A report from the Texas Comptroller indicates that school districts around the state are dealing with budget shortfalls by taking on a larger amount of debt. The Houston Chronicle reports that the total school debt load is more than 1.5 times higher now than it was in 2001 with districts owing more than $63.6 billion as of 2011.

Although the aim of the report was to bring transparency to local government finances, says state comptroller Susan Combs, some think that it is also a way for Combs – who is anticipated to run for the post of Lt. Governor in 2014 – to draw the support of political groups like the Tea Party. This interpretation is backed up this being her third report this year dealing with the topic of local government debt, and contains many instances of what Combs describes as “questionable spending” by school districts.

In the last year Texas schools have lost more than $5.4 billion in funding, which, coming on top of several years of education cuts, could push more districts into the red. Many have already had to turn to bond issues to fund things like capital improvements and school bus purchases. At the moment, eight in ten Texas districts are carrying this kind of debt obligation.

After school administrators saw lawmakers slash their budgets and force layoffs last year, Combs said they shouldn’t see the report as a message that they’re now spending too much.
“There are some wonderful examples in here of school districts doing a wonderful job. Those are best practices,” Combs said. “I’m not trying to ding anybody up.”

The situation has given rise to a lawsuit by more than 600 districts educating nearly 75% of the state’s students over the issue of funding and the formula used to distribute the money between richer and poorer areas. They are arguing that the funding formula used by the government is so flawed that it violates the Texas Constitution.

The main issue in the case will be the annual reduction in funding for education at the same time that student population in the state is growing by leaps and bounds. The rise in student numbers is especially rapid among low-income families and those born outside the United States.

Over the course of the arguments, which are scheduled to being next month, the districts will be attempting to prove that they are operating in “crisis mode,” and are therefore unable to offer the quality of education guaranteed by the Constitution. Meanwhile, the state government will be arguing that while the funding issues are indeed dire, they don’t constitute a crisis quite yet, although they admit that this is possible in the next few years.

The post Texas Schools Increasingly Mired in Debt, Says Comptroller appeared first on Education News.

Since 2007, which marked the beginning of the recession in Colorado, the number of school districts that chose to adopt a four-day week to save money rose by 30%. Currently, 80 districts have switched to the new school calendar, a process that requires obtaining approval from the state.

The savings come mainly from reduction in support staff, maintenance costs, food service and transportation which allows schools to retain teachers and academic programs that would have to be dropped otherwise. In order to keep the students on schedule academically, each school day is extended by an hour or two, thus resulting in no net loss of instructional time.

There’s little reliable research on how the shortened week impacts academic performance, but the studies that are available point to there being no difference. Specifically, the analysis carried out by the Colorado Department of Education released earlier this year shows that students in districts with four- and five-day weeks perform similarly.

It is the parents who typically have the most difficulty adjusting, with most schools reporting negative parental reactions due mostly to increased child-care expenses for the fifth day. Many are also wondering if the cost savings achieved via the shortened week really justify a disruption in the children’s and parents’ lives.

The savings, though, are less than you might think. A 20 percent reduction in school days seldom nets more than 2.5 percent slashed from the overall budget,according to a national study by senior policy analyst Michael Griffith of the Denver-based Education Commission of the States.

The vast majority of school spending goes to educator pay and benefits. None of the districts surveyed reduced those because instructional staff was required to work the same number of hours across the school year. Despite relatively meager savings, percentage-wise, some districts jumped at the chance to avoid losing teaching positions.

These estimates echo the experience at the Salida school district which, after switching to a four-day schedule last year, saved about $150,000. This seems a paltry sum considering the total district budget tops $19 million. But according to Superintendent Darryl Webb, even such small savings were worth it; they allowed the district to preserve teaching positions they wanted to avoid cutting.

In addition, after one year into the three-year experiment with the new schedule, another unexpected benefit popped up: an uptick in test scores. Webb thinks that the increased “sense of urgency” of the shortened week seems to encourage teachers and students to make every hour in the classroom.

The four-day week has its critics too, especially in light of the fact that shortening the time students spend in school seems to go against the academic reform push for more instructional opportunities rather than fewer.

Critics of the four-day week, while acknowledging that even minimal savings can mean a lot to a district, see the practice as adding to an already troubling summer learning loss and flying in the face of trending reform efforts aimed at expanding instructional time.

“I know some smaller rural districts have been doing it a long while and they have strategies that seem to be working,” said Jennifer Davis, president and co-founder of the Boston-based National Center on Time and Learning. “But the policy decision, at a time when we’re trying to upgrade our education system in America, is in the wrong direction.”

The post More Colorado Districts Saving Money with 4-Day School Weeks appeared first on Education News.

The New York State United Teachers is preparing to file a lawsuit against the state over the imposed 2% cap on property taxes, Press Connects reports. President of NYSUT Richard Iannuzzi explained that the cap makes it difficult for schools to make up funding shortfalls brought about by cuts in state aid.

The cap forbids local governments from hiking property tax rates by more than 2% annually or by the cost of inflation — whichever is lowest. In Albany, it is anticipated that the cap will be set at 2% this year just as it was the year before.

The cap was adopted last year, and district officials from several Southern Tier school districts said that it has severely limited their ability to raise needed funds, forcing them to make staff cuts and layoffs. The union is arguing that the requirement that 60% of voters must agree before the cap could be set aside creates funding inequality, since they contend that wealthier districts will have an easier time passing the override than poorer ones.

“As we look at the impact of both the cuts in state aid and the property-tax cap, the reality is that the wealth gap and the ability of poorer school districts to provide a sound basic education, whatever that means today, is much more difficult than it has been in the past — and much more difficult than it is for wealthier districts,” Iannuzzi said. “So, just on its face, what’s the reason for that? And is it the property tax cap, and is it the way we fund education?

Iannuzzi anticipates that the lawsuit will be filed sometime before the end of this year.

Governor Andrew Cuomo threw his support behind the cap which he saw as a key tool for bringing the state’s property tax rates — some of the highest in the country — into line. In a report released last week, he said that the cap did its job by keeping the tax rate growth at 2% in 92% of the state’s school districts.

“Governor Cuomo’s tax cap has been an unqualified success that, as was reported yesterday, has kept property tax increases 40 percent lower than the average of the last 10 years,” said Richard Azzopardi, a Cuomo spokesman.

“Taxpayers simply can’t afford to go back to the bad old days and have New York continue to spend more money per student than any other state, while ranking 39th in high school graduation rates.”

The post Teachers Union to Challenge NY 2% Property Tax Cap in Court appeared first on Education News.

Many schools around the country are experimenting with combined classes this year, The Press-Enterprise, which covers inland Southern California, reports. At one such school, Temecula Luiseño Elementary, fifteen first graders and fifteen second graders share the same teacher and a classroom — even for periods such as math when they are taught separately.

The Riverside County school district now has 32 combined education classes, a 100% increase over the year before. At another Riverside district, Murrieta, the number of combination classes more than tripled over the past year to 35.

District officials say that combining classes is a necessity due to budget cuts. School districts can no longer afford the payroll numbers that would allow them to put a teacher in front of every grade’s classroom. When staff numbers are reduced, mainly through attrition and retirement, schools can no longer afford to replace teachers; combination classrooms are an inevitable result.

“It’s not what we want, but it’s what we have to work with,” said Char Gollogly, director of curriculum and instruction for the Murrieta Valley Unified School District.
The classes are more work for teachers, who have to plan for and teach two sets of lessons. Combinations also can be a difficult to sell to parents, who worry that their students aren’t going to learn as much or might get overlooked in class.

There are education researchers, however, who paint a much less gloomy picture of combined-grade classes. There have been studies that show that combining grades actually provides academic benefit via exposure to a more rigorous curriculum for younger students and an opportunity to act as mentors and tutors for the older kids.

For those who aren’t convinced, however, there is some good news. Despite the anecdotal evidence, California education officials say there hasn’t been an overall increase in combined grade classrooms in the state.

Combination classes have long been a part of school life, simply because students don’t show up to school in even class sets, said Jodi McClay, assistant superintendent for educational support services for the Temecula Valley Unified School District. But in years past, a Temecula school with several classes of 26 or 27 students would have been left alone. This year, the classes are being reconfigured so all of the classes reach 30 students, even if that means creating combinations.

McClay calls it “staffing tighter.”

There’s limited research on how combining classes impacts student achievement, but in addition to the studies showing benefits, there are nearly as many saying that students suffer when their classrooms host a number of different grades. In the 1990s a number of research papers reported that kids in combined-grade classrooms underperformed their single-grade peers. More recent results, however, seems to be pointing to the exact opposite conclusion:

A 2010 analysis found first-graders in combination classes performed the same as their peers in single-grade classes in English. In math, students in the combination classes performed slightly better.

The post Is Number of Multi-Grade Classrooms on the Rise in CA? appeared first on Education News.

Collin Altic, a 14-year-old freshman from Willard High School in Willard, Missouri, recently found himself the victim of a new policy aimed at reducing the amount of money lost annually in school lunch charges. When Altic attempted to pay for his lunch earlier this week, he was told that he’d have to return his tray because his school lunch account didn’t have enough of a balance to cover the purchase.

Administrators explained that the new policy, which is in place only in the district’s high school, forbids any charges that puts the account into a negative balance. With 4,000 kids the overages were taking a real bite out of the school budget. Last year, Willard School District had to eat more than $20,000 in debit lunch payments that were never made up.

The policy in place at elementary and middle schools are different. Students are allowed to charge up to $10 onto their accounts, but parents are expected to make good on these charges before the end of the year. Willard School District Superintendent Kent Medlin said that the policy isn’t purely punitive. He said that any time the charge is denied, staffers are supposed to attempt to figure out what the problem is. For instance, staffers should try to find out if the student’s family might be having financial difficulties that might quality the high-schooler for reduced-cost or free lunch. If that is the case, assistance should be offered in filling out an application.

But Candi Altic, Collin’s mother, believes the district should be more understanding than that. While accepting full responsibility for forgetting to top up a lunch account, she added that sometimes parents get overwhelmed and can’t always remember everything.

Medlin remains unmoved, however, and maintains that the firm no-serve policy will stay in place.

“We’ve instructed our people in lunch lines that we’re not going to have charges at the high school,” Medlin said.

Meanwhile, those in charge of school lunches in Kenton County School District in Northern Kentucky don’t seem nearly as concerned with pinching pennies as Medlin. At least that was not the conclusion of the recent report by the state auditor that detailed expenses of more then $115,000 for lavish trips to various hot spots around the nation, including New York, Las Vegas and Miami, by the former nutrition services director Ginger Gary.

Gary, who has been in her position for more than two decades, abruptly retired last year after meeting with state auditors who questioned her travel habits. Kenton County, which is one of the largest districts in the state and serves about 15,000 students, unknowingly funded excursions like the 2009 one to Las Vegas for the School Nutrition Association’s annual conference, which cost the district more than $40,000. The charges included hotel stays, airfare and various other expenses.

The report concluded the school district was lax in monitoring its finances. It said district officials were not aware of many of the out-of-state trips and did not learn of them until the office of State Auditor Adam Edelen requested records.

School district officials were surprised to learn of the lavish spending by former nutrition services director Ginger Gray, said Barb Martin, the district’s deputy superintendent.
“The district was shocked because we consider ourselves good stewards of taxpayers’ money,” Martin said Wednesday. She said the nutrition services department had an account that wasn’t overseen by the finance department, allowing Gray to make quick purchases.

The post For Kids and Schools, Lunches Depend on Big Money appeared first on Education News.

A new study from State Budget Solutions finds that the approach that many have long considered a panacea to academic ills – more spending and increased financial resources – doesn’t actually translate to improvements in student achievement as measured by standardized test scores.

Analysis of spending by the states between the years of 2009 and 2011 showed that states that spend the most on education as a portion of their total budget didn’t graduate students at a higher rate, nor did their students score better on the ACT than their peers.

Bob Williams, President of the SBS, said that the United States spent more than $800 billion on education during 2010, which exceeds the totals spend by several European and North American countries combined. In return for that expenditure the country isn’t seeing the results demanded by both the taxpayers and parents, which is a certain indication that raising spending without a clear understanding about how to spend most effectively won’t solve America’s academic woes.

State Budget Solutions researchers analyzed the national trends in education from 2009 to 2011 by conducting a state-by-state analysis of education spending as a percentage of total state spending, and a comparison of average graduation rates and average ACT scores per state. The study focused on the percentage of total spending that each state allocates towards education. Education spending includes the funding that state and local governments generate, as well as additional federal contributions.

Although the overall spending on education as part of the total budget fell by .7% — from 30% to 29.3% — the top three educational spenders, Texas, Vermont and Arkansas, each spent 4% more than the national average on various education initiatives. The states that rounded out the bottom five were Alaska, New York, Hawaii, Tennessee and Massachusetts.

For states that spent the most, only Vermont saw significant results from 2009 to 2011.  In fact, four out of the five states spending the most on education failed to produce correspondingly high graduation rates or ACT scores. Arkansas remained in the top five states in spending for all three years, yet Arkansas’ average ACT scores consistently fell below the national average, and continue to decline annually. In 2010 and 2011, Texas ranked first in the nation in spending, 36.9 percent each year, but fell below the national average in graduation and ACT scores.

States that have spent the least didn’t show any performance degradation over the years studied. Although 45 states allocated a higher percentage of their budget for education compared to Massachusetts, the state topped the academic performance tables in almost every subject area covered and had the highest average ACT scores in the country.

The post Study Finds No Relationship Between Ed Spending and Results appeared first on Education News.

Are the strings attached to the efforts of a company based in Troy, Michigan to help struggling school districts stay afloat too much? Some critics of a program to get local and national businesses to place banner ads on school websites say that the funding brought in by those ads might be too dearly bought.

The effort, called UNITE, was put together by the three-year-old Alternative Revenue Development, and has so far secured the participation of 53 Michigan school districts with 47 more joining next year. All over the state, financially strapped schools see UNITE as a way to make up the financial shortfalls left by falling property tax revenue and reduction in state and federal education funding.

ARD is at the forefront of a national trend that has schools scrambling for more money because of the economic downturn and state budget cuts, said Daniel Domenech, executive director of American Association of School Administrators.

“School districts are desperate for any source of revenue that will help them maintain some of the services they’ve been able to provide in the past, so advertising is an easy way to do it,” Domenech said.

Schools allowing fundraising space on their website is a fairly recent development — and an alarming one according to Public Citizen, a Washington D.C. based group that takes aim at what it sees as commercialism in schools. In a report released last year, the group wrote that the miniscule .3% of school budgets raised in this fashion was hardly worthwhile when considering the real harm that could result from giving advertisers access to the children of a highly susceptible age.

Specifically, Public Citizen takes issues with advertisers that push unhealthy food products in contravention of the goals set by both local and federal government to help students make healthier choices to reverse high rates of childhood obesity around the country. The impact of eat-healthy programs could be substantially reduced when children are exposed to advertisement by companies like Little Caesars Pizza.

Sam Curcuru, the CEO and founder of ARD, says that Public Citizen’s concerns are misplaced since advertisers are targeting the parents rather than the children, and that school districts desperate for funding are happy to take advantage of any opportunity to raise money.

Since buildings and fixed costs like salaries comprise a large chunk of the school operating budget, ARD makes a difference with a district’s remaining discretionary budget, Curcuru said.
“Then you see a budget that might be only a couple of thousand dollars, and that is spread over an entire district,” he said.

The post Effort to Open School Websites to Advertisers Drawing Fire appeared first on Education News.

KnowledgeWorks, a policy research organization based in Cincinnati, has released a blueprint that school districts in Ohio can follow to maintain their current academic performance at a 20% discount. The study’s findings show that schools can save up to $1.4 billion dollars annually and cut their budgets by nearly 20% by making better uses of what the paper calls “shared services.”

By “shared services” KnowledgeWorks refers to non-instructional resources that could be shared by two or more neighborhood schools or districts.

“Sharing services and creating cradle-to-career initiatives can benefit students by freeing up more dollars to provide academic and support services to improve outcomes and focusing dollars on activities that result in student academic success,” said Andrew Benson, the executive director of Ohio Education Matters, a subsidiary of KnowledgeWorks.

The report, titled “Toward a New Model of Governance for Ohio,” was commissioned by the state’s former governor Ted Strickland. Although Strickland, a Democrat, was replaced in office by Republican John Kasich, Benson thought it worthwhile to continue the research, figuring the blueprint would prove useful due to education budget cutbacks that were likely to be enacted in 2011. Benson said that he and his group didn’t want to miss an opportunity to introduce a new, innovative way to share and reduce costs.

Benson noted that the way school districts currently approach cost cutting could prove to be self-defeating in the future because they have a direct impact on student achievement. But if the state government can offer other examples for districts to follow, and provide tools to encourage inter-district cooperation and resource sharing, schools could achieve substantial savings without sacrificing academic outcomes of their students.

The report aims to have schools imitate private companies like General Electric and Pfizer who have put resource sharing plans into practice and reaped not only fiscal benefits but increased efficiency as a result.

Applying it to schools could encompass departments such as human resources, accounting, transportation, and special education, among others.

Report conclusions point out that money savings don’t always have to mean quality compromises. By following the blueprint laid down in the study, schools can continue to perform at the same standards at before but at a reduced cost. As a matter of fact, in some cases, resource sharing could even improve student achievement in the districts involved.

Ohio’s best example of shared services is Jon Ritchie, superintendent to three small districts. Ritchie initially took on the second district with no pay increase, and his contract has recently been renewed for another five years. He has testified to Ohio’s legislature about how well the arrangement suits students and taxpayers.

The post KnowledgeWorks Touts ‘Resource Sharing’ to Ohio Schools appeared first on Education News.

The new Eagle Stadium will seat 18,000 spectators and cost a bit under $60 million dollars to construct. Its size is too modest to house a popular college football program, and maybe half the size of a stadium that would play host to an NFL franchise. But that’s fine, because the Eagle Stadium, located in a suburb north of Dallas, Texas, will be the setting for Friday night football games for Allen High School.

Those outside of Texas might be shocked that any community would be willing to bear so high a cost for a high school athletics team, but in Texas, where high school football is hugely popular, the new Eagle Stadium is only the fifth-largest high school football facility ranked by size. As it is, the residents of Allen, Texas, seemed willing to pony up with the money for the stadium raised via a $119.4 million bond offering. When put to the voters, nearly 65% voted to approved it.

“Most of the negative stuff that comes out are from people outside of Allen,” football coach Tom Westerberg said. “I don’t really worry about that a whole lot. We’ve drawn quite a few people to the games and I think for the majority of the big games it will be full.”

Still, the support wasn’t uniform. Even within the town there were critics who thought the high expense of the stadium couldn’t be justified at a time when school facilities that are vital for academics were being neglected due to shrinking budgets. When asked his thoughts on these objections, Allen School District athletic director Steve Williams shrugged them off. Allen community loves its football — and is willing to pay to see it in comfort — and Williams wasn’t inclined to disagree with that point of view.

Allen’s voters are getting their money’s worth. The stadium is a sunken bowl with decks on each side. There is a three-tiered pressbox on the home side and a giant video screen on the end zone scoreboard.

The district sold advertising on the scoreboard, but not naming rights. It’s just Eagle Stadium.

The feel is modern, clean and big without being ostentatious. There is no row of luxury suites, just two hospitality rooms in the pressbox. Instead, tented plazas in the corners of the stadium will be available for rent.

That isn’t to say that the school’s academics are being ignored. The community from which the 5,388-strong student body is drawn had an average household income of over $100,000 in 2009, and it has grown in the subsequent 3 years. Since before Allen experienced a population boom in the late ’00s, city leaders decided that they would remain a town with only one high school. So, when it comes to football, the city doesn’t have any split loyalties — everyone who roots, roots for the Eagles. And almost everyone there roots.

So, the expansion of the stadium to accommodate the local fans as well as those who truck over to cheer on the visiting team only made sense.

With the size of the football and band programs, not to mention cheer and drill teams, that’s a lot of parents wanting to see their kids perform on Friday nights. In Allen’s old stadium, not everyone was guaranteed a seat.

The post Texas Town Spends $60 Million for New Football Stadium appeared first on Education News.

The Miami-Dade School Board is considering a proposal, made by the Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, to put a bond offering totaling $1.2 billion on the ballot this November. The bond issue would be used for long-overdue building and facility repair and to upgrade the aging technology infrastructure at some of the district’s schools.

The last bond issue referendum was presented to Florida voters in 1988. The $980 million bond was approved by the voters and went, in part, towards building repair and towards building new schools. Some of the beneficiaries included schools like Miami Northwestern, which was constructed using some of the money raised via the bond.

This time, schools like Miami Norland Senior High and American Senior High would benefit if the voters say “yes.” Their buildings will get much-needed upgrades and repairs and their computers and internet wiring will get an overhaul as well.

And in a way, Carvalho said, the children of those who benefited from the previous referendum would benefit from this investment. The bond program aims to upgrade schools, renovate older ones, replace parts or entire campuses where it makes financial sense and build limited new construction where enrollment is expected to rise – and provide equitable access to technology and digital resources to all students.

“There would be something every school would benefit from,” Carvalho said. “It shouldn’t be you go to school in a decent building or you have access to technology. You should be able to do both.”

The 2008 recession hit Miami-Dade school district, one of the largest in the country, harder than most. Today, the school system finds its capital fund completely depleted with over $2 billion in projected capital expenses with no means to pay for them. As a result, over 400 district schools have had their scheduled maintenance pushed back indefinitely, and Carvalho believes that the local community will prove to be the solution to the district’s fiscal crisis.

The problem would be convincing voters, many of whom are facing financial struggles of their own, to agree to pay up.

Miami-Dade isn’t the only school district facing urgent maintenance needs with no clear way to cover the costs of carrying them out. Broward County Public Schools is carrying similar obligations on its buildings, but is forced to spend the majority of the budget allocated to capital improvements on servicing its debt.

Broward Superintendent Robert Runcie recently told the state Board of Education that funding for capital needs was among the district’s top challenges. Runcie told The Miami Herald the district would eventually have to take the case to voters in some way, like a multi-year special tax, in the next couple of years.

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