To discover any person or group's true priorities, watch where the money goes.
Sadly, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education continues to define itself by a poorly developed budget that places the highest priority on preserving the status quo at SMMUSD's 16th Street headquarters. Reduced state and federal funding means that cuts have to be made somewhere. In our district the classroom -- the heart of education -- is starting to suffer.
The root of the problem lies in SMMUSD's automatic, mechanical budgeting system. Administrators and the school board simply base budgeting decisions on the previous year's funding level in each category. That method assumes the previous year's funding level is still justified, regardless of any financial or operational changes that may have occurred during the year, or over-budgeting that may have occurred in prior years. The result: departments receiving excessive funding continue receiving it, year after year.
Zero-based budgeting requires financial decision makers to justify expenditures each fiscal year, for all or selected categories. If SMMUSD used zero-based budgeting on non-classroom budget categories, excesses would be found, and the funds could be diverted back to the classroom.
How can I make this claim? After studying the SMMUSD budget and budgets of comparable districts, I have already found excesses.
For the current fiscal year, even after suffering a 4.8 percent drop in revenues, SMMUSD has allocated the same funding as previous years for a number of non-classroom-related areas:
Why is the board retaining personnel recruiters and spending almost one percent of the total budget on data processing -- while class sizes are increased, our internationally renowned music program is whittled down, and many other student-serving personnel are laid off? Zero-based budgeting makes sure this type of question is raised.
Questions must be asked and answered during a public process, so the community can make sure that district leaders shift their budget priorities from district headquarters to the classroom. To keep our schools strong, the school board can't just pay lip service to a classroom focus. The board must put our money where their mouth is.
I posted a comment a few days ago, and it doesn't show unless you click on Recency or Popularity. Can you make it show like the rest of them?
Thanks,
Larry
1. On the data-processing disparity: Assuming the district's explanation is valid (although nobody has shown any documentation), we still don't know how much Las Virgenes spends on their data processors. I'm guessing it's not anywhere near $723,000, the disparity between the two districts' figures. In any case, the fact remains, the SMMUSD board didn't cut any data technicians, but it did cut teachers, librarians, nurses, and reading specialists.
2. The notion that CEPS and LEAD are school watchdog groups is hilarious. They are cheerleading squads dedicated to keeping the "SMMUSD Can Do No Wrong" myth alive, as is PTAMOM.
The truth is that SMMUSD has 86 more teachers this year than LVUSD and a student/teacher ratio over 15% lower (that's a good thing).
"recently reported numbers show the SMMUSD spending $812,293 on Centralized Data Processing vs. $89,086 spent in the comparable, neighboring Las Virgenes Unified School District"
How is this possible? It's unconscionable.
SMMUSD allocates $812,293 in its Centralized Data Processing account and $1,271,415 in its Instructional Library, Media and Technology account. LVUSD allocates $89,086 and $2,693,342 (including $817,373 for Capital Outlay), which it CFO says includes their Data Processing site-based costs. If you deduct the Capital Outlay funds the two districts spend very similar dollars on these services.
That is the absolute truth. It's a lesson I've learned in my own life, and I feel it often leads to the crux of what's wrong in education today.
I taught in Kansas City through Teach For America, and I am still stunned at how much money was wasted by district leadership.
If you fired all of the education consultants, curriculum directors, bureaucrats in redundant and pointless agencies, associate this or thats at the district office, and every other person who does not in any way affect the learning that occurs in a teacher's classroom on any given day, many school districts would be flush with millions of extra dollars.
If a child sitting in a classroom isn't directly affected by a person on the district payroll, if a person's job could be done by someone else, or if that person does something that doesn't need doing, then he needs fired ASAP.
Of course, that would mean that the people driving education policy and making decisions in most districts would be suddenly out of work...