Gentlemen...start your checkbooks!

The state's July 1 estimates of equalized aid figures were released today.
Good news for Sun Prairie; not so good for most others.

Last year district administration guessed way too high (aid was $730K less than projected).
This year, they guessed way too LOW.
(Do you suppose, like Goldilocks, next year they might hit the target????  At least within a county or so?)


Estimates from our financial advisors back in March suggested a $1.4M increase in aid over 2011-12.
Actually, the aid estimate for 2012-13 is $3.84M more than 2011-12.

THAT, people, HUGE.
Only 12 (of 426) school districts have a larger %increase in equalized aid.
Only FOUR districts will receive a larger DOLLAR increase over last year.

But don't be planning on a reduction in your property taxes....
You know this district...
if they have money, they'll spend it.
Hell...even if they DON'T have it they'll spend it.

What will they do with $3.84M?  Hell..they could give everyone an 8% raise.

It is, after all, other people's money.

http://www.dpi.wi.gov/sfs/pdf/July1_aid_est_summary_pct.pdf

District Gets $270K More State Aid Than Expected...Likely None for the Taxpeyers

The final state aid allotments were released today.
Sun Prairie will now receive $30,805,167 (a 5.42% decrease over last year), which is $267,732 more than the estimate released July 1 ($30,537,435). That's $268,000 more to spend .... OR ... they could reduce the tax levy by that amount.

Which do you think is going to happen??

 Of course, by our calculations there's an additional $200-$300,000 over-budgeted due to 20% lower new enrollment than expected. ...and we haven't heard the final tallies on open enrollment. There's usually a reason why we DON'T hear about something.

Our estimate is that there's another $200,000 as an expense (kids transferring out) that didn't happen...which means another $200K of fluff in the budget.

Last but not least....we still see at least $300K of fluff in the other lines of the general budget. Add it all up and there's about $1,000,000 in the budget--and the tax levy---- that doesn't need to be there.

The district wants you to approve a tax levy of $47,087,483 on Monday night. 
We think there are better numbers out there. 
How about $46,887,483 (that reduces it $200,000) 
Or $46,809,483...that reduces it by the extra state aid we just received 
Or $46,787,483...that's a flat cut of $300,000 
Or $46,637,483...which reduces the tax levy increases from 3.5% to 2.5%


Monday is your meeting.  Give them everything they want...or send a message that they have more than enough and that YOU are hurting financially.

State Aid Cuts Out; Deeper than Expected

Yesterday the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) released its estimate of general aids to school districts.  Of course, the disclaimer on this has to be that these estimates are based on information available as of July 1, 2011, and are subject to change.

   DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION

11-12 JULY 1 ESTIMATE VS. 10-11 OCT 15 AID CALCULATION

                                                TOTAL GENERAL AID ESTIMATE
                                                                                       
                                                13    DISTRICTS THAT INCREASE             1,073,642
                                               410    DISTRICTS THAT DECREASE          -399,800,040
                                                 1    DISTRICTS WITH NO CHANGE                    0
                                                                                  =================
                                                                                                                    -398,726,39
Read them and weep.

Recall that Gov. Walker's budget called for an 8.4% decrease to school funding.
These data reflect an average decrease of 9.1%.
For a dataset this large, and with this variability, the median is a better value to focus on than the mean (average).  For the 424 school districts, the median decrease in state aid is 10.13%.  In fact 230 out of the 424 districts received a cut of exactly 10.13%.

73% of districts had their state aid slashed by MORE than the average.

Is Walker's plan really working??

Enrollment Soars...338 new SPASD students

The budget planning metric budgeted for 133 students over last years total.

At the infamous, "official", 3rd Friday count, that tally was actually 338, for a whopping grand total district enrollment of 6969.

Elementary enrollment is up 77 kids to 3072.

Of course, "they" will caution us all that these numbers are constantly in flux.  But the bottom line is that we have to take a number at some moment in time, and the official date to do so is the "3rd Friday" of the school year.

What does 338 new students mean?

1. For this year, the Revenue limit will be much higher than expected....meaning the district COULD spend much more (although they must raise the levy to do so...they don't get state aid for these "new kids" till next year).  The Revenue Limit is based on the 3-year rolling average that they talk about.

2. Next year, we will see more state aid as a result of the new kids.   Next year, we will average the Sept 2010 3rd Friday count with the January 2011 count, add summer students from summer 2010, and --VOILA! -- that number will be used to calculate how much aid we will receive next year.  No 3-year average....we're just basing everything on the prior year's data.  So...effectively, there's a delay in incoming aid.

3. Will the drums start beating to initiate planning for an 8th elementary school?  As soon as spring 2011?  Hmmm?

How much equalization aid do we get per student?

From this year's Annual Meeting Booklet, we received $28,791,625 in "equalized aid" last year.  This number was based on enrollment from 2008-09, which was 6165.   If you divide $28,791,625 by 6165, you get about $4,700 in aid per student. 

Now let's check our simplified projection.   Last year, we had 6631 students.  Using our simplified figure of $4,700 in state aid per student, we would project receiving $32,546,445 in aid THIS school year (2010-11).    Lo and behold, what figure do we see in the Annual Meeting booklet for state aid we're receiving THIS year? $32,393,942 .  That's pretty close for government work, eh folks?  Our estimate was high by about $150K (0.47%), which is less than the money Phil carries around in his "our dough" pants.

The bottom line is that we constantly hear about all this wizardry about these calculations and we won't have all the information until October.  Horse puckey@!  We know last year's enrollment numbers...welll...last year.   We can estimate the amount of equalized aid based on last year.   

A note of caution:

Do we have this 100.0% 'dead-on balls accurate'?  No.  we wouldn't presume to have a perfect understanding of the way things work.  We're just a bunch of nobodies here. But we're pretty darn close.  The school district of course, will just say, "that mean blog is all wrong".

But what they will NEVER do, is publicly explain to you or anyone else WHERE it's incorrect.  Why? Because this is the stuff they do NOT want anyone to understand.  They like to wave their hands and operate under smoke and mirrors like a dime-store magician.  If you understand this stuff, then YOU become empowered...and the district is not all that keen on empowering you.

If the district REALLY wanted to do a service---and we'll offer this challenge--- then they should come up with a simplified explanation of how things work.  Not a 45 minute 50 slide dog-and-pony show, mind you, but a simplified 1-2 page explanation they can post on the website.

Geee...wouldn't that just smack of community service?