You Can Buy a Lot of Dry Erase Markers and Glue Sticks for $9,000

An astute reader writes...

" We are paying an extra $9K so that the lab table tops will match the ones bought years ago. When I toured [Washington] DC, a big deal was made about the Washington Monument having 2 different shades of granite since the Civil War interrupted construction and the original quarry closed in the interim. If slightly different shades of stone are good enough for our nation's most treasured obelisk, why is it not good enough for the Taj Mahighschool?

You can buy a lot of dry erase markers and glue sticks for 9 grand..."


What we wonder is: 
Which is more important:  spending every last dollar of referendum money matching the countertops?  Or helping the struggling community members who approved this project to begin with?

Hey, Big Spender!

They say it takes a village to raise a child.

We think they also say that it takes a lot of years to build up to a $72.3M expenditures budget.

Or not...

If one tracks the expense side of the budget ledger over the past 7 years, we see the trend of spending. Frankly, the 2010-11 budget does make a case for some degree of fiscal restraint. The degree to which expenditures are increasing over this past year, are the 2nd lowest over the past 7 budgets.

But...on the flipside...remember that despite it being the 2nd lowest increase in 7 years, it's still a $3 MILLION dollar increase.

The devil, however, is often in the details. If one looks at the expense side of the ledger in the standard "65.90" budget format, expenses fall under 3 main categories: Instruction, Support Sources, and "Non-Program Transactions". The increases in each of these "subheadings" can also be reviewed.

Kinda makes you wonder how things track on some of these sub-subheadings--like "School Building Administration", doesn't it?

Spotlighting the 2010-11 Budget

Tomorrow is the 2nd of 3 public hearings on the school district's 2010-11 budget. This is YOUR chance to speak your piece and comment on the budget. The first budget hearing had a least the appearance of being a little too...well...staged?

So to perhaps whet people's appetites, and to provide data in a format a little different than the one "spun" by district administration, we offer you this:

The net increase in budgeted expenditures of 2010-11 over this past year (2009-10) comes to $3.1 MILLION dollars. That's a figure the district doesn't highlight.

When asked about it, they usually will quickly revert to their defense posturing and blame the increase on "opening the new high school". That is quickly followed by a lot of yada yada about no school district opening a new school under the revenue limit. Hard to buy that when they also tell us that we're one of handful of schools that don't levy up to the revenue limit. Yet another statement that collapses when one looks at actual DPI data instead of taking the district's word for it.

So...$3.1 MILLION dollars in new costs. According to their own budget data, we can only see that $1.5M of those costs --slightly less than 50%---can be attributed to the new high school. So...what's behind the other $1.6M?

We call it "keeping up with the Jones". It's all tied up in food to feed that 800 lb gorilla...which is quickly gonna become a 900 lb gorilla at this rate.

This gorilla needs to be put on a diet...stat!

SP-EYE note: Yes...we don't truly KNOW what some of these costs will be, but the Administrators are "entitled" to 3.8% (just ask them). We even projected low (2.5%) for Local 60 (currently in negotiations) because the screw always gets put to Local 60. The SPEA number comes directly from the contract costing sheet provided with the contract last year. The 5% and 7% increases to health and dental premiums have been stated by the district and applied to what our CURRENT costs for 2009-10 were. We welcome data from the district to refute these numbers. Because basically, we just want to know...where exactly are we spending $3.1 M MORE dollars? Oh...and yes...those of you that do the math will see that the numbers add to 3.19M...not $3.1M. That's because OTHER parts of the budget have slight decreases built into them to accommodate the fat in the gorilla's diet.