It’s not enough to dismantle the Department of Education

It’s not enough to dismantle the Department of Education: President Trump proposes to dismantle the federal Department of Education and return education policy to the states. That will certainly be a good move, as the federal DOE has been a key promoter of the woke component of the education establishment, but this action will not of itself restore vitality to the institution of public education in our nation. ...

Pa. school districts holding on to $4B in 'surplus' tax dollars

At a time when almost every school district in Pennsylvania has raised property taxes on residents, an analysis by the Commonwealth Foundation finds that these very same districts are hoarding $4 billion in "surplus" accounts -- far more than the state requires. A "surplus" is another way of overtaxing residents.

Saving for a Rainy Day – But Whose Money?

Supersized buyouts for school chiefs under scrutiny

Why do school board members elected to represent taxpayers hand over hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to overpaid school officials so they would leave? Where is the accountability?

From an article by Christina A. Samuels in Education Week:

Arlene Ackerman's $905,000 settlement with the Philadelphia district grabbed headlines, but she isn't the only Pennsylvania superintendent who has been shown the door in recent months with a generous settlement in hand.

According to media reports, William Hall, who led the 3,050-student Gettysburg district, left in February with $542,000. That included two years of salary and forgiving the mortgage on his house, which he had bought from the district's vocational education program. In August, Gerald Zahorchak, Pennsylvania's former secretary of education, was bought out a year into his five-year contract to lead the 17,700-student Allentown district. He will be paid a year's salary of $195,000 and a $55,000 lump sum.

Education Week: Supersized Buyouts for School Chiefs Scrutinized

'Shining A Light Into The Black Hole Of School Spending'

Check out this website - PublicSchoolSpending.com - to read actual teacher contracts from your school district.

The site breaks down the contracts by state.

For Pennsylvania school districts, click here.

Small school district runs up $1.5 in legal fees

When you budget $900,000 for legal fees and you already spend $1.5 million for lawyers, something doesn't add up.

Can somebody explain to me how giving a lawyer $190/hour helps educate students?

Public school spending is out of control and here's an other example of some of the problems.

Read an editorial about how school districts spend their money at the link below:

Phoenixville taxpayers deserve to see legal bills' detail -

Posted using ShareThis

Other People's Money

The Pottstown School Board, including two members who lost re-election bids in the May primary and another board member likely to lose her seat in November, wants to extend the contracts of four top district administrators before the new school board takes over in December.

The cost to Pottstown taxpayers would be about $3.2 million, according to The Pottstown Mercury.

The individual contracts of the four administrators do not expire for another eight months and the right thing to do is wait until the new board is sworn in to review the administrators' performance, but vindictive school board members want to stick it to the voters by saddling the new board (and taxpayers) with $3.2 million in expenses.

This is why "off-year" elections matter more to taxpayers than who is elected president or governor. Make sure you know who is running for your local school board and municipal offices on Nov. 3.

Read the full story about the Pottstown School Board controversy in today's edition of The Mercury.

PA Ranks 13th in Per-Pupil School Spending

Despite a $3.2 billion budget deficit, Gov. Ed Rendell says Pennsylvania needs to spend more on public education. But new U.S. Census Bureau statistics show Pennsylvania is already among the leaders in per-pupil spending among the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Pennsylvania spent $23.8 billion on public education in the 2006-07 school year, the most recent figures available, according to the Census Bureau.

Public schools in Pennsylvania spent $11,098 per pupil in 2007, compared to the national average of $9,666, according to the Census Bureau.

Pennsylvania ranked 13th in the nation in per-pupil spending, behind 11 other states and the District of Columbia.

From the new report, Public Education Finances: 2007:

On average, each state spent $9,666 per pupil in 2007, a 5.8 percent increase over 2006. Of total public school financing, state governments contributed 47.6 percent, followed by local sources, which contributed 44.1 percent, and federal sources, which made up the remaining 8.3 percent.

"Public school systems have to balance income and expenses, just like other publicly run entities," said Lisa Blumerman, chief of the Governments Division at the Census Bureau. "This survey shows us the unique blend that each school system applies to utilize the financial resources it has available."

In total, public school systems received $556.9 billion in funding from federal, state and local sources in 2007, a 6.9 percent increase from 2006. Total expenditures were $559.9 billion, a 6.3 percent increase.

You can download a PDF version of the report from the Census Bureau Web site.

No law says you have to raise taxes

Six of the 18 school districts in Berks County will keep their tax rates the same for the 2009-10 school year and four other districts will increase property taxes by less than 2 percent, according to the Reading Eagle.

So much for Gov. Ed Rendell's assertion that if he doesn't increase the state income tax by 16 percent this year, school boards will be forced to raise property taxes next year. No they won't.

School boards can start living within their means like the beleaguered taxpayers who live in those districts.

"Nobody likes tax increases," Dr. Edward Albert, Tulpehocken superintendent, told the newspaper. "And if there was going to be any year you didn't have a tax increase, this was the year not to have it."

It's not like these school boards have been reluctant in the past to raise taxes. The newspapers notes that the Antietam School District, which has the highest tax rate of any Berks County district, has raised property taxes every year since 2000.

That's eight consecutive years of property tax hikes -- and Rendell (who keeps claiming he's lowered school taxes) has been governor for six of those eight years.

'Why do school boards raise property taxes? Because they can'

This Letter to the Editor, originally published in The Mercury, is about the Pottstown School District, but it applies to just about every school district in Pennsylvania. Student enrollment has declined steadily in Pottstown over the past two decades, but spending has risen dramatically. Why? And what happens to sane residents who win seats on school boards? Why do they rubber-stamp everything administrators ask for?

Why do school boards raise property taxes? Because they can

The Pottstown School Board is once again gouging Pottstown taxpayers with a 5.7 percent tax hike. The excuse this year is that the real estate assessments fell and therefore are not generating as much revenue as last year.

The article that detailed the board's decision in Saturday's edition of The Mercury stated that the $53.4 million budget passed without any public discussion among the board members. Are you kidding me? Back in February when the preliminary budget was presented, I remember Linda Adams saying that was not the time to discuss the details of the budget and she was applying to Harrisburg for permission for an even larger increase. The board in its infinite wisdom voted unanimously to let her do this.

Well, when is the time to discuss the details of the budget? Is it only done during a finance committee meeting, that then reports back to the board that there are absolutely no ways to trim the increase in spending? Hello, we are talking about a $3 million increase in school district spending for 2009/2010.

Board member, Nat White, did try to identify some areas in the budget that might be reduced, only to be told that most those expenditures are funded by grants. I find that hard to believe. The budget contained some very significant increases in a number of categories. Furthermore, the Pottstown School District's budget does not detail specifically what programs are funded by grants, but in a $53.4 million budget there is room to look for savings. The school board should instruct the administration to find a specified dollar amount in savings. Most members of this school board sit silently and do not question the administration on their free spending ways.

I fear that Pottstown is in a downward spiral with ever increasing tax hikes, and that middle class home buyers will continue to look elsewhere to purchase a home. The annual tax increases by the school district, as well as the borough, are unsustainable.

VERONIKA WHITE
Pottstown

Lame duck school boards can do a lot of damage

Five incumbent members of the Owen J. Roberts School Board were ousted by district voters in the May primary election.

So what does the school board do at its June meeting? The board voted 5-4 to fire Superintendent Myra Forrest, who has a five-year contract that runs through June 2010. District taxpayers will pay Forrest's $165,000-a-year salary even if she sits at home for the next year.

Over in neighboring Pottstown, two incumbent school board members were ousted in the May primary and another two will probably lose their seats in the November election.

The current lame duck board is considering a recommendation from its personnel committee to extend the contracts of the superintendent and other top administrators for another three years.

The current contracts run through 2010 and the logical thing to do is allow the new school board to make a decision on the administrators. A vote on extending the contracts was tabled at the last school board meeting, but could be brought back at a future meeting.

What's the solution? Shouldn't there be a law in Pennsylvania that prevents lame duck school boards from making rash decisions that could impact taxpayers for years to come?

Or maybe a new law isn't needed. A judge in Schuylkill County has removed eight elected members from the North Schuylkill School Board in a case involving a superintendent controversy. See story in the Pottsville Republican.

Read more about the OJR superintendent firing in today's edition of The Mercury.

Also check out a Web site set up by critics of the school board decision, www.TheFactsAboutOJRSD.com

How much should teachers get paid?

Pennsylvania continues to lead the nation in teacher strikes even though Pennsylvania teachers are among the highest paid in the U.S.

Trying to make sense of this contradiction is one of the goals of Stop Teacher Strikes Inc., the Pennsylvania-based advocacy group working to prevent teacher strikes. (It's illegal in the majority of states for teachers to strike.)

In order to have a fair debate about teacher compensation, you have to start with the facts. How much do Pennsylvania teachers earn?

Stop Teacher Strikes Inc. has a link at its Web site to a database that lists 195,000 Pennsylvania public school employee names and salaries.

The searchable statewide database, which includes teachers and administrators, is accessible via www.stopteacherstrikes.org

The database originated at the Asbury Park Press Web site http://php.app.com/PAteachers/search.php

Another good source of information about public education in Pennsylvania is School Board Transparency.

From a recent press release issued by Simon Campbell, president of StopTeacherStrikes Inc.:

"With the most recent salary data (2007-2008) now released by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the Asbury Park Press has once again done an outstanding job at bringing searchable public information to millions of Pennsylvania residents. Any Pennsylvania public school student can now research the salary of his or her teacher to gain an understanding of Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know-Law, and appreciate the difference between public sector and private sector employees. Taxpayers can also review how much money all school employees make, to see how public money is being allocated. The publishing of this data may also help taxpayers understand why some public servants feel the need to eject children from their classrooms by going on strike for higher compensation.

Also profiled on the new "Pension Scheme" Web page of www.stopteacherstrikes.org is the manner in which Pennsylvania State Education Association President (PSEA) union president James Testerman is able to collect a teacher's salary for not being a teacher; thereby enabling him to obtain a taxpayer-guaranteed public employee pension plan for the nine years and counting he has spent working for a private organization. This scheme is also being used by other teacher union officials.

With the Pennsylvania school employee retirement fund in crisis and facing a massive shortfall in 2012-2013, the message is clear. If you don't actually work as a public employee, yet you want a defined-benefit public employee pension plan that taxpayers will bail out, just find a way to become a union boss."

195,000 PA School Employee Names and Salaries Posted Online

StopTeacherStrikes Inc., the Pennsylvania-based advocacy group working to prevent teacher strikes, has posted a link at its Web site to a database that lists 195,000 Pennsylvania school employee names and salaries. The searchable statewide database, which includes teachers and administrators, is accessible via the StopTeacherStrikes home page www.stopteacherstrikes.org and at the Asbury Park Press Web site http://php.app.com/PAteachers/search.php

From Simon Campbell, president of StopTeacherStrikes Inc.:

"With the most recent salary data (2007-2008) now released by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the Asbury Park Press has once again done an outstanding job at bringing searchable public information to millions of Pennsylvania residents. Any Pennsylvania public school student can now research the salary of his or her teacher to gain an understanding of Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know-Law, and appreciate the difference between public sector and private sector employees. Taxpayers can also review how much money all school employees make, to see how public money is being allocated. The publishing of this data may also help taxpayers understand why some public servants feel the need to eject children from their classrooms by going on strike for higher compensation.

Also profiled on the new "Pension Scheme" Web page of www.stopteacherstrikes.org is the manner in which Pennsylvania State Education Association President (PSEA) union president James Testerman is able to collect a teacher's salary for not being a teacher; thereby enabling him to obtain a taxpayer-guaranteed public employee pension plan for the nine years and counting he has spent working for a private organization. This scheme is also being used by other teacher union officials.

With the Pennsylvania school employee retirement fund in crisis and facing a massive shortfall in 2012-2013, the message is clear. If you don't actually work as a public employee, yet you want a defined-benefit public employee pension plan that taxpayers will bail out, just find a way to become a union boss."

Education establishment opposes school consolidation

State Rep. Tom Quigley, R- 146th Dist., brought the House Republican Policy Committee to Pottstown Monday for a hearing on Gov. Ed Rendell's proposal to consolidate most of Pennsylvania's 500 school districts.

Three area school district administrators, the head of the commonwealth's largest teachers' union and a consultant who has worked throughout state government and now advocates for cyber charter schools testified before the committee during the hearing at Montgomery County Community College.

Consultant Greg White told the committee that between 1984 and 2006, the consumer price index increased 106 percent; median family income by 147 percent but total expenditures for school districts by 357 percent.

White said the current model for public education is trying to use 19th and 20th century methods to prepare students for the 21st century and that the existing system will resist change and adaptation because "it makes life more difficult for the incumbent leaders."

Despite runaway spending on public education, the education establishment is opposed to consolidation. No surprise there. The more school districts you have, the more high-paying jobs for school administrators.

Read the full story in today's edition of The Pottstown Mercury.

Who represents the taxpayer?

I received a flier over the weekend from four candidates running as a team for my local school board. I looked over the four-page flier and could not find a single reference to keeping property taxes from going up. Isn't that what we elect people to do on school boards?

School administrators have their own lobbying association in Harrisburg and typically do not live in the district so they don't care how high taxes go up each year. The teachers have the most powerful union in the state watching their back.

Who do the taxpayers have? Isn't the elected school board suppose to represent the interests of the beleaguered property owners who have seen their taxes go up 40 percent since Gov. Ed Rendell signed the casino gambling bill way back in 2004 with a promise that all Pennsylvania residents would see substantial property tax reduction?

If they're not looking out for the taxpayers of the district, what do the four candidates stand for?

According to their campaign literature, their platform consists of four items:

1) Responsive Budgeting (Translation: Rubber-stamp everything the administration wants to spend money on.)

2) Quality Education (Translation: Give the teachers' union everything it wants during contract negotiations.)

3) Improving the Quality of life for All Citizens -- Young and Old (Translation: Drive seniors out of the district with the highest tax rate in the county and prevent young people from being able to afford their first home by high taxes)

4) Preserving our Sense of Community (Translation: Fight any efforts to merge the smallest school district in the county with a neighboring district to save money, improve offerings for students and reduce property taxes).

I'm glad the four candidates dropped a flier in my mailbox to remind me which candidates I won't be voting for on Tuesday.

Newspaper: School merger study makes sense

Pottstown is a borough on the western end of Montgomery County. It has its own school district. Pottstown is surrounded by three townships (West Pottsgrove, Lower Pottsgrove and Upper Pottsgrove) that have their own school district.

From a geographic and economic standpoint, there should be one school district serving the Pottstown area.

But which superintendent drawing a six-figure salary is willing to give up his or her job if the school districts merge?

Which nine-member school is willing to disband, with nine people giving up their only ability to feel important?

And what about the teachers' unions? They like having more districts so they can pit one district against the other when it comes to contract talks.

The entrenched education bureaucracy and the unions like the current system. The big loser is the taxpayer.

That is the heart of the current debate over Gov. Ed Rendell's call to study merging many of the state's 500 school districts.

Mergers should save taxpayer dollars be eliminating administrators and reducing the cost of purchasing supplies and equipment.

The Associated Press is running a series this week in many Pennsylvania newspapers about the roadblocks to school consolidation.

The Mercury, which covers Pottstown and the Pottsgroves, would like to see a study done on the possibility of a merger. Both school boards oppose the study.

From an editorial published in Sunday's edition of The Mercury:

Rendell's proposal was an ambitious one and was probably asking too much too quickly from Pennsylvanians. But, it is not asking too much to study the pros and cons and examine the issue of consolidation as something to be seriously considered.

Finding a better way to achieve a good education for all students is a goal that requires starting somewhere. That place may be with "your schools, your children."

Read the full editorial at the newspaper's Web site.

You can also read the first part of the AP series at the Web site.

Insane school spending

I like this Letter to the Editor published in The Pottstown Mercury about out-of-control school district spending. The letter-writer is critical of spending by the Owen J. Roberts School Board in Chester County, but you can substitute any school district in Pennsylvania.

Bring an end to the 'insanity' of school district spending

I am writing this letter to respond to the many inquiries from friends and acquaintances as to why I don't run for the Owen J. Roberts School Board. While I chastise the board, I am well aware of the amount of time required to perform their thankless, unpaid job and all the board members are to be commended for their unselfish commitment to the community. Being self employed with no "staff," I just don't have the hours to commit to such a time consuming obligation.

As far as the statement that I've never attended a school board meeting, that is incorrect, although it has been several years since I have been in attendance. My bride, a dedicated OJR employee for more than 25 years, asked me to not attend board meetings as long as she is an employee, and her wishes are paramount.

I have no problem accepting criticism, but please have the courage to put a name with your remarks. It's very easy to condemn when hiding behind a curtain of anonymity, something which I never do. With information provided to me by meeting regulars, I feel the need for me to attend is unnecessary.

Now some interesting facts. According to a Mercury article on Feb. 8, the average wage of a Pennsylvanian is $43,000 with only 73 state legislative staffers earning more than $100,000 annually. According to a Philadelphia magazine article in Sept. 2008, the average OJR teacher's salary is $71,784 plus benefits. I have a list of 47 OJR "administrators and coordinators" with a yearly salary total of $4,565,676.66 plus benefits. The average wage of this group is $97,142 per year with 22 of these "professionals" making over $100,000 and the top wage being $164,807.19 per year. This list includes no teachers, support staff or even any of our $60,000 per year secretaries, and this group will grow even larger if Superintendent Myra Forrest has her way. Is it any wonder people try to gain employment in school districts?

At the present time there are petitions being circulated to freeze the wages of this group of your employees. Please locate one, sign it and help bring an end to this insanity.

I'll continue to give you food for thought, asking that you'll take the time to digest it and return your comments to the Mercury and the OJR School Board in hope that someone will listen and help us taxpayers before we all become PhD (Poor, hungry, Destitute).

JIM FITCH
Bucktown

Here's a shocker: Unions oppose school reforms

PFT President Jordan Calls Giving Schools Away 'Irresponsible'

10,000 Friends reacts to Rendell budget

10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania, an advocacy group that bills itself as "the leading voice for smart growth in Pennsylvania," likes what it heard from Gov. Ed Rendell's call to make government more cost-effective be reducing the number of municipal governments and school districts in Pennsylvania.

Here is a commentary released today from Judy Schwank, the president and CEO of the Harrisburg-based group:

Working Together for Efficiency

In his budget address for the coming fiscal year, Governor Rendell made it clear that in these tough economic times state and local governments must get smarter about how they use our money. Now more than ever, every public dollar should be spent in a way that is cost-effective and produces the biggest bang for the buck.

One of the best ways to improve government efficiency is to "right-size" the delivery of public services. The Governor endorsed the State Planning Board's recommendation to encourage local governments to join together to provide essential services such as police and fire protection.

Pennsylvania has an overabundance of local governments, with nearly 2,600 municipalities employing some 400,000 people. Surely there are efficiencies to be gained by working together across boundaries to pool resources and share service delivery to achieve economies of scale. To be clear, the State Planning Board is not calling for mandatory consolidation of local governments or police and fire departments, and neither is the Governor. The proposal is simply to create incentives to make it easier for local governments to work together on a voluntary basis when it makes sense to do so.

Similarly, Governor Rendell called for a legislative commission to study how to "right-size" our school districts, of which there are 500 in Pennsylvania. The idea is not to merge schools to make them bigger, but to consider options for consolidation at the administrative level to save money and reduce the pressure
to raise property taxes.

The Governor also praised the Sustainable Water Infrastructure Task Force, which developed a series of recommendations to improve the efficiency of sewer and drinking water systems. The Task Force has urged the state to remove barriers and provide incentives for the consolidation of water and sewer systems, which could result in considerable cost savings and render the systems more sustainable in the long run.

We commend Governor Rendell for calling attention to important opportunities to make better use of our tax dollars in these challenging times. He understands that in government, just as in business, it is critical to operate at an appropriate scale so that redundancies can be eliminated and resources can be put to the best possible use.

As Pennsylvanians, we value our system of strong local governments, most of which are small and close to the people. But we can preserve that system while at the same working together across municipal boundaries to save money and ensure the delivery of high-quality services.

Judy Schwank, President & CEO
10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania
www.10000friends.org

A temp job that pays $500-a-day

Not everyone is suffering during the current recession.

The Reading Eagle reports that David H. Robbins, former superintendent of the Daniel Boon School District, has been hired as interim superintendent for the Wyomissing School District.

Robbins will be paid $500 a day for at least six months. The board can extend his contract while it looks for a permanent replacement for Helen Larson, who resigned effective Feb. 1, from her $145,000-a-year job.

Who in their right mind walks away from a $145,000-a-year job? Larson was halfway through a four-year contract. And who in their right mind pays somebody $500-a-day to be a caretaker?

Oh, I forgot. It's easy to spend other people's money.

As part of her going-away present, Larson will collect her full salary for six more months. Where else can you get paid for not working? Larson and her husband will also have their health insurance paid by the school district until June, 30, 2010, the date her contract was due to expire, the newspaper reports.

Six months salary and full medical coverage. I'd be taking that around-the-world cruise if I were in Larson's shoes.

I have nothing against Robbins or Larson. Who can blame them for taking advantage of a system that allows administrators to strike it rich? I blame the school board for being poor stewards of our tax dollars.

There's nothing unique about Wyomissing's situation. The going rate for "interim superintendents" is $500-a-day. Administrators typically get all sorts of perks when they leave jobs. But six months salary and two years of health coverage? Isn't that excessive when you're asking taxpayers to pick up the cost?

It's just frustrating when you have so many people suffering (75,000 job cuts announced in the past week alone) while others make out so well.

Rendell Predicts $1.6B Budget Deficit

Amazing when Gov. Ed Rendell signed the $28.3 billion General Fund budget back in July he had no inkling that it would sink the state into a huge fiscal hole.

The red ink is flowing to the tune of $658 million so far and is expected to top $1.6 billion by the end of the fiscal year in June 2009.

Governor Rendell Outlines Plan to Close Budget Shortfall

For more on Rendell's budget shenanigans, check out "Rendell's wicked game" by Matthew J. Brouillette posted at the Capital Domes blog on the Central Penn Business Journal Web site.