Expansion ideas should be carefully considered, whether it is new classrooms or additional sports programs such as a proposed middle school rowing team. Other areas that do not clearly contribute to learning should be reviewed. For example, in the Information Technology area, the plan is to change out hardware and to modify software on a five-year rotating basis. Simply by shifting to a six-year cycle, a 16% savings in expenses could be obtained. As all who use computers know, older hardware runs programs quite well. Adding new software and/or and software upgrades mostly increases complexity without adding value to the people using the system. “Cutting edge technology” is not a valuable product for teaching basic skills and supporting imparting knowledge. The IT mythology should be concretely defended when opting for a five-year cycle.

NO INCENTIVE TO IMPROVE

If, arguably, we accept our ego's judgment that Manhasset Schools are superior to most others on Long Island , we still have no evidence that this “superiority factor” has increased or decreased over the years. Therefore, we must accept the idea that identified national educational trends apply to the Manhasset School District . Over the past 30 years, graduation rates and 4 th , 8 th , and 12 th grade achievement scores have trivially increased or decreased but schools “have become astonishingly less productive.” So reports a new book, Education Myths by Jay P. Greene, that thoroughly dissects eighteen issues preventing us from improving our schools.

Clearly, the Manhasset School District is adequately funded. The school system performs well and has done so for many years. The District uses more money per student than do most of the Long Island school districts and yet its output – student scholastic achievement – is only on a par with some of the better districts. Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that over the past 30 years (1971-2000) the national experience has been insignificant improvements in reading, math, and science scores while inflation-adjusted spending doubled.

If student achievement does not improve, why pour more money into an adequately funded program? The School Board recently approved, retroactively, a new agreement with the Teacher's union that increases their compensation by an additional 3.25 to 3.75% per year over the existing schedules that already assures them of a nominal 3% per year increase. All this without any incentives for teachers to increase their productivity, and/or to improve their teaching practices, or reducing restrictions on the District's ability to weed out poor producers.

As all know, incentives cause behavioral changes. In the work place, managers and workers alike are motivated to excel by positive incentives such as more pay for successful work and negative incentives such as dismissal for failure to perform. Without incentives, most people tend to drift. You know that; you've seen it in the workplace. Teachers are no different. Unfortunately, the contract the teachers' unions have under the State Taylor law runs counter to human nature. There is no such thing as merit pay or the risk of dismissal for a poor job. The contract in place guarantees generous pay increases over time. After a few years on the job, teachers have tenure for the next 35 years. Except for those first few years, a teacher has no incentive ever to improve productivity or performance. Humans react to incentives. Teachers are human. Good teachers cannot be recognized. Drifters cannot be asked to leave.

Hidden within this year's budget is sufficient funding to provide this year for the anticipated new teachers' union contract. The Board should make every effort to improve productivity to compensate for their own generosity. Next year's budget should demonstrate these improvements by showing no increase in expenditures at all. Student scholastic achievement will not be harmed. At about $23,000 per student, funding is adequate. Management needs to become effective.

NEGLECT

If you own a building, you know that there are three important things to do with it. Priority One is to keep the weather out. Priority Two is to keep all parts of it functioning. Priority Three is to use it well.

We have forgotten Priorities One and Two while using all three Manhasset Schools very well. As required by the State, the District Architect surveyed the three buildings and made a detailed report to the Board. We have problems and big costs facing us because of our neglect of the buildings over the years past. It didn't happen over night. We must all share the blame and absorb the costs for not maintaining the buildings properly.

$16,200,000 is estimated as needed to correct non-deferrable issues in about two years and another $2.9 million for the rest in three more years. Does that get your attention? The numbers are preliminary, but the conditions are clearly identified.

It is instructive to examine how this occurred only if we learn how to avoid the same problem again in a few more years. You know the bottom line from the ad, “Pay me now or pay me later.” The district maintenance budget has been far too small for many years. Maintenance is not a subject that grabs you; as can more lab equipment, or computers, or music, or art, or athletics, or science. It is not visible so it can easily be deferred. The one Plant Manager is easily out-shouted by many others who can more easily justify their desires. He doesn't get the respect that the PhDs demand. Yet we have to keep the roof from leaking and the toilets from clogging. Is there a District Engineer? A preventive maintenance program is difficult to establish and hard to maintain in the face of annual budgetary crunches. But in the long run, a preventive maintenance program is far cheaper than a breakdown.

Now we may need $8 million in each of the next two years to fix what we failed to maintain because we budgeted essentially only for routine work. The work listed by the Architect in his supplemental report to the Board has not been reviewed to determine what is a Capital Improvement and what is a repair. Capital Improvements can be made through bonds. It is not good practice to defer repairs and maintenance until they must be corrected through bond funding.

Annually since July 2001, an average of less than $360,000 has been spent or budgeted for building and services maintenance. The trend is flat. Clearly that is not enough. What was spent annually in the prior 10 years? At this writing, I have no information whether or not a system existed routinely to identify, budget, and correct issues such as those listed by the District Architect in response to the State's Five-year query. The major crack in a chimney and the significant roof and window leaks belie any system. Certainly funding was not made available in the budget to do more than the minimal correction of breakdowns. Why should there not be effective periodic inspections that result in adequate plant maintenance funding and implemented corrective measures? Should not someone be made responsible for this activity? Our buildings must be maintained.

An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure. Now we must pay the pound and the ounce each year as well, so that we may avoid paying another pound in the future.

We have asked for and are getting more transparency in the inner workings of our school district. The state of maintenance is bad news. We will get more bad news as more things come to light. We will have to pay promptly for the corrective measures. The alternative is to go back to sleep and let everything go into disrepair. That is not acceptable. The budget being worked up now for next year should include mature thinking on what maintenance must be done first, inclusion of reasonable sums both to make a large dent in the backlog and to perform hold-the-line maintenance, and transfers of funds from reserves and other parts of the budget to put in the line items for plant maintenance work.

CLASSROOMS AND CLASS SIZE

The progress report by a “transition team” to the Board of Education at the December 1 meeting is troubling. In the preamble to the slide show, the Munsey Park School official spoke at length about the congested vehicular traffic and pedestrian flow at school openings and closings, the congested parking lots, the difficulty of scheduling the cafeteria use, and the crowded hallways that required scheduling and routing of class movements to prevent interference. Yet none of the 11 options presented addressed any of these problems. Many of the options presented have, as yet, no significant information regarding the burdens and benefits that option would offer.

Apparently the enrollment has grown from about the 826 reported in September to 855 now. The school authorities project the growth to be 887 next year. They project three additional classrooms to be necessary next year. One option was to install “portable” classrooms. Discussion then revealed that this option was a capital improvement requiring approval both by the voters and the State Department of Education. When design, preparation of construction drawings, State approval, bid, and construction time are all taken into consideration, the trailers would not be put in place until at least December a year from now, too late for opening day.

A lady arose to deplore the option involving increasing class size. She indicated that the teachers would have to work harder to control class discipline if class size were to be increased beyond the present Board limits. She suggested that that option be dropped without further ado.

Additional classrooms mean more teachers, more parking spots for them, more congestion twice daily, and more overhead costs.

The teachers are contracted to teach up to a 31-student class. One slide in the presentation showed the following by grade, projected 2006-07 enrollment, number of sections, and class-size limit: K- 119, 6, 21; 1- 128, 6, 22; 2- 142, 7, 22; 3- 148, 7, 23; 4- 102, 5, 24; 5- 118, 5, 26; 6- 118, 5, 26. If the K-6 grade class-size limit were to be increased to 26, the need for the three extra classrooms would be eliminated, several classrooms would be freed up, there would be five sections per grade, and there would be flexibility as the actual numbers of students per grade varied over the next several years. This is a measure the Board can take now and well in time for opening day.

No link can be shown between smaller class sizes and test score improvements. Smaller classes mean we have to hire more teachers thus moving up the bell curve toward lower quality. The benefits of reducing class sizes are small and the costs are large. Greater benefits are obtained by hiring fewer but more highly skilled teachers. The costs of extra classrooms and extra teachers divert needed funds from areas where more significant gains in education can be obtained.

Another troubling area is the total lack of long range planning this presentation and discussion revealed. Only just recently a bond referendum was proposed and withdrawn. That program purpose was to increase the size of the middle and high schools to accommodate the sixth grade. No changes to either the Munsey Park or the Shelter Rock schools were indicated. As part of this program, the bus garage would have to be relocated. In 2002, a fact sheet projected occupancy in September 2006. In December 2003, a presentation projected that the Munsey Park School would peak at 981 students in 2009/10. Now the bus garage has been rented to Huntington Coach with greater bus congestion, and the Munsey Park School is calling for relief, too late for any timely construction. Not having a long-range plan allowed the Munsey Park working group to start over a year late, and in doing so have limited the options available.

Where is the long-range plan that should be in place? Several past Boards, and the present one, have been delinquent in not requiring the administration to have and periodically up-date long-range coherent plans. How often does one need to be requested? The Board should demand that the administration produce one so that an approved plan could be publicized a month before the next Budget vote.