A Meeting With the Commish

According to 16 V.S.A. 563, the Commissioner of Education can prescribe major categories for the annual budget report that all school district boards must prepare and distribute.  I met with Commissioner Cate and Department of Education CFO Bill Talbott earlier this year about requiring direct instruction percentages of proposed budgets to be included in these reports.  The two men deliberated.

In a recent email from Mr. Talbott, I was given the answer:  "Given recent legislation around cost containment (two votes provision in Act 82), the study on district mandates required by the legislature, the legislative requirement that the department's 'relationship and communications with the field' among other things to be studied, the legislatively required study of financial management in the schools, all in Act 82, the development of a state calendar, and more, we thought it best not to add any new requirements but to focus on those at hand."

The feeling among many Vermonters was that the Legislature didn't do enough to bring about cost containment.  Apparently, Commissioner Cate and Mr. Talbott feel that the Legislature did do enough.

Complying with the requirement I proposed would take business managers all of five minutes.  If it makes sense for the FY 2005 numbers to be provided to the state by school districts so they can be in the most recent SASRS Report, then why shouldn't voters have seen the 2006 actual numbers, 2007 projected numbers, and 2008 proposed numbers before voting this last March?  Why is it only proper for voters to know what they've voted on three years after the fact?

Comments

[George Cross]

Not sure what the budgetary process is where you work and live,Curt, but all the school district budgets I prepared in three different states presented the voters with:
1. The actual revenues and expenditures from the previous fiscal year.
2. The current fiscal year projected revenues, budget and anticipated expenditures.
3. The proposed budget and revenues for the next fiscal year.

All three years were broken down into the various categories and sub-categories depending on the requirements of the specific state. The budget was also accompanied by a detailed explanation of increases and decreases, changes in enrollment and on and on. The school boards I worked for always demanded transparency in the total process.

Given the current ever-expanding crop of cost studies and other legislative wishes, I would agree with the sentiment express in Bill Talbott's letter.

[Curtis Hier]

Here's the problem: The categories in budget reports tend not to be compatible with the categories in Table 5 of SASRS. That is because budget reports are usually a mishmash of current and noncurrent expenditures. For instance, equipment is a noncurrent expenditure, but it shows up in budget reports throughout the expenditures of the various departments of the school. It is impossible for a voter to calculate the percentage of current expenditures going to direct instruction, administration, student support services, and other categories. No, it's not transparent. It's confusing as heck.

It would take a business manager five minutes to make the calculation in order to comply with what I'm proposing. I know this because I saw a business manager do it.

[George Cross]

You are correct Curt, the way the data is reported tends to mask the total expenditures for instruction in the way you want to report them. For instance, if you go to Figure 4 of the SASRS report you will find unduplicated dollars (more on this later) which indicate that the dollars spent on instruction are more than those shown in the first pie chart. The second pie chart shows the expenditures for tuition and fees to other schools - instruction costs - and amounts for instructional equipment and pupil support services, both instructional costs all of which are not in the first chart.

There is a need however to ensure that all districts use the chart of accounts in the same way and post expenditures in a consistent manner. I suspect that is may not be the case currently.

Back to unduplicate costs. The bill to vote on the SU budget makes little sense. All of the dollars in the SU budget are also in the local district budgets as distributed across those budgets. If there is a vote on the SU budget as well as the local district budget as they are currently constructed some dollars will be voted on twice. What happens if they are approved in one budget and defeated in the other? Basically any reduction in the SU budget will result in the cost of that service being directed back to the local budget. Unless a SU is providing services which are absolutely not needed, those services must be paid for somewhere.

Here is an example of that: When serving as a superintendent in NH the four local school boards complained about the special education director's director postion in the supervisory union budget. They cut the position and the secretary out of the budget. The result was that a year later two of the disticts shared a special education director and secretary and the other two districts each had a director and secretary. So one special education director and one secretary in the SU budget became three of each in the combined local budgets. Plus, the supervisory union budget went down substantailly! A few years later they went back to one director in the SU office.

The moral of the story, be careful what you wish for!

[Curtis Hier]

Okay, what George has done is make an argument against S.175, but not against my proposal to the commissioner. Of course, it’s really hard to argue against informing voters.

Under S.175, the expenditure for a special ed. administrator or whatever would have to be authorized by one group of voters or the other. The superintendent would have to make a judgment about how best to get it passed.

To answer George’s question, if the SU budget failed, but the local school budget passed, then the SU assessment would be decreased, and it would be a boon to taxpayers. If the SU budget passed, but the local school budget failed, then the assessment could not be touched, which is the way it is currently.

By now probably the NH SU *and* the schools in it have a director and a secretary. That’s the case at my school. All the NH example tells me is that the voters in two of the districts were not all that committed to cost containment. George’s example assumes a director is needed. Maybe, but that could be explained to voters. Or maybe there’s another option: somebody already on staff does the work.

I’m sorry but the tax coffers are not the fiefdom of superintendents to use with no accountability. Bill Mathis has $8 million that he spends with no accountability to voters. There is an SU board, but they rubberstamp what he wants. Nobody knows who is on the board or when it meets.