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On Wednesday night, the School Board presented its budget to the Board of Supervisors. I spoke from notes in response to points that the supervisors raised during the Q&A that followed the presentation, but other members had prepared remarks. Below is an abbreviated version of Mr. Ohneiser's portion of the presentation. I'll share other member's remarks if they provide them to me for that purpose.
Under the law school boards are supposed to ensure school systems meet utmost efficiency standards. In the case of facility management this remains a unique challenge for Mr. Plattenberg. His staff has done exceptionally well when comparing the last two school LCPS built to the other 14 schools just built in Virginia. LCPS was lowest in square feet per pupil, ranked 3rd and 4th out of 16 in construction cost per square foot and ranked first and second in terms of cost per student. During this same period of time his department saves $126.5k per year by participating in regional natural gas bidding contracts.
The question I asked during my presentation to the BOS was how much should we challenge this department when they demonstrate great management practices but they really can't control their usage of resources completely. Every night parks and recreation open up the buildings for recreation and every daylight hour the fields are used by programs parks and recreation SELLS to our constituents.
LCPS has a budget enlarged due to accomodating district specific demands as well. Why shouldn't LCPS consider increasing efficiencies also on a district specific basis? Our bus services in rural areas are TWICE as expensive as the rest of the county. Our food costs per student are higher in rural schools. Our energy costs per student are higher, costs of running the school library are higher per student etc. Do we realize that it now costs an EXTRA $5000/student to provide ESL support. When the Supervisor in Sterling votes against the school budget (as he promised to do) does he want LCPS to save $21 Million per year by not supporting his immigrant non-english speaking population? Does he want Park View High School to have the same class size as Loudoun Valley? Does the Western Loudoun Supervisor want LCPS to run the bus system more efficiently by picking up middle and high school students at their local elementary schools instead of their driveways?
Friday, March 7, 2008
Bob Ohneiser's Budget Presentation
Shouldn't the school board enforce operational efficiencies BEFORE we consider educational program cuts? I pleaded with Supervisors to provide LCPS with some input on social program curtailment and efficiency enforcement not just a $ number to live by. It is totally unfair and blindly simplistic to merely claim LCPS should increase class size as a County objective when schools in Western Loudoun and in some far Eastern Louduoun schools don't even have enough students to fill up their schools in the first place. Using county averages without applying standards of deviation does nothing but insure unfairness in student teacher ratios. It remains my wish that both boards will work together cooperatively and make sure operational efficienices including sociologically driven programs, demographically driven programs and geographically driven costs are managed prior to even considering reducing the educationally necessary quality of LCPS.
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I think Mr. Ohneiser’s raises a fascinating topic: how do we allocate educational resources and who should take the lead in those discussions.
We all are likely to agree that it should be done justly. Bob seems to suggest that equality is justice but then stumbles without addressing whether economic equality or social equality is the goal.
Economic equality (every students gets the same dollar-value education) is an easy system to measure and satisfies our sense of fairness.
Social equality (every student gets the same educational outcome) is the premise of No Child Left Behind. We like it too because it prevents fraud, highlights discrimination and keeps children/parents/teachers from squandering taxpayer money without accountability.
Neither a 100% social equality model nor a economic equality one produces just results. A compromise is to balance them.
For practical reasons the core subjects defined by the SOLs have to be budgeted with Social equality in mind because of NCLB. That means ESL students will cost more than others to educate in order that all students become minimally proficient.
The rest of the curriculum should be administered with a model that strives for economic equality. One student’s educational electives should not cost twice as much as other students simply because they have an IEP or love expensive courses.
Where to draw the line between social and economic equality is a tough question. Because the stakeholders include taxpayers, I think the BOS needs to make that decision since taxpayers have no standing before the school board.
My personal preference is to tilt the school budget more towards economic equality than social equality. This reflects my bias towards more parental educational choices and a belief that free market economics will save taxpayer money.
Many will not want to have this discussion in such abstract terms. That is why I suggest we prepare the budget in a per-student allocation format so parents can follow the money and help the public decide on a just balance.
Did Mr. Ohneiser consider that the cost to buy parcels for schools in the east is far higher that that of the west? Of course, that detail wouldn't serve his apparent vindictive purpose. Since his counterpart on the Supervisor Board supported an even lower tax rate than the western Supervisors, perhaps he should similarly propose punishing Ms Water's constituents by redrawing boundary lines so class sizes in Broad Run are more equivalent to those at Loudoun Valley. Otherwise his rationale is hypocritical.
LCPS could take a logical step toward reducing their transportation budget in the rural west if they abandoned their feeder school concept. As fuel prices continue to skyrocket, building huge schools in the middle of no where where most students are forced to ride the bus becomes increasingly cost prohibitive from an operational standpoint. If schools were sited where more kids could walk or ride their bikes to school - kids would get more exercise, air would be cleaner, roads less congested and transportation costs would be reduced. In the west, those sites may cost more upfront, because upgrading Town infrastructure to accomodate schools is needed, but the initial site cost would still be far cheaper than equivalent sites in the east and the long term operational cost would be reduced.
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