School is starting up again next week in California and budgets are described as tight. While schools are handcuffed especially
by the fixed overhead needed to support 20-child maximums in an ever-changing K-3 population, the situation in some schools
is less dire than advertised.
Schools systems behave like close cousins of government agencies which tend to spend all of their budgets every
year so as not to lose funding the following year. Actual need is not their primary consideration. Schools' search
for new funds becomes an end in itself. "Mo' money" is always demanded. "Mo' money" is always better...
When I was in school, it was described as a constitutional requirement for the school to provide pencil and paper. Regardless,
most of us bought back-to-school supplies. Kids wanted the coolest notebooks, binders, pens or erasers. (At the risk of dating
myself, backpacks were only starting to appear and a TI Scientific calculator had just fallen below $100.)
Now schools publish supply lists every child is expected to bring during the first week of school. Required supplies include
pens and pencils, whiteboard markers and erasers, highlighters, snacks, paper towels, facial tissues, hand soap, etc. The
bill this year for the "required" supplies was less than $20 per child. If you kick in all the optional items, including cash
donations and printer ink cartridges, you can hit $200 "mo' money" per child.
However, this is only the tip of the iceberg for school funding demands. I didn't set out to pick on the Palo Alto Unified
School District, they are just the closest. To set the table, Palo Alto reports(#) spending ~$10,215 per pupil out of general
revenue for each of ~10,000 students. (CA average ~$6,400.(*)) The average classroom teacher earns $71,255. Roughly 42% of
properties in Palo Alto are occupied by renters.
Our first year in the Palo Alto system was greeted with a request for a $650 PTA contribution. Now this is some serious
"mo' money" going to the PTA! The prior district we lived in was excellent and they only asked for $35. Does Palo Alto serve
caviar at the parent-teacher meetings?!?
It turns out the rationale was 2003-04 would be the last year each school spent its own PTA money. Beginning 2004-05, all
PTA contributions will be pooled district-wide and shared equally. Therefore, our school asked for a two-year PTA contribution,
presumably planning to keep $325 "hidden" until after the 2004-05 pool is disbursed. This is an example we want to set for
our children?
Palo Alto already gets "mo' money" through a parcel tax, but it's expiring. Rather than apologize for needing to extend
this "temporary" "mo' money" the board is "proposing a bump in property-owners' payments by $19 a month." This would be a
new $228 per year tax, on top of renewing a $293 tax, for a total of $521 tax per parcel, per year. (Annual take: $1.88M in
new funds or an $188 "mo' money" per pupil.)
Santa Clara county tried to chip in "mo' money" with their own parcel tax. Such is the drive for "mo' money" that an opinion
from their own legal counsel that such a tax was constitutionally illegal did not stop several legislators from trying to
subvert the law. The idea was dropped only after a second set of opinion polls showed it probably wouldn't reach the 66% approval
needed for passage.
At the top of California's funding ladder, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger started his 2004-05 budget negotiations by increasing
the school budget by $2B. All school systems will receive "mo' money" from the state for the 2004-05 year. In the case of
Palo Alto, it's estimated at $8 or $9M (If $8.5M, that's $850 per student.)
A bit of quick arithmetic finds per student finds supplies ($20), PTA ($325), parcel tax ($188) and state funding ($850)
add up to $1,383 "mo' money" per pupil in the Palo Alto budget. Wow, a 13.5% budget increase! This is before you add in the
"mo' money" from various festivals designed to raise still more money from parents. You might expect the school administrators
are dancing in the halls.
But you would be wrong. Even all of this "mo' money" is not enough for the Palo Alto schools.
State funding for school districts is calculated based on Average Daily Attendance (ADA). As parents, we are admonished
to always have our child attend class, every day, in order to keep up the ADA figures. (I foolishly thought a more enlightened
approach would tell parents to keep sick children home as not to infect classmates.) It is critical to keep ADA as high as
possible.
To avoid losing attendance on any known holidays, Palo Alto schools already shut down for Yom Kippur, Veteran's Day, Martin
Luther King's birthday, President's day, good Friday, spring break and any other day you can imagine on which parents might
not have their children in attendance. Like many other area school districts, Palo Alto has a "minimal day" where children
are dismissed two hours early one day per week. This time is intended to give teachers the opportunity to prepare lesson plans.
(I assume it's just a tragic coincidence Palo Alto has their minimal day on Wednesday, the same afternoon doctor's appointments
are impossible to get...)
It turns out, in a district like Palo Alto, some number of families also take their children out of school during February
or early-March. The school board believes these absences are mainly due to family trips to Europe or Hawaii or Asia, or just
to go snow skiing. The board believes these absences unfairly degrade Palo Alto's ADA.
A few months ago, the school board proposed adding a week-long school holiday in February to "give the kids time off from
the pressures of school." Obvious to the 80%+ of parents who do not blow off a week of school in the middle of winter, the
school board is just trying to prop up their ADA and get "mo' money" from the state. (In fairness, Palo Alto is not the only
Silicon Valley district with this "problem," or preferred solution.)
The first time this "winter break" proposal ("ski week" being too blatant to actually put on the calendar, even in Palo
Alto) appeared on the school board agenda, a lot of parents attended, prepared to argue against it. Why should the majority
of working parents be stuck paying for an extra week of child care, or with taking time off from work, for the convenience
of a few vacationers and to preserve Palo Alto's ADA? When the school board saw such strong opposition, they tabled the proposal.
Then, about three weeks ago, at the end of long meeting on unrelated topics, and without having put the subject on the
agenda (as required by statute), the school board re-introduced "ski week." With the opposition not in attendance, the proposal
passed. There is now a "winter break" in Palo Alto's February school calendar and the school year is extended a week further
into June. (Teachers presumably get an extra week's paid vacation along the way.)
If 10% to 20% of students missed one full week of school, this is a ~0.3% to ~0.6% risk to the ADA figures in a 32-week
school budget. The 13.5% supplement shown above replaces this potential loss by 22- to 45-times over. Yet the school board
is imposing the cost of a week of day care or missed work on the 80%+ of parents who would rather have their kids in school
during "ski week." I guess the board sees their "mo' money" as more critical than pushing parents toward "no money."
Part of what kids learn in school is cooperation and working in a group. Children are encouraged to think of others' interests
in addition to their own. Perhaps the Palo Alto school board members were absent those days?
