Whose Fault Is It?

I see several comments on my posts and Facebook page that Dr. Dawkins must go.  Though I did not vote for his contract renewal, it really won't help to get a new superintendent.  It's like getting a divorce. Many times when one remarries somehow they end up with the same problems or in some cases worse.  We are still a part of the new partnership. Most Superintendents want to do what is right by the students, of course there are exceptions, but the politics with Board Members bend his/her actions all out of shape.  The superintendent put forth a Vision 20/20 Plan that reflected the lack of vision found in the self-serving attitudes of at least 7 board members.  Then last night he proposed raising the teacher/pupil ratio because he could get at least 7 board members to go along with it.  We must cut 20 million dollars. How did we get in this shape?
From the messages the Superintendent gets from the majority of the Board Members.
Here are a few from the past couple of years.

1.  Problem: We have 3 high schools in Caddo with about 300 students with a capacity for over 1000. They are all in the city, so distance to another school is not a problem.
   Solution: None of them can be closed.  These 3 high schools are represented by 3 board members.   Millions of dollars just to keep them staffed and running. This is what Vision 20/20 plan became.  Save these 3 schools by sending 7th and 8th graders there to increase enrollment and let them also get an academically unacceptable education and maybe even increase their chances of becoming a 12 year old mother.
Costs: Lives, safety, and education of our students.  Don't have money total but in the millions. Mr. Hooks and I voted, No.

2. Problem: The state is going to take over these 3 high schools because they have been listed as academically unsuccessful for 5 years. 
Solution: We can't let the state take them, so let's send the state about a million dollars a year for 5 years per school.  The state will send consultants.  Synonym for Consultants-Cronies. \
Costs: There goes around $15,000,000
Board member Tammy Phelps and I were the only 2 who voted NO.  We said, Tell the state to take them, if they think they can do better. We knew the state would not take them.  They were bluffing to get money.

3.  Problem:  A group outside the school system didn't get their grant funded this year. They do work with children in Caddo Parish.  Also, very bad problem for Dottie Bell's daughter-in-law because she works for them and she has been told she will be laid off if the school board doesn't fund them.
Solution: Superintendent says we have a budget shortfall, so we can not fund their program for them.
Dottie Bell leads the charge to get them funded.  She actually said that at the board meeting. Lawyer gets up and informs Mrs. Bell it is not legal for her to vote on this issue.
Costs:  $260,000 for 1 year and 3 months.
Board member Tammy Phelps and I were the only 2 who voted NO.  Dottie Bell abstained after she lead the charge to fund it.

4.  Problem: We have 13 schools that are labeled academically unsuccessful.
Solution:  Hire consultants (refer to synonym above).  Best consultants are from Michigan where the Superintendent is from.  The majority of board members will vote to do anything to keep these schools open.
Costs:  We spend almost twice as much money per student in these schools. $8,000,000 was spent on various consultants the past 2 years.
 I do believe I messed up and voted for several of these.  I never said I was perfect. I wanted to believe.  And we did have money, then.  But you don't after you spent it.

5.  Problem:  Our schools need to have technology upgrades.
Solution:  Get a $17,000,000 interest free loan from the Federal Government. Take $17,000,000 out of our General Fund and set it aside in a separate fund to pay back the note at $1.1 million a year.  But instead of using money from the set aside fund to pay back the loan, our Finance Director decided to take the payment for the past 2 years out of the General Fund.
Costs: $19,000,000 to our General Fund. The $17,000,000 we set aside and the 2.2 we paid back.
I have requested at every budget meeting that we use $6,000,000 to cover our budget shortfall.  I do realize this is 1 time money.

6.  Problem: Our district's enrollment has dropped a little and shifted a lot.  In some schools the classes have 10-14 in a class and in other schools there are 28-40 in a class in grades 2-12. Too many schools and too many employees in our school system as a whole.
Solution:  Revise staffing formula, in other words, increase teacher/pupil ratio. We will then have 18 students per class in the under populated schools and 33 in the crowded schools.  Remember, we can't close any high schools.  We did close 4 elementary schools. But there are at least 15 that are under populated.
Savings: $6,000,000.
Costs: But where will we increase the ratio.  Only in the already crowded schools.  You can't create students where there are none.  And because a lot of those classes are already at capacity, they will be cutting music, art, band, Advance Placement Classes, and other none core subjects. By raising the T/P ratio at the under populated schools, there will not be enough teachers allocated to fund any classes but the core subjects.  All students lose, but the over populated lose the most.

7.  Problem:   We have a $14,000,000 budget deficit. Is anyone surprised?
Solution: Let Central Office Staff prepare list of proposed lay-offs
Lay-off 300 employees all but a small number at the school sites.  Central office needs to keep all of their high paid positions. They will be needed later to propose future layoffs at school sites.  They can cut 3 secretaries.

I have several proposals that have not been proposed by our Superintendent, because he can't get 7 board members to vote for them or maybe he thinks they are bad ideas.
Mostly, I don't want to make suggestions, I just want to not cut the classrooms that have the correct number of students.  I want the Superintendent and highly trained staff to make proposals ie. cut programs (not talking about classes like art, music)  We have millions of dollars of "programs"--like stuff sitting around in your house.  Every director and supervisor has several pet programs, move funds for set aside accounts, cut the 255 staff cars and trucks, cut all consultants and MOUs with the state, etc.

1.  Close 2 high schools. Leave the middle schools alone, except Bethune.  It's been on the academically unacceptable list for the most years, with the least improvement and the most money spent on it.

2.  Open another Middle Magnet School to keep us from losing those students to private schools. 

Explains how his leadership has caused most of  LA crisis?

3.  Roll forward the property taxes.  Collecting an additional $6,000,000 of taxes due the school board each year.  Problem is the property tax payers' children are in the over crowded schools and see that the school board wasted a lot of money already.

4.  Go to 4 day school week.  Estimated to save about 5% of our budget.  That's $17,000,000.

5.  Vote for a new Governor (anybody but Jindal) who supports public education and is not always cutting our funding and blackmailing us to hire his friends as consultants. We've already hired enough of our own. (I know that is not funny-it's true.)

If all else fails, get the hell out of Caddo Parish School System and make 2 new school districts called North Caddo and East Caddo.

Take This Budget and Shove........not down MY Throat

The School Board in the past 2 months has received about a dozen possible ideas from the Superintendent that would reduce our 14-20 million dollar deficit depending how you look at it.
1. Eliminate busing for High School Students
2. Eliminate busing for Magnet School Students
3. Freeze all employee salaries
4. Vision 2020 which closed and combined small inter-city elementary schools
5. Vision 2020 which combined middle schools with 4 underpopulated and underachieving High Schools
6. Increasing the teacher/pupil ratio or actually changing the staffing formula used to staff schools
7. Reduce Central Office personnel
8. Reduce Central Office out of state travel by 50%
9. Reassess the use of school vehicles by staff
10. Delay purchase of new buses
11. Eliminate the $200 teaching supply money allocated for each teacher

We have been given our projected costs for next year, but just dollar amounts not specifics.  When they talk about reducing staff in Central Office, they give a total amount of dollars saved by cutting x number of jobs. But what are the exact positions we will cut to save those dollars?  Well, we had 2 budget work sessions last week which amounted to a total of 4 hours wasted on vague numbers and ideas. Some ideas may not even be legal.  Most are not educationally sound.  Prior to this superintendent, we started the budget process in February.  Each year since Dr. Dawkins has been here, it has moved later and later.  This year, it was the middle of April before we had the first worthless budget work session.  But from Dr. Dawkins' point of view it is not worthless.  I really believe he is a  genius in psychology.  It is a game of pretending to provide information with a lot of made up numbers, wearing us out with fruitless meetings, asking us to write down our requests for information and never answering them, and finally we've run out of time--it must be passed tonight!

Tonight was a regular work session for our voting meeting on May 17th.  When I looked online at the agenda this weekend and last night, there were actually just routine type items.  Not much to work on.  But as I was driving, I got a call that there was a special session with requested revision to our staffing formula. Of course, when I sat down at my station before the meeting was called to order, I began to have dialogue with myself and anyone that might be listening, that it isn't legal to spring this on us.  I actually don't know when the special session was put on line, but I didn't get an e-mail from the secretary telling us about the special meeting.  Anyway, the board president over heard my fussing and told me that it was pulled until the meeting on May 17th.  Putting it on the agenda was an accident--does anyone believe that?

Yes, my darling son, Paxton is playing the cello.

But that is almost as bad, but of course not really.  The new tactic is for us to vote on policies rather than budget items.  If we revise (increase) our teacher/pupil ratio, we will have approved a major budget item.  I was very vocal against this. And I also said that I want all items like this addressed in the budget not as a policy.  There is nothing wrong with our current policy.  
The change is purely to reduce the deficit by putting more students in the classrooms and eliminating art, music and other electives.

When board member, Barry Rachel, said quite clearly that he does not want to eliminate music, the superintendent quickly chimed in that he also did not want to.  But of course, that is a play with words.  I spoke out, that while no one wants to eliminate the arts and enrichments, that is exactly what happens when the staffing formula is revised this way. There will not be enough staff allocated to hire teachers for music, band, art and other electives.

So tonight I wrote a list of 7 items on which I want information that could affect our budget. Board member, Curtis Hooks looked at my list and asked me was I just doing handwriting practice. Actually, we are just passing time until that finally board meeting when it will be critical to pass the SURPRISE budget--you know the real stuff that we will get Monday afternoon before the voting meeting Tuesday.  There are always 7 board members who have been lulled to sleep and just want to get it over with.