Joint Committee Meeting #1

The first meeting of the joint committee of the School Board and Board of Supervisors was this evening, and was an interesting affair. Each board appointed three members to represent it at the beginning of this month, fulfilling a campaign pledge made by all of the Democratic candidates in the 2007 election.

I took a lot of notes on what was said by everyone, and I’m a little reluctant to transcribe them for some reason, but I shouldn’t be. It was a public meeting, audio recorded and with citizens and a reporter present. I’m not offering any comment here, just the notes I took. Discuss.

By the way, you won't see many comments from me below, because I didn't take notes while I was speaking.

• Tom Reed raised the issue of himself and Sally Kurtz being co-chairs instead of Sally as Chair and Tom as Vice Chair.
• I commented that I thought the best hope for this committee was an improved familiarity between members of the boards that would foster communication and trust. I mentioned that some School Board members are also reaching out to their counterparts on the Planning Commission.
• Priscilla Godfrey focused on land and towns, and the interdependence that we have with the county for programs and use of facilities.
• Susan Buckley spoke of the two boards being habitually in roles where the Supervisors are playing offense with the schools playing defense. She recounted watching previous work sessions that "started with conclusions" that weren't changed by discussion, and were a waste of everyone's time. She talked of feeling like we're "in the same book but on different pages."
• Kelly Burke expressed hopes for a less rancorous budget process
• A skeptical Jim Burton asked "Are things goint to be different?" and said "I'll give it a try." He talked about our fundamental differences in responsibilities, and opined that the relationship between the two boards has improved steadily over the past eight years. "I don't buy that we've been at loggerheads recently." He talked favorably about the western Loudoun Schools joing planning exercise presentation, and said that BOS concerns about school building costs had fallen on deaf years in the past.
• Tom Reed talked about a Ven Diagram of overlapping areas of concern and said that the intersection of our responsibilities basically boils down to money. He said we need to concentrate on the kids.
• Sally Kurtz said "we need to be at the table." She agreed with Tom Reed's money assessment, saying it often felt like that was the only reason that the School Board ever talks to the Supervisors. She asked how our similar departments can work together in areas such as finance and planning. She said a priority for her was "fiscal clarity... I can't read your budget." Sally remarked on the perception of the Board of Supervisors as "scrooges" and talked about this joint committee being "a new animal." She mentioned the membership of a business person and mentioned having a business perspective at the table. She isn't worried about perceptions of being equal, and wants to focus on concrete decisions that can be brought back to our respective boards.
• Jim Burton (I'm paraphrasing) "I should not have been a skeptic about this, after looking at the task force over the course of the year. There is genuine communication occuring that had never happened before. The mayors have asked to continue to meet."

Discussion of Fiscal Clarity

• Kirby Bowers spoke of the long term liability for retirement obligations, about getting more funds and a change in the retiree health plan.
• Dr. Hatrick suggested that a good starting point would be to educate ourselves about all of the joint endeavors between the two organizations. He listed several: trash collection, recycling, use of facilities, accounting system, health care plan, turning old schools into community centers.
• Susan Buckley asked for recommendations of opportunities for collaboration.

Discussion of 21st Century Global Education

• Sally said this was of great interest to the EDC
• Tom Reed suggested moving the topic to the front "Start with the end in mind"
• Dr. Hatrick spoke of educating kids for their future, not our past. "We have the first class of truly world citizens." He talked about our welding students having their highest paid opportunities in China and Dubai, and needing to prepare them for jobs and lives in other parts of the world. He recounted the comment earlier in the day of a Maryland public school official, who noted that today's kids are entirely plugged in to technology... coming into school with iPods in their ears and cell phones texting messages back and forth... and as soon as they hit the school door we make them turn it all and put it all away, it's like sending them back in time.

Discussion of Staff Liaison Role (mostly addressed by Asst. County Administrator Paul Brown)

• Provide data, analysis, research
• Bring daily/practical issues to the committee
• Capital facilities are the County's biggest concern. We need to have a serious heart to heart about land acquisitions. We share a common ground in our difficulty in acquiring land for fire stations, community centers.
• There are serious concerns about debt andthe ability to deliver critical public facilities at the right time. "It's the elephant in the room."

A public hearing format was established. Speakers will be heard at the beginning of each meeting for a maximum of three minutes, with a 15-minute time limit.

Future meetings will be held on second Thursdays of the month from 4pm-6pm.

All Ages Read Together

I just came across a fledgling Loudoun non-profit called All Ages Read Together. AART is a unique program that provides low-income preschoolers who cannot attend the Head Start preschool program at LCPS with senior citizen reading buddies in a weekly program. The seniors help the kids develop the reading skills that more affluent kids learn in daycare or preschool before starting kindergarten. LoudounExtra published a nice profile a couple of weeks ago that does a great job of explaining.

Head Start is a federally funded program, our funds for it are limited. LCPS has a supplemental program, but it isn't accessible to all kids in the county. LCPS provides a supplemental program called STEP. From the LCPS website:

Head Start and STEP are preschool programs serving economically disadvantaged four year olds and their families at several centrally located elementary schools. The Head Start Program provides a variety of services including preparation for kindergarten plus health and social services for children and their families. STEP is a traditional pre-school program for children of low income families. Information is available from the Head Start Coordinator at 571-252-2110 (Also See Early Childhood Page).

FOIA & gadgets

Read today's story in the Loudoun Times mirror about a local FOIA lawsuit. FOIA is short for Freedom of Information Act, which is actually the federal statue, I don't think Virginia's law (the one at issue in the case) is called that. I'll let you in on an unintended consequence of that lawsuit... most of the School Board members have been issued new laptop PCs and Blackberries at our request, myself included. I'll explain why.

The implications of the FOIA case are that any computer I have that stores emails or documents that might have some relevance to school business can be seized and explored by someone the court appoints to determine what is and is not in the public domain. In the past, I and my colleagues have used our personal computers to create and store documents, personal email accounts to correspond with constituents, staff and colleagues, and my cell phone to keep up with emails. Under some interpretations of the law, any of these could now be taken from me to be combed through.

So now we'll be drafting and keeping these documents on notebook PCs payed for by tax dollars, talking and tracking emails on cell phones payed for by tax dollars, and using the county's email system for all School Board-related emails. I'm not happy about a second phone on my belt, yet another briefcase carried with me, or the money that could have provided the laptop upon which I'm writing this post to a classroom instead. But this way, if the court somebody wants to go through one of these devices I'll just hand it over and not worry about it.

Once again, these are the unintended consequences of the rise of antagonism in public service.

Have your say on Elementary Math

There has been rumbling lately about an elementary math program called "Math Investigations." Some folks in neighboring Prince William County are trying to push their school system into repealing its use, and my favorite nay-saying blogger Elise would like to see the same effort in Loudoun. I heard a parent at a Special Education meeting dismiss it as well, so I know that discontent is out there.

Folks, here's your opportunity. LCPS is seeking parents for an elementary math evaluation committee. There are five meetings (plenty will say that they are at inconvenient times, so if that would keep you from serving then say so, maybe there's room to adjust if others feel the same way).

For what it's worth, I'll quote from an email I wrote to a parent this past weekend:

I generally start in support of LCPS decisions, as they are made with much more information, expertise and experience than I have.

Self-Sufficiency Standard

As you may have read in this Washington Post story, I worked hard this winter to raise the salaries of our lowest-paid employees, the custodians. The story looks at what other area localities are doing that is similar, but does not go into depth about the principal of Self Sufficiency, beyond a brief quote from me:

"Everyone who works a full-time job should be paid enough to meet basic needs without help from family, friends or the government," School Board member John Stevens (Potomac) said.

This is the basic story, but I want to give you a little more background information. I'm not going to give you all the background, look up Self Sufficiency Standard or Living Wage to learn more. I'm just going to posit that this is an important principle for both political liberals and conservatives to support. Liberals should like that we're reducing the gap between rich and poor. Conservatives should like that good wages reduce the need for government subsidies. Good wages mean that people don't have to live two families to a house. Good wages mean parents can have only one job, which reduces gang activity and increases community integration. Good wages are the right thing to do, they are the smart thing to do, and as a Loudoun County's largest employer the public schools have an obligation to pay not based on the lowest amount we can get away with but on what it takes to live in our community.

It's important also to note that the standard is different depending on where you live, how many people are in your family, and how old they are. A preschooler requires higher daycare costs than a school-age child. Two-earner households can earn less per person because they share living expenses. Living expenses are much higher in Loudoun County than in Clarke County. The standard I chose was determined by the non-profit Wider Opportunities for Women, because their study is being used as a benchmark by the Loudoun Community Action Agency Board as part of its poverty symposium.

I am very pleased that the proposal passed unanimously.

God Made School Boards

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.

Mark Twain. Link here.

Don't read anything into my posting this quote. I just came across it today and thought I should share.

Loudoun Schools Two Hour Delay Friday January 18

In case you're looking on the web and can't get to the LCPS website...

Loudoun County Public Schools Delayed 2 Hours Friday, January 18th. Loudoun
County Public Schools will open on a two-hour delay on Friday, January 18th.

Exams scheduled in the high school and middle schools will be
given as scheduled today. High schools will be dismissed at the regular time and
not on the early exam schedule.

Jan 17, No early closing

LCPS Website is crashing under the load today. I'll talk to them about that. In the meantime:

Loudoun County Public Schools will remain in session today, Thursday, January 17th, until the conclusion of the regular school day. All after-school activities are canceled. CASA functions as usual when schools are open for the full day.

Successful Advocacy at LCPS

I'm watching the Board of Supervisors public hearing tonight, and listening to the many speakers on school issues. Those poor Supervisors. No wonder they speak to their School Board counterparts with an underlying tone of "what the heck are you guys doing over there?"

Frankly my fellow citizens, the Public Hearing is one of the least effective ways to have your voice heard. I'll use this post to give you my take on how to get your issue before the Board.

With the new School Board and the new year, we start fresh with the list of issues to consider over the course of this year. This comes after an election and budget-cycle induced hiatus of committee work over the past three months. Now, new committee chairs have been assigned, new meeting times are being negotiated and a new year's set of agendas are being filled. If you have an issue that you want the School Board to consider this year, this is a good time to bring it forward.

The list of committee assignments is on the LCPS website for your information, but it's helpful to know that for most citizens it's enough to contact your own representative, who will usually bring issues forward on behalf of their constituents.

As you are deciding who to call, here are some tips from my experience, in no particular order except the first one:

1. Most important: Exhaust your other options first, particularly when it comes to individual complaints. Problem with the class? Talk to the teacher. Problem with the teacher? Talk to the principal. Problem with the principal? Talk to the Superintendent. Still no luck? Now try your Board member.
2. Know your stuff. Information is the coin of the realm. Provide your representative with written information to work from and you'll give the issue a big head start.
3. Learn the reasons against your argument as well as your own and treat them with respect. Yours is not the only side to the story, your School Board member knows this.
4. Have personal contact with your School Board rep. We are not so innundated by calls and emails that yours will get lost in the shuffle (except perhaps when it pertains to a boundary issue and they come in by the hundred). Trying to contact every member is not as effective as contacting two: the member from your district, and At-Large member Tom Reed. Letting your representative know that you live in their district gives them a chance to be your advocate. Too many times I see emails with a name and a phone number addressed to every board member. With no indication whose district it's in, it's easy enough to not feel personal responsibility to respond.
5. Get some people together who agree with you. Work together, even if you just coordinate by email. You don't need a movement of hundreds, but it helps to show that there is broader appeal than one person.
6. Baby steps. Don't ask for district-wide mandates, because it just doesn't work that way in most cases. Principals in Loudoun have tremendous autonomy, and this can work for or against you. Find one who thinks your idea is a good one and try to create a successful pilot program in a single school before trying to take the County by storm.
7. Government is about legwork. Effective people know that the big public meetings with the dais and the microphones are just the tip of the iceberg, the showpiece. Want to really hear the meat of the discussion? Go to a committee meeting. Want to really advance your issue? Offer to help with the research and coordination. Join an advisory committee. Don't forget to help other people with their issues too.
8. Understand how your issue fits in with others. It's all a big interconnected web and you can't pull one string without affecting the rest. For instance, if you want to alter the bus schedules in your area, understand the effect this will have on the budget, on traffic flow, on school schedules and on kids. Instead of saying "I understand this will have some effect on the transportation budget," take the time to find out and then write "I understand that an additional bus and driver will cost the district $57,000 per year." (I pulled that number out of the air, don't quote me on it.) If you don't know the answer, call and ask how you find out. If someone asks why, be honest and explain to them that you're interested in promoting a change and want to know the ins and outs.
9. Finally, follow up. With the passage of time some issues will rise to the surface and stay there on their own and some need to be nudged back up again. Write and call your member to remind them if you're waiting for a response or some action.

I would welcome comments on the experience others have had, either doing things similar to what I listed here or going against this advice.

Anatomy of a Decision

A question was asked in the comments to a previous post about the ‘Online Assessment System’ that the board scratched from the budget this week. The questioner was, I suspect, not terribly interested in an actual response, only in trying to throw an insult and be done with it. I won’t return such insults, though it would be easy enough. I think it is enough to say, and probably obvious enough to most people anyway, that one’s comment is worth only as much as the amount of informed thought one puts into it.

Anyway, the experience of cutting the OAS was illustrative of the struggle we face in trying to make good decisions about spending in a tight budget year, so I thought I’d write about it. Everything I say below constitutes my understanding of the facts based on discussions at budget sessions over the past six weeks. My understanding is certainly incomplete and quite possibly inaccurate in more ways than one. Any readers who have more knowledge than I and can provide better information are more than welcome to do so, either in the comments or in another online venue that I can link to. I think the illustration of where my knowledge falls short is as important a lesson as what I have learned, because we are all required to make these decisions based on our incomplete information.

In addition to SOLs and many other standardized tests that our kids take, twice each year they take subject assessment tests that are designed to help teachers and principals identify how to adjust instruction now to help the kids achieve success in the same school year. You see, the SOLs do little to help the kids who take them. They evaluate the school and perhaps the teacher, but by the time the results come back, these kids are about to start a new grade level.

The current assessment process is that kids take the tests and fill in the little circles with their number two pencils. The papers are scanned and scored, and predefined reports in PDF format are sent back after a few weeks. There is a fair amount of a teacher’s manual effort required to submit these tests and the fixed format of the reports limits the ways in which the results data can be used to help teachers identify which students need extra help and for principals to identify which teachers need extra help.

Enter the Online Assessment System. With the OAS, tests are taken online. The results are immediately stored in a database and immediately available. Reports can be aggregated across subjects for an individual student, across teachers for an individual subject, by student ethnicity, by date of birth, by any data fact that we store about our students. There are a thousand ways to dissect the data to look for patterns and ways to improve instruction. In addition the assessments are linked to individual student records allowing educators to better understand how an individual student progresses over the course of multiple years, a concept called the growth model which is very big in people who track student achievement data and of great interest to me and other board members. Oh, and it does all of this while cutting down dramatically on the teacher’s level of effort.

I am a database designer and programmer by vocation, so this type of system is right up my alley. Less effort, better results. It’s what technology is all about. It is necessary and inevitable that we employ an OAS in the future at LCPS. So why was I the one to propose that we cut it?

Well obviously the price tag made it a big target. The OAS is a service provided by third party companies to the tune of $400,000 per year. In addition, the administration proposed a new staff person whose job it would have been to oversee implementation of the OAS across the district and to provide all of those custom reports. This employee would also have been responsible for implementing electronic School Improvement Plans, something else we really need. Add $63,700 per year in salary and benefits.

In an $800 million dollar budget, there’s only so many $20K items you can have time to go over with a fine toothed comb. This is the nature of a large institution and you can’t pin that on LCPS. It’s the same at every large corporation and government organization I’ve ever worked at, with the US Military topping the list.

But even in an $800M budget, those half-million dollar items that are brand new really stick out. And when it comes to new employees, we allocate for new special education aides in batches akin to ordering up fries at Five Guys. But new administrative positions are looked at very closely, one by one. What will this person do, is somebody else already doing it, can it wait another year?

And so this $463,700 item got a closer look. Will it substantially improve our test scores and save us from NCLB’s wrath? Will it dramatically improve the efficiency of our teachers and administrators? Are we really ready to take advantage of it? Can it wait another year? Most importantly…and this is at the core of all of the preceding questions but should also be asked on its own… will it improve our children’s education better than using the money another way?

The answer I came up with was “I’m not sure.” I need more time, more information, more understanding. When that’s the answer, I think the time isn’t yet right to spend the money, and I proposed that the OAS be cut. Enough other members agreed that the OAS was cut from the proposed budget. Was it the right decision? I can’t be sure. I would like nothing more than to give our students, teachers and administrators every tool available to succeed. Maybe by next year I’ll have learned enough to know that this was a terrible cut. Or maybe I’ll have learned that we can accomplish the same thing for less in a different way, or that we’re really just fine with the process we have.

There were dozens of decisions just like this one on a bewildering array of topics, some explicitly voted on but many more made by simply moving on to the next item. This is just an example.

That is the nature of this budget process for me as an average dad on the School Board: Gathering as much information as I can in the little time that I have, and then making million-dollar decisions based on information that is inevitably incomplete only because of the limitations of my schedule, my experience, and my mental capacity.

Budget Amendments Complete

Forgive me for my blog silence these past five days. I came down with the flu just hours before we started considering amendments to the Superintendent's budget on Tuesday. I managed to make it back for the second session on Thursday night as well, but nobody wanted to sit next to me, and at least one person compared my appearance to Keith Richards.

You can find some press coverage from Leesburg Today and Washington Post. Each article states something that I think is a little misleading.

From Leesburg Today:

The school board's budget seeks 9.3 percent less in local tax funding than originally proposed by Superintendent Edgar B. Hatrick in November.

From Washington Post:

the School Board approved only $7 million in trims late Thursday before sending the plan to county budget officers.

The truth is that Governor Kaine made most of the budget cut by changing his own budget for the Virginia Retirement System and Group Life Insurance rates. Additional cuts came automatically as the Superintendent moved the opening of two schools out another six months because litigation is keeping them from opening on time.

The sum total of changes to the Superintendent's budget by the School Board was actually only $5,721. This is not a typo. There are no missing abbreviations or misplaced decimals. The correct number is five thousand, seven hundred and twenty one dollars. This is because while we cut back new school office staff, new technology and raises for our substitute teachers we added full-day kindergarten at four schools, gave a tech boost to our poorest schools, rolled back a school lunch price increase and started thinking in a new way about how we determine the appropriate starting pay for our custodians.

You probably won't see this number from other sources because I am combining our Operating Budget with the Food Services budget which is somehow a different budget, but I never was any good at understanding accounting principles so I'm discarding that difference in favor of the changes we made to what my neighbors and I are being asked to pay for with our property taxes.

And while I proposed and voted for many more cuts than we made, I believe that this budget is the best representation we have of the desires of Loudoun's citizens on what public education should be in the coming years. It has been vetted and formed after countless hours of meetings and countless numbers of inquiries about its finest details by nine people elected to this purpose just 60 days ago. I will champion this budget exactly as it is, publicly and privately, to anyone who will listen.

There are a lot of discussions to have about this proposed budget as we lead up to the Board of Supervisor's consideration in March, and I'll have plenty of posts in upcoming days. There are plenty of ways to slice and dice the numbers and more information I'd like to get out about some of the cuts and additions.

Most importantly though, there is the education that anyone from citizens to members of the Board of Supervisors needs to be willing to undertake before they go appointing themselves as unelected School Board members and authorities on this budget. I always welcome criticism, but I only factor it in when it comes from people who have taken at least a minimum amount of time to inform themselves. I try to make it easier to do that with my blog, but of course I'm not the only source of information and shouldn't be for a discriminating critic.

In that vein I'm going to point you to a tremendous resource now available online, LCPS Operating Budget School Board Questions and Answers. In past posts and in the sidebar to this log I have provided you with links to the same budget documents that we work from. Now you have the final resource, that of direct questions posed to the Administration by the School Board and answered in writing. There are a grand total of 161 questions and answers in this file, along with many charts and statistics. They come from every member of the Board and cover nearly every conceivable topic. Many resulted in the very amendments that were voted on and adopted. I think that by reading it you'll learn a lot about what is on the minds of your School Board representatives, and how hard they work to understand the inner workings of the administration to deliver the very best school system for the dollar.

Budget Amendments Underway

I had meant to write more budget posts last week, prior to getting into the amendment process but there simply weren't enough hours in the day. First, a note on the status of the process. As I write this, we have already begun votes on modifying the Superintendent's proposed budget. On Saturday afternoon we finished reviewing the budget as a whole and began the amendment process. We approved without amendment the following relatively small areas of the budget:

• School Board
• Superindentent's Office
• Deputy Superindentent's Office
• Public Information Office
• Planning & Legislative Services

All of this constitutes less than 1 percent of the budget. The total, by my calculations, is $5,889,881. It is an increase of 1.46% over the FY08 Appropriation. All of these offices combined have a total of 26.8 FTEs, and no new employees were added this year.

As I said in a previous post, the budget numbers are nothing without context. As I also said, different things grow at different rates. For everyone involved in the budget process, one of the most important tools is the information about previous expenses and increases. Every line item in the budget is shown as three numbers:

1. The actual expenditure in FY07
2. The approved budget for FY08 (current year)
3. The proposed budget for FY09
   

In the executive summary though, certain categories are shown as 10-year trends. It's tricky to compare dollars to dollars over time, because the cost of various things inflates at different rates. But I thought it would be interesting to compare the growth in the number of students to the growth in personnel.

• The benchmark: since FY98, the number of students has grown by 141%.
• The number of personnel has increased even more... by 204%. This is in some measure because the number of teacher assistants and specialists in our schools required to provide services to kids with special needs. Instructional Support and Teacher Assistant positions have increased by 548% and 369% respectively.
• The number of classroom teachers per student has increased 186%. The previous School Board has made a strong commitment to keeping class sizes down.
• The only two categories to increase more slowly than the rate of student growth are in the Administration and Secretarial/Clerical categories. The number of administrators has increased by only 90% in that time, it is the only category that hasn't doubled. However, the number of non-school-based personnel classified as "other support staff" has risen by 420%.
• We have the same number of nurses and school-based administrators per student as 10 years ago.
• There are more custodians and bus drivers per student than 10 years ago.
• In all, the number of school-based FTEs is up 202%, and the number of non-school-based FTEs is up 225%.

I'm just giving you some numbers here, not judgements. I caution anyone against making across-the-board judgements about the LCPS budget based on these numbers. I don't think they say much about our current needs, but they do show how our system has evolved over time.

On Tuesday night we first have a regular business agenda, and then we will continue the process of ammending the Superindendent's proposed budget. Salaries will be the first item to consider, and then we will get into the individual departments. Finally we will take up matters of land acquisition, construction and renovations. There will likely be another session on Thursday evening and possibly another on Saturday. Then we will pass the budget as ammended and submit it to the Board of Supervisors for funding.

I'll write more about the budget as the week goes on. It is my sense that when the budget is less of a mystery, it receives more support from the public and ultimately the Board of Supervisors.

Lending Space to the County

I got an interesting memo recently addressed from Jay Snyder, Loudoun County Director of General Services to County Administrator Kirby Bowers regarding "Use of Office Space in the School Administration Building." In it, Mr. Snyder responds to a question from Supervisor Lori Waters about placing some County Agency offices in the school administration building. Some excerpts:

When the School Administration Building was designed and constructed, dedicated space was included for the County to establish a redundant computer center.

Some growth space was included in the design of the [LCPS Admin] building to accomodate staff increases. However, since occupancy of the building in 2005 the Central Office programs have grown and the building is currently fully occupied. No additional space is available to support County agencies.

The availability of space for the redundant computer center at the School Administration Building does reduce the County's reliance on leased space... The County, by using the space in the School Administration Building, is avoiding at least $180,000 in lease costs in FY08.

I didn't know any of this before reading the memo, found it interesting, though you might too.

FY09 Growth and Funding

There was much consternation over the mid-December presentation by the County budget staff that the incoming Board of Supervisors was facing a $251M budget shortfall in the new year (Loudoun Connection, WTOP, Washington Post, Leesburg Today, Loudoun Times). With the school budget making up the vast majority of the budget, it is obviously incumbent upon the School Board to work together to spend carefully on our needs. But let's have a second look at the $251M budget shortfall, shall we?

If I read the story correctly,

• $18M is from fewer taxes collected in FY08 than expected
• $49M is from a lower than anticipated fund balance for FY08. Fund balance is leftover money at the end of the year, right? So basically, the current Board spent $49M of the new Board's money.
• $53M is due to lower property values, meaning that if you & I pay the same taxes we paid last year, this much goes away.

Now, although the superintendent's proposed budget has a $110.9M increase, much of that comes from State, Federal and other funds. A total of $80.1M would come from local funds. This is a 16% increase over the previous year. We all know that in addition to inflation, the growth of our student population pushes the budget ever higher. Next year we anticipate a 6% increase in the number of students.

Still, a reasonable person would ask "What is the cost of inflation and enrollment increases alone?" Supervisor Jim Burton put this very question on the table, and the LCPS budget staff provided a response.

FY08 Cost Per Pupil: $12,751
CPI (BLS Oct 2007): 3.00%
CPP increased based on CPI: $13,134
Projected enrollment increase: $3,270
FY09 increase due to CPI and Enrollment: $42,950,000

A reasonable person would then ask "Why does LCPS have an increase so much higher than the rate of inflation?" Here's why:

• This number assumes that our employees will make no more next year then they did last year... no increases for seniority and additional experience, even just the cost of inflation. I know that at my job I'm hoping for a raise this year, and a raise that outpaces inflation. So do our teachers, bus drivers, coaches and custodians.
• The price of everything doesn't increase equally. The CPI does not include the cost of fuel or health insurance which both increase dramatically more than 3% per year and make up a significant part of our non-salary budget.
• We will open three new schools in FY09. It costs more to open a new school than it does to operate an existing one. New textbooks and supplies, principals and maintenance folks operating for six months before the school opens, increased maintenance costs as the building grounds are settled in to service, the expense of inprocessing 3,270 new students... these all add up to much more than the cost of an existing school and a total of $3.2M for LCPS in FY09.
• Need for services grow at different rates. For instance, there is strong growth this year in the number of ESL students, who require more teachers per pupil and therefore disproportionately affect the budget. The cost for special education increases annually at a rate that outpaces the general population as well.
  
• Past needs were put off and need to be caught up. For instance, in the FY08 budget we cut the number of schools getting new computers by half. To make up for this, the FY09 budget has a 50% higher cost to purchase new computers in order to play catch up. Similarly, in order to come under the FY08 budget several new administrative positions were unfilled for the first half of the year. Therefore their salaries only counted for half of the FY08 budget but will count fully for FY09 budget.

If you want to see the specific numbers for the proposed budget, read the Executive Summary. They are your schools and your taxes, take some time to find out where that money goes. I especially recommend page 12, "Operating Budget Expenditure Increases."

In upcoming posts I'll look at the history of LCPS enrollment, staffing and budget increases in more detail.

If you're really ambitious, you can download the full proposed budget here.

Budget Tools and Indicators

It is budget season, and I am awash in numbers. It is difficult to comprehend the significance of any one number all by itself. Fortunately we have two effective tools for putting each number in context. First is the LCPS budget document itself, which provides historical information for key budget metrics. I'll use that extensively in future posts as I ponder the Superintendent's proposal.

Next is the Washington Area Boards of Education budget guide, which provides comparisons between our district and others in the Washington area. It is an apples-to-apples comparison of many key budget areas, and not just in strict dollars and cents. For instance, did you know that Loudoun has the lowest percentage of students learning English as a second language of any school district in the Washington Metro region? We're at 8.2%... Manassas city has a staggering 27.5%.

I'm going to use the WABE guide to highlight some key budget metrics today, and in future posts I'll get more into LCPS budget trends. The numbers I'm using today are from the current (FY2008) school year, and not for the proposed budget year currently under consideration.

State & Federal Funding: Loudoun receives just 1.6% of its funding from the Federal Government, less than every other DC-area county. This is no doubt a reflection of our high median income. One would think that would hold true also for state funding, but
we receive a higher percentage of our school funding (22.8%) from the state than Alexandria, Arlington, Falls Church or Montgomery County.

Student/Teacher ratios: Loudoun isn't remarkable in the area for its student/teacher ratios. We're in the middle of the pack for K-6 education at 22 kids per teacher: more than Alexandria, Falls Church and Montgomery, fewer than Fairfax and Prince William. We have fewer kids per middle school teacher (21.6) than any other jurisdiction but Prince William (18.9). In High School we have more kids per teacher with our 25.9:1 ratio than all but Montgomery and Fairfax counties. There are additional students/classroom numbers that reflect the same middle-of-pack status in other ways.

Cost per pupil: This is the big metric that everybody looks to, as if all the answers were in this one number. In FY08 our cost is $12,751 per student. This is 6th out of the 10 metro DC jurisdictions. Prince William, Prince George and Manassas spend less. My colleague Dr. Guzman from Sugarland Run thinks this number should also reflect capital costs, but I disagree.

Teacher Salaries: These are more difficult to compare than one would think. Each municipality has a different contract length (192-200 days, Loudoun has 197). Each rewards advanced degrees and longevity differently. The key recruiting benchmark is typically for a first-year teacher with a BA degree. In FY08 we pay $43,065, behind Fairfax, Prince George and Montgomery Counties. There is an interesting chart in the WABE guide showing comparative salary and benefit costs of a teacher making $60,000 per year. Loudoun ranks third out of 10 districts at $86,436.

Local funding: One area where Loudoun stands out from all of its neighbors is the percentage of the General Fund disbursed to schools (meaning how much of your property tax dollar goes to schools instead of something else). A whopping 72.5% of Loudoun's local tax dollars go to schools. Our closest competitors? Montgomery County at 61.1% and 52.1% for Fairfax. Everyone else is below 50%. Why is this? Some folks will tell you that it's because our schools are overfunded, but I think the preceding facts dispute that. I think it's that we have a very high proportion of young families in our community and that we spend less on other areas of our county budget (law enforcement, social services, parks & recreation) than our neighbors.

So to sum up, in comparison to the average neighboring jurisdiction we pay our teachers more, have about the same number of kids per class, get less federal funding, pay more locally to schools than other services and yet spend less per student.

That's enough for one day, don't you think?

Start of a New Term

From Edmund Burke, in a speech to the Electors of Bristol, November 3, 1774.

Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

My worthy colleague says, his will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If government were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior. But government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate, and another decide; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments?

To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience,--these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.