Help Save Our Small Schools!
On November 17, 2010 at the school board meeting, Superintendent Trani announced that we will be entering the 2011-2012 fiscal year $575,000 in the negative. This is explained by:
A. The Public Employees Retirement System will be increasing their cost 6% which will add $145,000 to the Corbett School Districts cost.
B. Planned increase in Purchase Services/ supplies by 8% for $58,000.
C. Teachers are paid based on the Step they are on which increases with years they have taught and increased education. There will also be a rate increase for Certified and Classified personnel for an estimated cost of $100,000.
D. Stimulus funding disappears ($98,000).
E. Fed Edu Job Funds disappears ($173,000)
D and E may reappear in a different form should the money be available from the feds.
Three options were presented at the meeting to the School Board members.
1. Cut music, coaches, travel, etc
2. Merge with Reynolds district
3. Year round school coupled with adding another charter
Option 3 was explained at year round school with Red group going Five weeks, then Black group going Five weeks. Then switching to red group going two weeks, black group two weeks, then before AP testing two days on, two days off.
There is also a large push to floating a $1,000,000 loan to upgrade the Springdale school and turning that into a charter building or moving the Middle school kids down there and running the increased Charter/Corbett High School out of the existing buildings. The papers state Bond on them that would require a vote of the people, but the explanation was it would be a Loan and no vote would be required.
The plan is to bring another 300 high school students into the area as Charter to cover the added cost.
One of the Board Members suggested it be put to the People that you either pass the next bond in March, or your kids go to Reynolds. So, I am asking for the Community to get involved in figuring out ways to cut expenses and increase monies into the Corbett schools.
I have been reading the budget statements for the 2009-2010 school year (this years information was just zero’s so far) and I am finding that during that year we spent:
Capital Improvements $670,212
and maintenance This is 40,801 over budget. Can we find people who will review the bids, the costs, any over runs? What did we get?
Overtime: $268,946 Teachers spend 148 days in front of students
3 in-service days/3 student & departmental assessment days
2 parent/teacher conference days
3 class prep days/ 5 paid holidays = 164 contract days
Teachers receive comp pay for all assigned curriculum projects outside normal working hours at $30/hr.
Classified employees get overtime at 1.5 on anything over 40 hours.
Where is the overtime going? Is it for teachers, classifieds, administration? It’s a lot of money!
AP Testing $48,000 Of the 748 tests given, 25% passed
CSD meeting Cost of test not passed: $36,000
7/28/2010 Or cost of passed test: $256.68 per test
AP exams 2011 $61,760 Projecting 965 AP Exams this year
Should we continue to pay for the exams out of the school
budget? Corbett is the only district in Oregon that pays for AP exams according to the Oregon Department of Education. Rating in the Newsweek magazine is based on number of exams Taken, not Passed, divided by the number of graduating Seniors. Class of 2011 has approximately 42 Seniors based on the last figures I saw. You can find more information by going to:
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/13/america-s-best-high-schools-faq.htmlFood Service $193,424 This is $19,302 higher than budgeted
Supplies were $134,350 How can we trim this number? Can we
reduce spoilage by buying pre-packaged fruit
cups, yogurt, salads? Can we see the bids for supplies?
Audit for 2009/2010 $7,630 CSD staff must pull together numbers. Should have in place from previous year and not have to reinvent the wheel, but appears to be causing a problem at the
District office.
New audit proposal $47,240 Talbot, Korvola & Warwick LLP
Offer discount of $18,740 to show partnership (one time?)
Final cost to district: $28,500
Let’s look at this closely
Cut school days $18,000 per day It was suggested by Dr. Trani that we might suggest cutting school days, at a reduction in expenses of $18,000 a day. Many Districts are going to this as a way to meet budgets. Based on needing kids getting instruction of 900 hours a year, my numbers show we could easily cut 10 days off the year without running into problems with the State. Maybe on weeks we have a holiday we could just not have school that Friday and spread the time out over the year.
How do we bring money into the District?
Special Education students are funded at Two times the weight of a non-exceptional student. (American Research Institute). We are running 42 students as needing IEP assistance, which counts for 84 kids. Or, at $5,496 per student, an additional $230,832 to the District.
There are other students who could also use assistance. Let’s inform parents that you can put in writing a request (by law you can do verbal but just to keep your records, I suggest in writing) to have your student tested and within 30 days the school must comply. This is a Federal Law and we receive funding for it, and your child will benefit!
Reduced/free lunch program. Guess what?! We get funding for each student who qualifies, whether they use the service or not. If I’m reading the paperwork correctly, each student counts as a additional .25 of a student. At the General fund rate of $5,496 per student, this comes to an extra $1,374 per student. That means that if we sign up another 15 students to the free/reduced lunch program, we could have covered the over budget cost of the Food Service in 2009-2010!
Parents, don’t say your kid eats at the CCM so why do the paperwork. Don’t say you send a lunch so why do the paperwork. FILL OUT THE PAPERWORK AND TURN IT IN! If we got an additional 124 students to qualify that would bring in $170,376.
Contact your State Senators! Ask them if its possible to get a waiver on the rural school distance portion of the budget. There are approximately 7,700 households in Corbett, (2000 Census) let’s flood them with e-mails, Senators Merkley and Wyden need to hear from us. Send them to Kitzhaber too, he ran on the Education platform!
If you need copies of the budget, monthly expenses, hand-outs from the school board meetings, etc, you can contact Dr. Randy Trani at:
rtrani@corbett.k12.or.us . Once that is all on line at Corbett School District we will be able to pull up the information ourselves, but for now, request, request, request and educate yourself!
I am asking everyone to come to the Board meetings if you can. The next one is December 15, 2010 at 7:30 in the Grade School. Bring a couple of ideas to cut expenses or increase income and sign up to present them to the Board.
Let’s Keep Our Schools Small, and our Education in our hands.
Victoria Purvine
ghpurvine@aol.comI do think we should look into upgrading the Springdale school, but I think it needs to be done without the push behind it for bringing more kids into the District. I believe this idea needs to have community involvement, take the time to get the information instead of rushing it, and let the community decide what they want. I heard suggestions of making it more towards educating the kids of Corbett, with classes like Shop, Mechanics, Culinary, Computers, etc. Not another College Prep School. I think that is a wonderful idea. Expensive, but wonderful. But let’s give the Board input about slowing things down, involving us before the plans are drawn up (and they are being drawn up already and the company is looking for another $15,000 to go forward.)
My information is pulled from the 2009/2010 budget, teachers contract with CSD, classified contract with CSD, school board meetings minutes, COSA website under financial information, open book section. (Compare our district with other districts that are compatible in size)
