The Tower, the Grosse Pointe South student newspaper, ran an editorial this past week taking the school board to task for not being “frugal” enough “before making salary cuts.”
As treasurer of the Board of Education for the last two years, if the public feels we haven’t been frugal or that the school board is somehow unilaterally “making salary cuts,” I want to be explicit about a few things.
First and foremost, I encourage everyone to review my presentation on the financial state of the district, accessible here but this is the “short short” version:
- As the state has cut K12 spending, our district operates annually with $9.7 million (10%) less than we did three years ago.
- State mandated retirement costs us $4 million more per year than just three years ago.
- We have reduced over 85 full time equivalent jobs in the district in three years, a 10% reduction.
- Annual non-employee costs are down annually by nearly $2 million per year from 2008 levels, having been reduced every year for the last five years.
The Tower narrative rings the tired bell that school boards and employees should fight with each other. The contracts we negotiated put an end to this kind of archaic thinking. The contracts pre-negotiated a standard by which we would operate within our means. The contracts delivered substantial benefits that came with risks.
Need I remind us all of the tableau at school board meetings while this contract was being negotiated? The rooms were filled with angry people, a large percentage of whom called the Board out for having too rich a level of fund equity. That money was to be spent on education, was the call to action. I’ve got news for you. That’s exactly where it went.
- We maintained staffing levels so as to not increase class sizes or diminish our educational program.
- We are paying on average $5,400 more per employee every year for their retirement plan than we were just three years ago. We have 875 employees, by the way.
- We funded a $3.4 million early retirement incentive that was strongly advocated for by our employees and their representatives.
- We added two new salary steps at the top end of our teacher direct compensation salary grid that delivered raises to over half of our teachers who were previously capped. Meanwhile all the others continue to progress through step and lanes.
If the Board “overspent” let it be understood that our most significant incremental investments driving fund equity down have directly benefited our current and former employees via more jobs, higher wages, and higher retirement benefits/packages.
All of the above was incredibly expensive and the main reason fund equity will drop below 10%. But even more significantly, this was all properly negotiated. In that process, the Board was skeptical of our ability to sustain these cost increases. The employee bargaining units pointed to fund equity and said, we think you can.
To break the impasse, the Board agreed to fund these requests – with this single provision: If fund equity drops below 10%, we need to take some of it back in this certain formulaic manner. And our employees overwhelmingly agreed. In this respect, the Board is not “making salary cuts” as has been charged. Rather the Board and the employee bargaining units are merely following the terms of the contract that were negotiated.
As to the charge that the Board has “no incentive” to save money recall that the Board manifested such an incentive when we were negotiating. We were deeply concerned about adding these costs, but the 10% clause provided the balance we needed as a district. This WAS the check and balance that we are now charged with “being a little off.”
In the budgeting process this year I anticipate making formal requests from the Board of our employee bargaining units to receive their cost reduction ideas. These ideas will be evaluated. I for one will look through this simple lens in doing so: Does this change make our district better? If the answer is no, I will be very skeptical.
The Tower editorial aims to remind the Board or certain Board members of their role. Here’s another reminder. The Board was elected by the citizens of this community to make our district better. This is THEIR school district. I take my responsibilities in this regard very seriously.
8 responses to “Addressing charges of out-of-control Board spending”
“The Tower narrative rings the tired bell that school boards and employees should fight with each other.” … and this is the nature of so much of what the media tends to do and it’s usually not based on a whole lot of fact but instead a whole lot of rhetoric. While kudos goes out to the Tower’s young journalists for raising questions and having a willingness to address important district issues, this will ( ideally) be a lesson in one of the primary, if not THE primary rules of journalism- due diligence. I think the idea that controversy and soaring rhetoric is what ‘makes good writing’ is sadly a product of our culture, in which one really has to weed through several layers of media dreck to find the credible news source. Lets hope our young writers ( and , ahem, editors) will continue to put out stories that DO ask tough questions, but that there is the necessary depth and nuance to the story that it deserves.
As far as the charge that the BOE ‘overspent” and somehow fell short in their duty to make responsible decisions.. having read the above financial breakdown before ( which is really very accessible to anyone who might want to read it, so it surprises me it wasn’t used as a resource for the story) I can’t imagine that anyone on either side of the aisle would disagree that the contract negotiated was nothing less then ( and I don’t throw this word around THAT much) pretty brilliant. The fund equity, which was the main point of contention as I understand it, is now beholden to the same outside-of-our-control factors as we all are in a down economy and a time of vertigo-inducing cuts from the state. Now we ALL have an investment in the district, we ALL benefit, or not, but its based on things that we never had any control over in the first place. To somehow lay the blame at the feet of the BOE when it appears they went above and beyond in a deeply demanding time period, which is a pro-bono role I might add, is just not right.
Let this be a learning experience to ALL media ( I know, yeah right) that being a journalist is an honorable, important position- people WILL believe what you put out there- you have the obligation to go above and beyond to make sure what you’re putting out there is researched, balanced and substantive.
well, if you would have read the Tower you would have realized that they said that they did not want the School Board to fight. And let’s get real, Brandon Walsh is Lynn.
Susie A.
I have much better things to do with my time than to pose planted comments under fake names. Lynn Jacobs happens to be a Woods resident who helped defeat the Michigan legislature’s efforts to force open enrollment on our schools. If I want to share my opinions, I write a blog.
Brendan
Thank you for reading our editorial in “The Tower” newspaper this week and commenting on its implications. We always appreciate readers and commentary. Our main point was to offer a balanced view of the matter, and to give our opinion about a newsworthy event impacting our school, our teachers and our community. We implied that the sooner the Board and teachers worked together, the sooner they could compromise; nowhere did we promote conflict. Here is our editorial so the community can decide for themselves.
http://www.thetowerpulse.net/?p=7583
Thanks for the reply, Tower Editorial Board. Here are a couple thoughts in response:
You chose to characterize our Board as being recklessly out of control in our spending, yet as I demonstrated in my answer, you took no time to actually identify what elements drove up the costs and therefore drove down Fund Equity. It seems to me having even a modicum of fact based knowledge is endemic to the “balanced view” to which you aspired.
Your editorial picture of the Brinks truck with money flying out the back combined with the charge that the Board is not sufficiently positioned to make good decisions contributed to the “balanced view” in what way again?
You call for “compromise” when you failed to grasp that the last contract we did WAS the compromise. The contract wasn’t a “teacher’s experiment.”
You defend yourself by saying you did not “promote conflict” yet your editorial painted the picture of a bumbling, unmotivated, unbalanced Board wasting money while teachers were victimized by these characteristics. This does promote conflict.
Hear my offer loud and clear. I will gladly spend any amount of time you would like answering your questions about any of these issues, preferably in person. The two minute phone interview was clearly inadequate in this case. Just say the word.
Hear this as well. I applaud your efforts. I applaud your coverage of this issue. I freely accept you have the freedom to write whatever opinions you wish. I just challenge you to be truly balanced in your editorial positions because in this case I think you were woefully off balance.
Brendan Walsh
After reading the Tower’s editorial, I can say that I agree completely with them. In a different section of the paper, there is two, well thought out and precisely plotted stories that show the highlights of the transparency series. Although there were no definite facts in the editorial (besides the one about you making $30 a month), it connected well with the other articles. I voted for you under the impression that you would advise the superintendents office, not use them as bureaucratic pawns in you not-so-well though out agenda.
Thanks for your comments, Gary.
To clarify, I don’t “make” $30 a meeting. I have chosen to redirect that stipend to the Latin Club at South every year of my service.
Secondly, I get this accusation all the time that I am somehow a grand puppet-master and all of the literally dozens of players affecting these outcomes is magically under my trance. Yes, it’s as preposterous as it sounds. I take a great deal of time breaking down data and refining it into information. If you and others think that by merely making these presentations I control all the strings, you’re simply mistaken.
The administration and teachers negotiated this contract that directly led to the drop in Fund Equity. No one should have been surprised, as The Tower appears to be, that Fund Equity dropped when the contract increased wages and benefit costs against a backdrop of decking state revenues. Yet now you and others somehow want to believe I am unilaterally controlling this and a result the outcome is bad.
If it makes others feel better to find a scapegoat, I am glad to be of service. But informed people know the story, and I will continue to tell it.
Brendan
Just want to reiterate that I am an actual person, who in fact did write the above comment. I will admit that having met and worked with Brendan Walsh, I have a different perspective than perhaps someone who hasn’t in that I’ve found him to be very open about the workings of the Board, and has always gone above and beyond to parse out some of the more complicated pieces of policy. What I do know about this subject is that a charge as serious as ” an out of control BOE” should be a piece that is researched, well thought out, and measured. The Tower article is not that, by any stretch. The part about “no definite facts” being presented is what should stick out here like a sore thumb.
I’m not suggesting that the Board should be impervious to criticism- however, to put forth a serious assertion based on apparently nothing ( because the facts simply don’t support the charge) is irresponsible and disappointing.