Archives for category: Budget Cuts
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D.C. Superintendent Antwan Wilson Overspent Budget for Administration in Oakland by 100%

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2017 //
14

When Kaya Henderson stepped down as chancellor of the District of Columbia school system, she was replaced by Antwan Wilson, superintendent of schools in Oakland, California.

Wilson came to Oakland in 2014 from Denver, where he was an assistant superintendent. He also graduated the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy in 2014.

He was superintendent for two-and-a-half years in Oakland when he received the invitation to take charge of D.C.

Reporter Ken Epstein of the Oakland Post reported on problems that Wilson left behind. Long before Wilson arrived, Oakland spent years in state receivership and was bailed out by the State with a loan of $100 Million. The state watches Oakland closely.

Now the District has discovered that Superintendent Wilson spent heavily on new administrative positions.

Epstein writes:

“The financial report, based on a close examination of the district’s income and expenditures, was presented by Interim Chief Financial Officer Gloria Gamblin and her staff at the school board meeting last week and at the board’s Budget and Finance Committee meeting this week.

“One significant misstep last year was the failure of what is called “position control.”

“Supt. Antwan Wilson’s administration created 75 positions, mostly in the central office, that were not accounted for in the budget and for which funds had not been allocated, said Katema Ballentine, OUSD’s financial officer of budget development
.
“That’s huge. I’ve never seen a budget number that large,” she said…

“Ballentine told board members that budget staff realized during the last months of Supt. Wilson’s administration that the district was facing a $30 million shortfall, but she and Senior Business Officer Vernon Hal were not allowed to tell the board.”

In a follow-up article, Epstein reported that Wilson overspent the budget for administrators by 100%.

“As the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) struggles to maintain financial solvency – cutting expenses and realigning spending priorities – reports are coming to light indicating that expenditures for administrators and consultants grew dramatically during the three years of Supt. Antwan Wilson’s administration and regularly exceeded the adopted budget by as much as 100 percent.

“As leader of OUSD, these are not the kind of numbers I want to see,” said Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell.

“Our schools need the best leadership we can find, but we must find and keep those leaders while working within our means,” she said. “It is our duty to ensure that we are operating in as efficient and cost-effective way as possible. I am committed to putting us on the right path to fiscal stability.”

“According to one of the numerous financial reports presented Monday night to the school board’s Budget and Finance Committee, total spending for classified (non-teaching) supervisors and administrators grew by 69 percent during Supt. Wilson’s administration, July 2014 – January 2017.

“Classified spending was at $13.1 million in the final year of previous Supt. Tony Smith’s administration (2013-2014), and rose to $22.3 million in 2016-2017.

“At the same time, the district overspent its allocated budget for classified supervisors by over 100 percent in the past two school years.

“Spending for administrators and supervisors with teaching certificates grew 44 percent – from $13.9 million in 2013-2014 to $20 million last school year. Spending in that category exceeded the approved budget by $4 million in 2015-2016 and $1 million last year.

“In the category of professional and consulting services, spending grew 25 percent from $22.7 million in 2013-2014 to $28.3 million in 2016-2017.

“Last year, expenditures for consultants exceeded the budget by 32 percent.“

When interviewed by the Washington Post, Wilson said he had left Oakland with a balanced budget.

Not really.

Categories Broad Foundation, Budget Cuts, District of Columbia, Education Reform, Funding

Texas: Advice to Public Schools from State’s Most Powerful Elected Official: STARVE!

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2017 //
6

In Texas, the Lt. Governor is considered the state’s most powerful elected official. That man is Dan Patrick, a flamboyant former talk show host who hates public schools. Patrick recently spoke in Houston.

Please read this brilliant reaction by Cort McMurray, a Houston area businessman.

A snippet of a great piece:

“Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was in town this week, talking schools, school finance, and property tax reform. These are favorite topics for Patrick, who, before becoming arguably the most powerful man in state government, was a Houston media personality, best known for undergoing an on-air vasectomy during a live radio talk show. In his 2015 inaugural address, tucked between the Stetsoned hubris and the cowboy booted jingoism and the liberal quotation of Scripture, Patrick bemoaned the failure of “our inner city schools” and invoked Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech to articulate a dream of his own, a “dream of the day every child gets a quality education so they can break the binds of poverty and live the Texas and American dream.”

“It was a “conversation” in which a middle-aged white man was having a “conversation” in a room filled with middle-aged white men and women, talking about “people in the inner city.” Mr. Patrick likes to talk about the “inner city.” It’s a phrase he uses often. He talks about “inner city” schools, which are invariably “failing,” and inner city residents, who are “losing their homes” because they can’t afford to pay the gosh-darn property taxes: It’s not the lousy economy or the drugs and gangs or the relentless tectonic grind of decades of tone deaf public policy that’s ruining the places where the poor folk live. It’s property taxes.

“Patrick speaks about “the inner city” with the smooth confidence of a man who’s never experienced the challenge but knows the precise solution. He’s the loudmouthed guy at the end of the bar, explaining how to hit a Clayton Kershaw slider. He’s the clueless uncle, giving an expectant niece his sure-fire, drug-free tips for managing pain during childbirth. He’s the eternal talk show host, all honeyed words and callus-free hands.

“What Patrick wants has little to do with bringing hope or light to the shadowy spots in our benighted inner cities. What Patrick wants is the evisceration of the Texas public school system, replaced with a quasi-public collection of “charter schools.”

“Property taxes are the primary means of financing public education in the state. Earlier this year, Education Week, a highly respected newspaper, published Quality Counts, its 20th annual analysis of performance in U.S. schools. Texas ranked 42nd out of 50 states and the District of Columbia in student performance, 42nd in “student chances for [post-high school] success,” and 45th in quality of school funding.

“Patrick’s solution to a stretched, struggling, woefully underfunded system? Cut the funding. Starve the schools. Starve them to death.“

The writer doesn’t mention Patrick’s passion for vouchers, which he has promoted for years. The rural districts have allied with urban districts to block them.

You can quote research or you can look at Michigan, where charter schools have proliferated for many years. On national tests, Michigan used to be in the middle of the pack. Now it has fallen to the bottom. Or D.C., one of the lowest performing districts in the nation, which has had charters and vouchers since 2004.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization

Carol Burris: Something Mike Petrilli And I Agree On

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2017 //
13

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education and its Action Fund, writes:

I rarely agree with Fordham’s Mike Petrilli, but this week he nailed the Republican tax reform plan with these two tweets:

Every friend of public education must spring to action this week to oppose the House tax reform bill. That bill is a clever attempt to create a backdoor voucher, and at the same time undermine funding for public schools.

 

You cannot let this one pass. Act now. Send our NPE Action email to your House member. But that is not enough. Post the link on your Facebook page, send it by email,

pick up the phone and call your representative.

 

This bill is part of the master plan to destroy public education.

 

Use this link to send your email, and then share it.

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding

Betsy DeVos Chooses Her Number 2 at ED: Who is Mick Zais?

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2017 //
13

Here are two views of Mick Zais, the new Deputy Secretary of Education selected by Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump.

First, from Politico:

“TRUMP TAPS NEW NO. 2 FOR THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT: The president on Tuesday night announced he’s nominating Mick Zais to be deputy secretary at the Education Department. Zais checks off a lot of conservative boxes – as superintendent of schools in South Carolina, he refused to participate in the Obama administration’s signature Race to the Top program, which encouraged states to adopt more rigorous academic standards like the Common Core in exchange for federal grants. Zais saw the standards, which were never mandated by the Obama administration, as federal overreach. He pulled South Carolina out of the Smarter Balanced tests, which are aligned to the Common Core. And he has supported the expansion of school choice programs in the state. Prior to serving as South Carolina’s superintendent, Zais was president of Newberry College for 10 years.”

The Council of Chief State School Officers expressed their approval.

But the grassroots group EdFirstSC were not so complimentary about their state school superintendent. They don’t think much of him.

“How about:

“Since taking office, Zais sent $144 million of our tax dollars to 49 other states, causing thousands of SC teachers to be fired and directly causing class sizes to skyrocket as we made the biggest cuts to education in the US…24.1%. SC test scores on NAEP plummeted over this period of draconian cuts that Zais would now make permanent.

“Since budgets have recovered, Zais has not requested that this funding be restored, even when the state had a billion-dollar surplus. To continue running SC schools on the cheap, he tried desperately to gut regulations limiting class-sizes.

“Zais has poisoned relationships with teachers, attempting to give them letter-grades based on test scores of students they’ve never even met. At a recent State Board meeting, he suggested making teachers at-will employees, to be fired without notice and without showing any cause or due process.

“Zais also took 29 personal days during his first ten months in office. He used those days to go golfing, attend stamp conventions, attend football games, and clean his shed.

“Zais allowed Jay Ragley to lie to the media, claiming that records related to those personal days would cost $500,000 in man-hours to process and provide under a Freedom of Information Act request. It ended up taking a staffer about two hours.

“His department has also conspired to censor and suppress public comment at a series of public meetings on teacher evaluation. At one meeting, staff members were caught taking audience questions into the hallway and stuffing them into a briefcase.

“At another, two senior staff members stood onstage giggling as they sorted questions into those that would and would not be answered. In a two-hour meeting, less than ten minutes were allotted for questions, and none were asked that raised concerns about their plan. That plan was ultimately rejected by the State Board because of serious concerns about its fairness.

“Even those who agree with his goals and radical Libertarian ideology would have to concede that Zais has been singularly ineffective in accomplishing anything of note.

“He runs the same play over and over: develop a plan with no input from stakeholders, keep the public in the dark, fail disastrously when it all comes to light…and then withdraw the plan to duck a vote.”

Usually, a new Secretary of Education selects a Deputy with extraordinary talents or a successful record.

DeVos seems to have chosen someone with more experience than she is (any educator fits that bill) but who is totally ineffectual and leads a low-performing state.

One thing she can count on: he shares her radical libertarian ideology.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, U.S. Department of Education

Clark County Deficit: Cut Administration First, Not Classrooms!

By dianeravitch
September 14, 2017 //
5

Clark County, Nevada, discovered it has a deficit. A big one!

Because of poor planning and oversight, the district has a budget deficit of $80 million. It intends to lay off teachers and slash services for children. Most of the children in Clark County are poor.

Why should the children pay for the adults’ mismanagement?

Sign this petition on change.org, calling for actions to cut central Administration, not children or teachers.

https://www.change.org/p/mayoderios-gmail-com-clark-county-school-district-cut-central-bureaucracy-budget-first

Accountability starts at the top!

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Budget Cuts, Nevada

BREAKING NEWS: Senate Rejects Trump Budget Cuts, Reduces School Choice Requests

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2017 //
7

Education Week reports on decisions made by Senate and House committees that preserve programs targeted for deep cuts by the Trump administration and sharp rebuffs to Trump plans to expand school choice. However, the federal appropriation for charter schools was increased by $25 million, which is a big victory for DeVos and a rebuff to the NAACP.


Lawmakers overseeing education spending dealt a big blow to the Trump administration’s K-12 budget asks in a spending bill approved by a bipartisan vote Wednesday.

The legislation would leave intact the main federal programs aimed at teacher training and after-school funding. And it would seek to bar the U.S. Department of Education from moving forward with two school choice initiatives it pitched in its request for fiscal year 2018, which begins Oct. 1.

The bill, which was approved unanimously by the Senate budget subcommittee that oversees health, education and labor spending, would provide $2.05 billion for Title II, the federal program that’s used to hire and train educators. Both the House spending committee and the Trump administration have proposed scrapping the program, so it remains in jeopardy despite the Senate’s support.

The measure rejects another high-profile cut pitched by the Trump administration, $1.2 billion for the 21st Century Community Learning Center program, which helps school districts cover the cost of afters-chool and summer-learning programs. The House also refused to sign off on the Trump administration’s pitch to eliminate the program. Instead, it voted to provide $1 billion for 21st Century, meaning the program would almost certainly see some funding in the 2018-19 school year.

The panel also dealt a blow to the administration’s school choice ambitions. And the bill seeks to stop the Education Department from moving forward on a pair of school choice programs it proposed in its budget request. The administration had sought a $1 billion boost for the nearly $15 billion Title I program, the largest federal K-12 program, which is aimed at covering the cost of educating disadvantaged students. The Trump administration had wanted to use that increase to help districts create or expand public school choice programs. And it had hoped to use the Education Innovation and Research program to nurture private school choice.

The Senate bill essentially rejects both of those pitches. It instead would provide a $25 million boost for Title I, and $95 million for the research program, a slight cut from the current level of $100 million.

But importantly, the legislation wouldn’t give U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her team the authority to use that money for school choice. In fact, the committee said in language accompanying the bill that the secretary of Education Betsy DeVos must get permission from Congress to create a school choice initiative with the funds.

A House appropriations panel also rejected the school choice initiatives in a budget bill approved earlier this year. Taken together, that’s a major setback for DeVos’ number one priority.

But the Senate bill does include a $25 million increase for charter school grants, which would bring them to $367 million. That’s not as high as the $167 million boost the administration asked for, or even as high as the $28 million the House is seeking.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan Opposed Disaster Relief for Hurricane Sandy, But Now?

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2017 //
13

When Hurricane Sandy devastated the East Coast, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, and Mick Mulvaney (now Trump’s budget director) insisted that any disaster relief had to be offset by budget cuts.

They said the bill was loaded with pork. It wasn’t.

Will they insist that the disaster relief for Hurricane Harvey be offset by cuts? Will they complain about any disaster relief for Texas and Louisiana? Of course not. Nor should they.

Maybe Hurricane Harvey will teach them that there actually is a need for a strong federal government to help people who are in need. Maybe they will discover that problems of epic size can’t be solved by volunteers alone, though volunteer help has been necessary and wonderful. Maybe they will learn something about the importance of the common good, not selfish individualism. Maybe I’m a foolish optimist.

Categories Budget Cuts

Cynthia Nixon: Why Won’t Cuomo and the Legislature Fully Fund Our Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2017 //
28

The story has circulated in the media that megastar Cynthia Nixon may run against Andrew Cuomo for governor. You may have seen her on television or on Broadway, but what you don’t know if that she is a public school parent in New York City and cares deeply about public education.

In this article, she explains that New York City public schools have been denied funding that was promised by the courts. She also explains that Andrew Cuomo is no friend of public education. He is a cheerleader for the charter industry, whose wealthy patrons have underwritten his past campaigns.

Nixon knows more about education that any other candidate who will be on the ballot in 2018 in New York state.

She writes:

As a public school parent, I am fearful about what our new U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has in store for our nation’s public schools.

The Trump-DeVos agenda includes more support for privately run charter schools — which in DeVos’ home state of Michigan are known for being some of the worst performing in the country — and a dramatic expansion of school privatization through vouchers. It could also greatly reduce federal funding for public schools. For New York State that could mean a cut of up to $2.5 billion.

Frightening. But equally frightening is how much Betsy DeVos and Andrew Cuomo’s policies echo each other.

Governor Cuomo wants to eliminate New York’s obligation to provide schools statewide with $4.3 billion in additional funding, including nearly $287 million for schools in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties. There is no doubt that high-needs schools require this support: Guidance counselors in Yonkers carry a caseload of 750 students. Ossining and Peekskill struggle to find resources to serve a growing influx of English language learners. And parents in Mount Vernon are suing the state to receive their fair share of education funding. We have the same problems in New York City.

In 2001, on the day my oldest child Sam began kindergarten, I was shocked to find that two thirds of the school’s paraprofessionals, the art teacher, the music teacher and the assistant principal were all gone since the spring tour I had taken a few months earlier — casualties of a woefully inadequate budget. On that day, I joined the fight for New York State to fully implement the ruling from the landmark Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit against the state…

In 2007 and 2008, the state made progress towards its constitutional obligations to students by funding Foundation Aid, but after Cuomo took office he did everything he could to avoid paying this debt, and now he wants to eliminate Foundation Aid outright.

He also wants to increase the number of privately-run charter schools in New York City by more than 50 percent. And he has been a loud proponent of private school tax credits, essentially a backdoor voucher system. These are policies we expect from Betsy DeVos, but from Andrew Cuomo?

Whoever runs for office in New York and in other states should go on the record about whether they support public schools. We know the answer from Cuomo. He wants more charter schools. This will be an albatross around his neck if he runs for president in 2020. That is, unless Cynthia Nixon beats him!

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Cuomo, Andrew, Funding, New York

Mike Klonsky: Rahm Emanuel Will Lay Off Nearly 1,000 Staff in Chicago

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2017 //
9

Mike Klonsky reports that Mayor Rahm Emanuel intends to lay off nearly 1,000 staff, including 350 teachers.

The Chicago Teachers Union responded:

Once again, Mayor Emanuel has topped Governor Rauner’s ruthlessness towards Chicago’s public school students with his own savage, short-sighted response, by further stripping to the bone schools that he’s forced to function in a climate of civic abandonment and the violence that his neglect has caused. — CTU Blog

Mike Klonsky writes:

“Yes, it’s true that the lion’s share of the blame for the devastation of public education now taking place statewide, falls on our sociopathic Republican Gov. Rauner who just last week, vetoed the emergency school-funding bill. Then there’s a Democratic-Party-dominated legislature, has long been gutless when it comes to making the state’s wealthiest shoulder their fair share of the tax burden.

“But when it comes to racist duplicity, the buck stops at the fifth floor of City Hall. Why? Because this latest round of cuts, which hits hardest at predominantly African-American and Latino high school students, comes on the heels of Rahm Emanuel’s plan to make it more difficult for city students to receive their hard-earned high school diplomas.

“The mayor mandates that kids without a job offer or college acceptance can no longer graduate from high school. There’s an exception to the new rule. Enlisting in the military can fulfill the graduation requirement which could make CPS the nation’s number-one military recruiter of black and brown youth.

“Yesterday’s layoff of hundreds of staff, follows last year’s round of layoffs of 1,000 teachers and staff, including counselors, and will condemn that many more students to academic failure and loss of future college and job prospects. They’re losing the very support network needed to help them fulfill the new mandates.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Chicago, Teachers

Department of Education Will Continue to Spend More Than $1 Million Per Month to Protect DeVos

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2017 //
23

Politico reports that the Department of Education will renew the agreement with the U.S. Marshalls Service to protect Secretary Betsy DeVos, which cost nearly $8 million for six months. This occurs at a time when DeVos has enthusiastically endorsed budget cuts of billions to the Department’s programs. One program that she agreed to cut is a $10 million subsidy to the Special Olympics. Should the Dartment pay for her security detail or for opportunities for students with disabilities to demonstrate their athletic accomplishments? She is a billionaire. Why doesn’t she pay for her own security or ask her brother Erik Prince to send over a detail of his mercenaries?

“DEVOS, U.S. MARSHALS SERVICE TO RENEW SECURITY AGREEMENT: The U.S. Marshals Service and the Education Department plan to renew an agreement to continue providing protective services for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, a spokesman for the Marshals Service tells Pro Education’s Caitlin Emma. Earlier this year , the Marshals signed a memorandum of understanding with the agency to provide protective services for DeVos for up to four years, “subject to the availability of funds and current threat assessments.” The Education Department at the time agreed to reimburse the Marshals Service an estimated total of $7.78 million for services spanning mid-February through September 30, or the end of the fiscal year. Now, both parties “plan to renew the reimbursement agreement beyond Sept. 30, which will continue the memorandum of understanding between the agencies for the protective detail for Secretary DeVos,” a Marshals Service spokesman said. The spokesman could not provide details about the anticipated cost or length of the reimbursement agreement and could not discuss specifics about threats to DeVos’ safety. The past four Education secretaries have been protected by the Education Department’s own small security force.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts
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