Dr. Charles Cummins / Report Card on Education
Schenectady, NY: 2006-06-04
School budgets keep going up and voters in some communities keep voting them down. When this happens, school administrators have a problem. If they agree to trim the proposed budget, voters will feel it clearly contained excesses and understandably wonder if even more cuts are possible. If the administration refuses then the district goes on a contingency budget. This contingency budget contains certain cuts mandated by state law: usually involving busing, sports and some other “non-academic” areas.
That’s rather cleverly–or awkwardly–stated. The contingency budget, with lots of loopholes and lots of exceptions, caps the increase in spending. That’s mandated. While districts frequently cut sports and other non-academic areas, cuts in these areas aren’t mandated. School boards have substantial leeway in deciding which cuts to make. However, the administrative component of a contingency budget cannot exceed the cap.
Some school budget critics at this point will point out that a contingency budget saves taxpayers little because most of the budget goes for teacher’s salaries. Well, that’s partly true.
Most of a school district’s budget goes for salaries; salaries for teachers, administrators, bus drivers, school lunch personnel, custodians, guidance counselors, librarians, safety officers, grounds keepers, psychologists, computer specialists, secretaries, substitutes and aides. And I’m sure I missed other people important to the successful and safe operation of a school.
Schools are labor intensive. Approximately 80 percent of a school district budget goes for salaries.
This is not unusual when you think about it. It takes people to run a school, to run a hospital, to get a television show on the air, to publish a newspaper, to provide timely banking services, to make a movie and to provide our communities with adequate police or fire protection.
People’s services cost money. The more training their job requires, the more money they want. The more dangerous their job, the more money they want. The more important their job is to the community, the more money they can command.
That last statement isn’t generally true. In the private sector, it doesn’t matter how important your job is, the salary is “set” by free market forces. For example, paramedics are extremely important. They are the first responders to life and death tragedies. How much do you think they can “command” for such an important job? Part-time paramedics earn “$8 an hour in Schenectady - the same as the clerk at, your local gas station, at the grocery, or fast-food restaurant!”It’s only in the public sector, where compensation is set by politics and power, that the importance of one’s job “commands” a higher salary. But, exactly who doesn’t have an important job? Can schools run without cooks, janitors, secretaries or bus drivers? Every job is important.
It is true that approximately 80 percent of a school district’s budget goes for salaries and will not change whether voters approve the budget or not. Whether they are nurses, police personnel, teachers or bus drivers, the salaries they receive derive from the terms of a negotiated contract. These contracts are not subject to the voting whims of the public.
There’s a keen psychological insight into the attitude of school administrators. Your duty to oversee school spending through elections is perceived as being based on mere “whims.”Let’s assume that’s true. Presumably farmers have important jobs. You have to eat, don’t you? Their incomes–substantially less than educators, especially on an hourly basis–are based on the mere whims of the weather (with occasional disaster relief). The incomes of autoworkers, steel workers and others are based on the mere whims of consumers who prefer to buy substantially similar goods produced overseas at substantially lower costs. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find any private sector job where compensation isn’t “regulated” by one whim or another.
And even if voters’ judgments are “whims,” these are the “whims” of those who pay the bills. Why should these “whims” count any less than the “whims” of school board members and self-interested teachers and administrators? (Few complain about the salaries of other employees).
But Cummins is simply wrong to imply that voters can’t have a direct impact on employee compensation, even though as a matter of current practice they can’t. School districts around the country have wised up and decided to put the education of students ahead of protecting the compensation of educators. They have written contracts that make raises contingent on the level of state funding and/or on the passing of tax levies. If the money doesn’t come in, it’s not student services and programs that get cut first, it’s the negotiated increases in salaries and benefits. Typically, increases above the rate of inflation are pared back to be in line with the rate of inflation, or slightly below it. Then, if more needs to be cut from the budget, other items are considered. This is fair to the students, the communities and the employees. They get their shot at a higher compensation but only if the money comes in–the iron law of the private sector.
Cummins says nothing about this. He just leads you to believe that the public must accept the premise that they are utterly powerless. It’s true the public can’t alter the terms of the contract, but it’s completely false that the contract must be written in a way that protects salaries and benefits when school budgets fail or when state funding falls.
That annoys some people and I understand why. For one thing, voters ask why are we voting on this budget if our vote affects so little of it.
My answer is this: Imagine what school budgets might be if they were not made public and made subject to voter approval?
People get involved when school taxes get too far out of line. Voters put pressure on the school board and school administrators. This public pressure even puts negotiating units on notice that voters will not accept runaway salaries. Leaders among the budget critics often end up running for the school board on a promise of fiscal accountability. And that is good.
Don’t you wish we could exercise the same direct influence over other budgets that result in higher taxes?
No, and I’ll tell you why. The whole process is a charade that most voters skip. No part of state or local spending, with the possible recent exception of Medicaid, has consistently risen faster than school spending over the decades. This suggests that even though voters don’t have a vote on these other budgets, the processes in place are more effective in controlling costs than the process used to control increases in school spending. Who would want more of a process that produces the fastest increases in spending? Maybe Cummins wishes for direct voting on other budgets, but I say, “Be careful what you wish for.”Educators have seen to it that laws have been passed to completely trivialize the power of your vote. In other states, a “no” vote means “no increase in taxes.” The school gets what it’s getting and no more. But in NY, a “no” vote is always a “yes” vote to increase spending, albeit at a slower pace than desired by the whims of administrators. If we had the right to vote on other budgets, you can be absolutely certain that the same fate would await “no” votes in these elections. NY has essentially outlawed “no” votes on school budgets, which is why lots of people choose not to vote at all.
Let’s not blame everything on higher personnel salaries, though. School budgets are also affected by higher fuel costs, ever rising equipment replacement costs (have you priced a new school bus lately?), equipment repair costs, and building maintenance, just to name a few costly items in a budget.
These have an impact, but it is extremely small. For example, fuel is only 7/1000ths of S-G’s budget. Even if the price of fuel doubles, its impact is less than a 1% increase in taxes. Nothing impacts school spending like salary and benefits because they are around 80% of the budget. Just look at this graph from Scotia-Glenville, where the 1996-97 budget was $24,591,514 and the 2006-07 budget is $42,010,399 for 150 fewer students:
Mandated programs and mandated testing require space, equipment and personnel. Security cameras and metal detectors cost big bucks — plus personnel to monitor and maintain them. The cost of providing after-school programs or supervision for children is passed on to the public. Every accident or disruptive incident today requires an investigation and mounds of paper work — by someone on the school staff.
And therein lies the justification for imposing fees for disciplinary services.
Accelerated programs, enrichment programs or advanced placement programs are wonderful. But we must not forget that these programs are often in addition to existing programs. That means, they require additional space, equipment, and special staff training. Your tax dollars at work, as the highway department likes to remind us in a road-repair zone.
Schools are big business. They often have the largest payroll of any employer in a given community. That means they are often the largest employer of local people in a given community.
As I said before, schools are labor intensive. They require many people to discharge their responsibility to the students they serve. But they also serve the community and, like it or not, generally reflect the values and expectations of that community.
Schools are labor intensive. But that has nothing to do with deciding what the level of compensation should be. Private school educators earn lots less than public school educators. Public schools are labor intensive around the entire country, but educator costs in other states are well below NY’s even after adjusting for living costs. Cummins is making excuses, if not intentionally misleading you.It’s also true that schools generally reflect the values and expectations of the community. But there’s one huge exception to that, and it’s educator compensation. I’ve done two surveys on teacher salaries in Scotia-Glenville with nearly identical results. 70% of respondents believe teachers should earn at least 10% less than they currently earn.
Why aren’t community expectations being reflected here? Because the system has been legally engineered to produce bidding wars between communities for educators, which artificially drive up costs. Combine that with ironclad contracts that put adult entitlements ahead of students’ interests and you have a system intentionally designed not to reflect community values and expectations when it comes to compensation. In fact, the system is designed to twist people’s arms.
And Cummins talks about all this as if these conditions are irrevocable laws of nature that cannot be changed by any human power. It’s completely false.
If you feel your local school budget is out of line, you may be right. The way to find out — and possibly correct the matter — is to get involved in school functions or school committees and make your feelings known. Your local school board would love to hear your suggestions BEFORE next year’s budget vote.
Attend a few board of education meetings and find out what is going on, why and who is paying for it. Then speak up. Voice your opinion. Don’t wait until the budget vote to share your wisdom.
What a hypocrite! Cummins spent the entire article telling you why nothing can be done–why your “whims” don’t count–and now he’s telling you to attend school board meetings and voice your opinion. With the exception of school board members and some school staff members, few people in the entire country have attended more school board meetings than I have. I can tell you that you can spend hours, weeks and years at school board meetings and never have the first clue about what’s really going on. Board members look at secret documents, make cryptic comments, and cast their votes. They are especially careful not to mention anything that could be used to detract from their goals.If you really want to know what’s going on, you have to obtain every document you can via the freedom of information law, and you have to study education law and regulations. Then you’ll have a fair chance of interpreting the cryptic discussions of school boards, but you won’t understand all of it because there’ll always be some recent information you won’t have that greatly impacts the nature of the decisions being made.
Now, who has the time to do that? Beyond that, no one walks into a $40-million-or-more operation, watches a few public meetings, and develops the “wisdom” needed to make practical suggestions about spending practices. Cummins knows that. He just wants you to believe you can have an impact because the more you believe it the less likely you are to seek fundamental change in the laws that dramatically diminish the impact of public opinion. Only on rare occasions does a community member’s opinion have even the slightest impact, or an impact any where close to the impact of the opinions of school insiders.
There are a couple of other reasons why Cummins wants you to voice your opinion at school board meetings. First, he hopes that having a say will psychologically deflate your motivation to campaign against school budgets or to vote against them. Second, he knows that responses like “Nobody else has complained” sound legitimate when aimed at individual opinions. You can’t claim that nobody else is complaining when a school budget is defeated.
Is trimming a school budget easy? As a practical matter, no. But it could be much easier except the powerful and self-interested forces of administrators and teachers have absolutely no intention of letting that happen. Consequently, they flaunt their credentials and write lots of articles telling you there’s not much that can be done, reinforcing the educators’ most dependable companion–the myth of helplessness. Don’t you believe it.
When it comes to disagreements with educators, there’s only one thing they respect–power. Either political power or legal power. Otherwise, you’re just a gadfly or a critic, and that’s true even for the administrators and teachers who live outside the pertinent geographical area. I’ve run for school board seven times without winning, but the closer I come to winning, the more intently the insiders listen to what I am saying. You can make all the speeches and all the Internet comments you want. As former Scotia-Glenville school board member Dan Magruder has said, “You just don’t show up at a meeting, make your speech, and expect things to change. It doesn’t work that way.”
Don’t I know it! Cummins knows it, too.
