Board Meeting on Monday

There is a special school board meeting on Monday. You may not know that the '40 year' roof on the high school lasted less than 13 years. The design and implementation had some flaws. We can't go after the contractors since they have all gone out of business.

The bid for the new roof will be reviewed Monday, along with with the bid for the track resurface. It seems there was an implementation problem there too, and, once again we have no recourse.

Ed Grassel with be chairing the meeting. I am scheduled to be in Vancouver for a conference. I will be giving a paper entitled, "Which would you rather have, experimental now or statistical later? : Simpler empirical tests of discounting with better experimental controls" You can thank my coauthor Anna Kim for the snappy title.

Commencement Address

Here is the text of the commencement address given by Guy Crawford in the Rossi Field House on June 11th.

The class of 2009 is a very special class to the Parkrose School Board. Three of the five school board members have sons graduating here today.

As a result of having students in this class, we are aware that the class of 2009 has always had a… reputation.

Let me read a quote in reference to the freshman class of 2009 that appeared in the school newspaper, the Bronco Blaze, four years ago.

The quote is as follows, “In the past, students have walked through the doors of Parkrose High School looking for an education; the freshman class of 2009 came in looking for a fight.”

An eighth grade teacher is quoted as describing the class of 2009 as, “…a curious mixture of innocence, disrespect and intelligence. “ The teacher is further quoted as saying, “The only way to handle a class like this is to keep your sense of humor.”

So, what we had was a group of young people who came into high school with an attitude. They had a reputation as being bright but obstinate. They were not obedient, and they challenged authority. They had to have a reason to do as they were told, and it had to be a reason that worked for them.

However, we have been happily surprised. In response to the student leadership provided by the class of 2009:

In the arts, student participation in band, chorus and thespians has increased dramatically. The thespian troop in particular has grown from 5 students four years ago to nearly 50 at the end of this year. The choir has performed nationally including performances at the Oregon School Board Association and Disneyland, and our jazz band is generally acknowledged to be one of the best bands of its kind in the area. All three programs have shown significant improvement in state–wide competitions.

Academically, Parkrose students have participated in the Model UN and have won awards for journalism, and in the We the People Constitution competition, Parkrose scored victories over traditional power houses like Lake Oswego and Grant.

In athletics, Parkrose participated in playoffs in soccer, dance, cheerleading, volleyball, men’s and women’s water polo, swimming, tennis and individual track. Even teams like women’s track, basketball and football, that didn’t make the playoffs, showed significant improvement.

I need to apologize for being unable to mention all the achievements that occurred this past year, there were many others. I’m just hitting some of the high spots; but the truth is, under the leadership of the class of 2009, the high school improved in just about every way.

This same group of students who came in under a cloud, turned out to be the ground breakers, the trail blazers that have lead the district onto the path of a new era of success and excellence. Who knew?

Who knew that in addition to being obstinate and difficult to control; that these students were creative and inventive and capable of hard work and of fulfilling their commitments.

…Well now we know, and so to the class of 2009 I say “good luck”, and to the rest of the world I say, “Watch out…watch out folks because here they come.”

One last word, the student who wrote that column that I quoted at the beginning of this speech won an award this year for best column with a by-line in a student newspaper in the State of Oregon. That student is my son, Thomas Crawford.

Thank you.

SB555-A Lowering Transporation Cost Shares to Districts

Transportation reimbursement is only for getting kids to and from school and does not include athletics or field trips. Districts with high per-student costs have a larger fraction of those costs, up to 90%, paid for by the state. Districts with lower per-student costs have at least 70% paid for by the state.

From the economics point of view, the current cost sharing of transportation expenses gives no incentives to cut costs. If we spent a dollar to lower transportation expenses by a dollar we would only see $0.20 worth of savings. The other $0.80 is just money we would not receive from the state. It is bad incentives.

Note that we can't not bus kids. The law says that if the kids are within so far of a school we can't bus them, and if they are on the other side of the line, we must. There is an exception to that, Portland Public Schools does not have to bus a large fraction of their high school students because the public transportation system is so good. That can't be said for Parkrose, Centennial and David Douglas since TRIMET service is much worse on our side of 205.

Transportation does represent one of the few area where state funding admits that there are costs differences between rural and urban districts. Urban districts face higher labor costs because of higher housing costs. Rural districts face higher transportation costs.

Here is a quick numerical example, on how the reduction in cost sharing effects overall budget and what the change will mean for more rural districts.

Suppose you have $22 worth of state funding that you will divide equally to two districts after you pay for a faction of their gas. One district has a $12 gas bill that you pay 3/4 of before you divide the remaining funds. The other has a $6 bill that you will pay half of.

District one gets $9 for gas. District two gets $3 for gas and the remaining $10 is split between the two. In the end district one gets $14 and spends $12 on gas. District two gets $8 spending $6 on gas. Note that each spends $2 on education.

Now you cut the share you pay for gas to half for both districts. District one gets $6 for gas. District two gets $3 for gas and the remaining $13 is split between the two. District one now gets $12.50, and able to spend $0.50 on education. District two gets $9.50 and able to spend $3.50 on education.

Total state spending remains the same. Total gas expenditures remains the same. Total education spending remains the same. What changes is that instead of $2 spent on education in each district, there is now $3.50 in one and $0.50 in the other.

SB555A increases inequality without improving cost cutting incentives by very much. That is why I suggest Student Miles Traveled (SMT) based compensation. It gives incentives to reduce transportation costs so that, in the future, a larger fraction of the schools funding can be devoted to Education.

Provide a fixed dollar amount of transportation funding based on (SMT)-- how many miles the students travel in a day averaged over the course of a year. The address of all students are known and it takes about four lines of code in a GIS program to find the shortest road distance from the house to the school.

This fixed dollar amount is critical since it allows districts to make transportation investments and get the benefits from those investments. SMT will also compensate districts with higher than normal costs because of simple geography in an equitable manner.

Please don't expect to see cost savings the first year -- you wont. But it will provide for dynamic efficacies in the years going forward if each year you change the compensation to the 50th or 45th percentile of costs per SMT from the previous year. It is this dynamic component that creates persistent savings. It will be a little bit every year, but eventually you will have a more efficient transportation system for our students.

Just in case you are curious, this comes straight out of the economics of regulation. I anticipate that if this proposal goes forward, Parkrose will slightly better off because we have lower than average per student transportation costs. There are some rural districts that will take a very large hit.

Monday Budget Hearing and School Board Meeting

We are looking at another long meeting. The board will be meeting in executive session at 6pm. There are only a few instances where the board can legally meet outside the public eye, suspension hearings, labor negotiations, property negotiations and some personnel issues. Basically, when being public would hurt our negotiating position or when the courts have decided that privacy rights of the individual are more important. The press can be there but they can't report.

We have been negotiating the classified union, non-teachers and non-administrators, and there are some offers on the table that we will discuss. The key word is discuss. All decisions are made at a board meeting, in public.

After that another meeting, the budget hearing, starts. This is mostly the time for public comment. At this point it is too late to change much. We started the budget process back in February and have had more than a dozen listening meetings, frequent email updates, and two budget committee hearings. We are required by law to pass a budget and have it looked over by the end of the month and this is the last day that can be done.

After that, the regular business meeting starts. You will have to look at the agenda for what goes on there.

Twitter Blogs and Facebook

I think twitter is cutting into my bloging time. I know that sounds odd but I am still trying to sort out the relationship between the three different information channels.

Here is how I think I am going to work it.

I will use this blog for longer form written works, like my screed about the ECBC and the 5% solution. These articles will tend to be a little longer, a little more polished and a little more in the spirit of that old Einstein quote, "problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them."

I will also use it as a place I can refer people to some facts and figures and as a place for longer explanations than appropriate in email. The focus will be on Parkrose not my research or teaching.

Every blog post will immediatly feed into twitter. For your convenience I put a link in my bio and a widget in the blog that shows the last few twitter posts.

In twitter I mix personal, professional economist and school board issues. Today is a perfect example of this mix. I started off braging about some tough econometrics that I finished, groused a bit about my iphone and then reported on the K-12 budget passing a mile stone in the legislature.

Everything on twitter then feeds into Facebook. Here you will find a link to everything that has been written here, and posted in twitter as well as a links to a few articles, and some odd comments by students, former students as well as family. Everyone keeps it straight because I will kick them off if they don't.

Today I used facebook to congratulate a student on getting a nice job with Bonnaville Power and I admited that I prefer Gin to Vodka.

This makes me relize how much things have changed in the last five years, or when I was a kid or when my grandmother was a kid.

In case you are curious. I still talk to people.

Prescott School Promo on YouTube

Work Session on June 8

We will have another working session on June 8. Work sessions are for the board to dig into a topic. We are not allowed to vote on anything but we are also not allowed to meet without posting an agenda -- that is Oregon Open Meetings Law.

We will be getting a report on our first year with AVID (Advancement via Individual Determination). I wish we could give up on the cutesy acronyms but it is a terminal disease in education. AVID is supposed to give the students the soft organizational skills they need to get through school, time management and the like. We should be having an external evaluation soon to see if the money was well spent.

We will also be taking a first look at the long-run facilities report, basically what needs to be done to the districts buildings to keep them functioning and how much it will cost. That report is currently pushing 230 pages and I have to read it before 5pm on Monday.

ECBC and the 5% Solution

The East County Bargaining Council (ECBC) is the 'teachers union' for most of the districts in Multnomah county east of 82nd Avenue. Sure, we have individual associations, such the the Parkrose Faculty Association, but be bargain with ECBC over hours, wages, benefits and working conditions with ECBC.

While trying to build the budget for next year we asked for salary freezes from the administration groups, the classified groups, e.g. , drivers and maintenance, and the certified group -- teachers. This requires an agreement because we have contracts and when you have a contract, both sides have to agree to changes.

The administrators, including all the accountants, secretaries and everyone else agreed to the freeze. The classified groups, some of the lowest paid employees in the district, agreed to the freeze. The Parkrose Faculty Association agreed, but that doesn't mater because in order to have get the freeze we have to get ECBC to agree. They didn't.

They didn't because they didn't think things were bad enough. They didn't because we had an ending fund balance of greater than 5% of general fund. They said they would consider a freeze if we spent down the ending fund balance to 5%. They thought it was a good idea since, "5% is what the Oregon School Boards Association suggests."

This is a combination of deceptive, short-sighted, and other words I should not use.

Let me explain a few things about ending fund balances and contingencies. They are both shock absorbers. Contingencies are for random unforeseeable expenses that occur through out the year. This is for things like someone throwing a log through a window and bending the goal posts, like what happened a few years ago. Ending fund balances are for uncertainties about revenue, for when we are unsure about what the legislature will give us from year-to-year. Add the ending fund balance to the unused part of the contingency and you have the beginning fund balance for the next year.

Now, where did ECBC get the 5% number from? They got it from this page on the Oregon School Boards Association (OSBA) website. 5% is just the lowest number anywhere on the page. 5% misses nuggets of wisdom such as:

• "... [t]he smaller the district, the larger the percentage ..."
  
• "The more unpredictable your revenues and expenditures are, the more likely you will need to maintain a larger ending fund balance..."
• "... [u]tilize ending fund balance to cover the peaks and valleys of revenue collections ..."

Parkrose followed those nuggets of wisdom. We are a small district. We do have uncertainty. We built up ending fund balances, saving from year-to-year, every year since the last recession, so when a year like this happens we don't cut 30 teaching positions. We only cut 13.

We will spend down that ending fund balance over the next two to three years so that our students receive similar levels of service each year. We will spend it down over the next two to three years so we can keep using those young, active and motivated teachers we spent the time to hire and train. We will spend it down over the next two to three years so don't have a 40 students in a 6th grade class in 2010.

We will spend it down over the next two to three years so our students can read and comprehend websites like that of OSBA.

Tuesday School Board Meeting

One of the high points of the meeting Tuesday will be Dan Graham from the Northwest College of Construction tell us more about how our High School students are doing in his sheet metal, HVAC and welding programs.

A full agenda for the meeting can be found here. Please drop by early for some cake and to honor those retiring from the district.