schoolinfosystem.org
Greg David: Those are the major conclusions of a new report on the system called “Footing the Bill,” released Monday by the Community Service Society and the Progress and Poverty Institute, aligning those two progressive groups with fiscal organizations like the Citizens Budget Commission and real estate groups like the Real Estate Board of New […]
Melanie Asmar: The document, called the Budget Transparency Guidebook, details how the state’s largest school district spends the $10,806 it budgets for each of its 92,600 students. Most of that money – $6,854 per student – goes directly to schools to spend as they see fit. The rest – $3,952 per student – is spent […]
Yevgeny Feyman, via a kind reader: Last year, as part of a contract deal with the teachers’ union, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he and the city’s unions had agreed to cut $3.4 billion in worker health-care costs over four years. Even with these “savings,” though, Gotham’s health-insurance spending is projected to grow 6 […]
State lawmakers on Friday approved a bill that would allow school districts to borrow as much as $1 billion without voter approval, but a spokesman for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said the measure would most likely be vetoed.
Without advance notice and with little debate, the bill won Senate approval late Thursday night, several days after the legislative session had been scheduled to end. The Assembly passed the measure Friday afternoon, and the governor’s office then took the unusual step of publicly opposing the legislation moments after its passage, effectively dooming it.
Elizabeth Lynam, deputy research director at the Citizens Budget Commission, a business-backed group that generally favors lower spending, described the bill as one of the worst things the Legislature had done this session.
Superintendent Dan Nerad, 74K PDF:
Attached to this memorandum you will find the Fall Revised Budget version of the 2010-11 Citizen’s Budget. The Citizen’s Budget is intended to present financial information to the community in a format that is more easily understood. The first report includes 2009-10 Revised Budget, 2010-11 Revised Budget and groups expenditures into categories outlined as follows:
- In-School Operations
- Curriculum & Teacher Development & Support
- Facilities, Other Than Debt Service
- Transportation
- Food Service
- Business Services
- Human Resources
- General Administration
- Debt Service
- District-Wide
- MSCR
The second report associates revenue sources with the specific expenditure area they are meant to support. In those areas where revenues are dedicated for a specific purpose (ie. Food Services) the actual amount is represented. In many areas of the budget, revenues had to be prorated to expenditures based on percentage that each specific expenditure bears of the total expenditure budget. It is also important to explain that property tax funds made up the difference between expenditures and all other sources of revenues. The revenues were broken out into categories as follows:
- Local Non-Tax Revenue
- Equalized & Categorical State Aid
- Direct Federal Aid
- Direct State Aid
- Property Taxes
Both reports combined represent the 2010-11 Fall Revised Citizens Budget. This report can also be found on the District’s web site.
TJ Mertz comments on Monday evening’s Madison School Board 2010-2011 budget discussion (video – the budget discussion begins about 170 minutes into the meeting). The discussion largely covered potential property tax increases. However and unfortunately, I’ve not seen a document that includes total revenue projections for 2010-2011.
The District’s Administration’s last public total 2009-2010 revenue disclosure ($418,415,780) was in October 2009.
Property tax revenue is one part of the MMSD’s budget picture. State and Federal redistributed tax dollars are another big part. The now dead “citizens budget” was a useful effort to provide more transparency to the public. I hope that the Board pushes for a complete picture before any further substantive budget discussions. Finally, the Administration promised program reviews as part of the “Strategic Planning Process” and the recent referendum (“breathing room”). The documents released to date do not include any substantive program review budget items.
Ed Hughes (about 190 minutes): “it is worth noting that evening if we taxed to the max and I don’t think we’ll do that, the total expenditures for the school District will be less than we were projecting during the referendum“. The documents published, as far as I can tell, on the school board’s website do not reflect 2010-2011 total spending.
Links to Madison School District spending since 2007 (the referendum Ed mentioned was in 2008)
- 2009-2010 $418,415,780
- Proposed 2008-2009 $367,806,712 budget
- 2007-2008 $339,685,844 Citizen’s Budget
- 2006-2007 $333,101,865 Citizen’s Budget
It would be great to see a year over year spending comparison from the District, including future projections.
Further, the recent “State of the District” document [566K PDF] includes only the “instructional” portion of the District’s budget. There are no references to the $418,415,780 total budget number provided in the October 26, 2009 “Budget Amendment and Tax Levy Adoption document [1.1MB PDF]. Given the organization’s mission and the fact that it is a taxpayer supported and governed entity, the document should include a simple “citizen’s budget” financial summary. The budget numbers remind me of current Madison School Board member Ed Hughes’ very useful 2005 quote:This points up one of the frustrating aspects of trying to follow school issues in Madison: the recurring feeling that a quoted speaker – and it can be someone from the administration, or MTI, or the occasional school board member – believes that the audience for an assertion is composed entirely of idiots.
In my view, while some things within our local public schools have become a bit more transparent (open enrollment, fine arts, math, TAG), others, unfortunately, like the budget, have become much less. This is not good.
Ed, Lucy and Arlene thankfully mentioned that the Board needs to have the full picture before proceeding.
A few weeks ago, the Madison BOE received a summary of what the board and its committees had done in its meetings during the past year. I am posting the entire document as an extended entry as community information. It provides a lot more detail, a good overview, and a glimpse at the pieces that […]
Andy Hall: But when students resume classes in the fall, fewer special education teachers like Bartlett will be available to work with Karega and 228 other of the Madison School District’s 3,600 special education students. That’s because the School Board last week voted to save $2.2 million in the 2007-08 school year — by far […]