The Close Vote on Prop. 55 Reveals a Failure to Communicate

ISSUE 63 | APRIL 5, 2004

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Statewide, only one out of four households includes children of school age. Are we seeing a split electorate, one with kids in schools and hence committed to funding school facilities, and those without school-age kids who have snipped the bonds that connect them to everyone else?

This missing link is not just the result of rampant selfishness. It is in part the result of education leaders' failure to communicate the value of school buildings to all citizens. School board trustees too often are reluctant to campaign, fearing the wrath of anti-tax voters. Parents are not carrying the cause to their neighbors who have no kids in school. The PTA, as usual, is nowhere to be seen. The only member of the state Board of Education who was visible and vocal was Reed Hastings. His personal contribution of $350,000 to the campaign certainly helped buy much needed media time. The legislative leaders in the Assembly and Senate had little to say, perhaps distracted by California's structural insolvency. Newspapers don't report on the sorry state of school facilities because it has slowly become the new status quo. Only when ceiling tiles fall on students heads does it become a news story.

Statewide action on statewide bond elections is largely the purview of organizations. It's a turf where bigger players get to play. But the actions you can take on the local level are considerable. This owl has a few suggestions to offer to help you communicate your need for funds to the communities you serve.

COMMUNICATE YOUR INTERNAL BENCHMARKS OF EFFICIENCY IN A DISTRICT ANNUAL REPORT

Measures of efficiency in running schools are not commonly shared. But they are there for those willing to ask. One source: Tom Henry at the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT). This agency has a dozen years of experience providing management assistance to more than 400 districts and county offices of education. His intrepid team is perhaps better known for crisis audits. In a handful of cases, these audits were followed by state takeovers. The management wisdom his team has amassed is precious. I heard him speak in late March at the Small School Districts' Association annual conference, and he addressed a room filled with supes and school board trustees through a checklist of vital signs. Most of his indicators of growing stress and strain are quantifiable. The predictors FCMAT uses in measuring their vulnerability to a crisis are a suitable starting point for setting up a monitoring system for your district.

Once you do so, you can summarize those indicators for your public and report the results to them annually in a district accountability report. This document is called for by NCLB anyway. Since you have to produce it, why not include ratio analyses of key factors of efficiency to show your public not only that you're minding the store, but also what you have your eye on. It may be crowding. Will you measure that as students per acre (dumb)? Or will you measure staff and student ADA against fire marshals' capacity ratings of your buildings (smarter)? It may be classified staff per 100 students, compared to other districts in the county, or the salaries and benefits of classified employees per student. Perhaps you're up for collective bargaining this year, and letting your public see the creeping cost of benefits over time per teacher would prove enlightening. If West Contra Costa USD had disclosed the cost of giving lifetime benefits to employees before their board approved it years ago, perhaps their public would have raised a ruckus.

SHOW YOU ARE A DEMANDING EMPLOYER

Randy Ward, state administrator in charge of Oakland USD, is showing his public that he is a demanding but fair employer. He audited the real cost of putting cell phones in teachers' and janitors' hands, and then he pulled those cell phones back and canceled the contract. In early February, he asked employees to show up in person to pick up their paychecks. One hundred and twenty people were a little shy about showing identification, and never appeared. These smart moves made the papers and gave him the opportunity to explain that he wanted a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. This owl heard him speak at a Stanford University conference recently, where he emphasized his need to prove he was managing a tight ship before he asked citizens to row harder and pass a parcel tax. His sense of first-things-first is relevant in more districts than Oakland USD.

TEACH YOUR PUBLIC WHAT IT COSTS TO RUN EACH SCHOOL

Districts are abstract entities. Schools, however, are knowable. Your parents walk in the doors. They know their kids' teachers and principal. If you could tell them what it costs to run that school -- actual fiscal-year expenditures for those teachers, their benefits, that building, those programs -- and if you could show them how that compares to the cost of doing the same thing five years ago, you'd be preparing your public to act. This information is available through your Standardized Accounting Code System (SACS). The roll-up at the site level allocates what used to be central office-booked costs (i.e., deferred maintenance) back to the site where it belongs. This analysis will show that categorical funds may flow in different amounts to different schools, based on the needs of students at each site. More special ed money here, more GATE money there. But tha'ts the way it really is Why not let your public know? This, too, belongs in your annual school and district accountability reports. The CDE offers a cost analysis of what it takes to run a typical elementary school. You may find it a useful guide.

OTHER RESOURCES

The cost-efficiency or cost-benefit of each aspect of school life is under review. While you have political realities that determine what stays and what goes, you may want to contribute some economic facts to the debate, perhaps helping counterbalance the emotions that run high when cutbacks are on your board's agenda.

Cost-benefit and cost-utilization analyses are the subject of this useful text by Prof. Henry Levin, professor of Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, and Patrick J. McEwan, professor at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. The title is Cost-Effectiveness Analysis: Methods and Applications, second edition (Sage Publications, 2000), and it is the prevailing textbook for administrators in training. The authors offer methods of quantifying difficult decisions that should help guide you through tough choices.

Class-size reduction has shown questionable benefits and high costs. If you are embroiled in debates about preserving this costly reform, you may want to review the work of Brian Stecher. The high cost, both in teacher salaries and classroom space, has produced questionable results. And the impact on students in low-wealth districts, he argues, was detrimental, causing a flight of better-qualified teachers to those districts able to offer higher pay. A current summary of Stecher's findings is the 2002 Capstone Report from the CSR Consortium. ERIC research analyst Wendy Schwartz also summarizes Stechers studies.

Libraries and librarians are too often the first to be cut when trimming budgets. But have you measured the benefits of libraries against the costs? Columnist Joan Ryan, in a column in the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE of March 27, 2004, argues that school libraries show great return on investment, citing the research of Keith Curry Lance and his 2000 study of Colorado schools. Ryan writes that Lance "... found higher test scores in schools where library resources were maximized and librarians actively collaborated with classroom teachers. Standardized test scores ran 18 percent higher in fourth grade and ten percent to 15 percent higher in seventh grade when compared to schools where library resources and staffing were meager."

The researchers controlled for factors that people think would explain away the difference, such as per-student expenditures, teacher/student ratios, socioeconomic differences, race, ethnicity and the education level of the adult community. You can find his research and executive summaries at the Library Research Service.

His more recent study of 2002, coauthored by David Loercher and published by Hi Willow Research and Publishing in San Jose, was based on research from seven additional states, and confirmed his earlier findings.

Public sector management everywhere is pressing to demonstrate evidence of efficiency. Author and consultant David Osborne is helping lead them there. Hes known best as the developer of reinventing government and the advocate of entrepreneurship in the public sector. But his new book, coauthored with Peter Hutchinson (ex-superintendent of Minneapolis schools), addresses this topic of the moment. It is called The Price of Government: Getting the Results We Need in an Age of Permanent Fiscal Crisis (Basic Books, 2004).

The jacket copy describes the book as ... a clear, step-by-step roadmap for change, offering concrete solutions drawn from the authors' combined 30 years of experience leading and advising public institutions. The authors begin by describing a radically different approach to budgeting-one that focuses on buying results for citizens rather than cutting or adding to last year's spending programs.

The American Institutes for Research have an impressive track record in K-12 economics, specializing in cost-effectiveness and evaluation studies. The staff in their Palo Alto offices is prepared to guide you to research that AIR has already completed, and they can discuss with you further research you may wish to commission. Their Web site offers rich background material on their experience and capabilities.

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