Trick or treat!!!
In most places, Halloween comes but once a year. Not in QCSD. While the late-October candyfest provides the "treat", our local school administration is just now readying the "trick". They are again preparing to frighten gullible kids - and parents - with the infamous red-yellow-green lists of proposed budget cuts.
It is a formula that has worked so well for them in past budget discussions. Just threaten to cut back sports, music, art, and other non-core activities, and furious families storm the school board meetings to demand that their own special interests be spared, even if it means raising taxes for the entire community. Then, on cue, the free-spending board majority throws up its hands and says "Oh well, the people have spoken. We'll just raise taxes even higher". There is such a hubbub that everyone somehow seems to "forget" that we might realize necessary savings by just not replacing every retiring teacher. Or maybe not building a totally unnecessary $450,000 superkitchen to serve one school. Or by imposing small participation fees on those who benefit. Or by focusing on the real potential money-saver, the upcoming teacher contract.
QCSD, the district that never makes a mistake (ever hear an apology?) is in a worse pickle than ever. The years of mindless hiring and spending have been exacerbated by the poor economy. Revenues are flat, and the administration's proposed budget is $12 million more than last year's expenditures (which, in turn, were actually $2 million less than last year's budget)! Translation - we have a $12 million shortfall. PA's Act 1 limits tax increases to 2.9 percent. This is the quintessential Mission Impossible. However, QCSD has never used the Act 1 exceptions, which allow tax increases in excess of the legal limit for certain situations, such as teacher pensions, declining revenues, and building construction. The directors can raise our taxes about seven percent without having a public referendum.
Superintendent Dr Lisa Andrejko, and Business Manager Sylvia Lenz, would do it in a Halloween heart-skip-a-beat. But they are opposed by the most unlikely of sources.....
In a move that the administration is still wondering about, the district's Finance Committee recommended "only" a four percent increase in taxes, and a reduction in the rainy-day Fund Balance to $2 million. The committee totally ignored the colorful scare lists. Unlike previous years, when we started budget discussions with what Andrejko and Lenz wanted, and made the tax increases and Fund Balances fit, the Finance Committee is demanding a monumental shift in the way we plan. A Halloween Revolution. Managing the budget from the revenue side instead of the expense side. Start with what we can afford, and require the administration to live within that budget. The logical, business-like approach that the "reform" candidates have been calling for since 2005!!!
And when the administration said something like "But...but...but our lists. We've always budgeted this way" (translation: "pleeeease don't let the community know there is a different way to do this"), the Finance Committee retorted with phrases never before spoken in these parts: "We don't care about the lists, we aren't going to recommend raising taxes much above inflation, we're not going to completely drain the Fund Balance, so deal with it! Find a way to manage the budget." The committee was also OK with cutting costs, programs, and staff if absolutely necessary, recognizing that this is happening all over private industry, and the district should not be immune.
Halloween Revolution indeed. Somewhere, that guy with the tail and pitchfork is reaching for his parka.
The Finance Committee is relatively new in QCSD. It isn't a formal part of the district's organizational chart, and it can't make policy, only non-binding recommendations. It started several years ago as a volunteer group, working to bring in additional government education dollars. The chairperson is Kathy Mosley, the biggest of the board's big spenders. Most members have been strong supporters of the administration, and the board majority. But as it became clear that their lobbying success was going to be, at best, limited, their focus changed.
School director Paul Stepanoff, who sits on the committee, explained: "It was basically a pro-administration lobbying group trying to seek more money from Harrisburg. When they switched over to studying the budget, (former board member) Manuel (Alfonso) and I started attending regularly. Then (Richland Supervisor and CPA) Rick (Orloff) came to the last two or three meetings. We were all able to have open discussions in a calm and reasonable way. When we went around the table for consensus on a 'number' (the tax increase recommendation to the board), the only two that appeared adamant about more than four percent were (newly-elected director) Rob Smith (who was elected by Milford families demanding higher spending for their pet programs) and Mosley."
The committee, which also included board member Nancy Tirjan, former board candidates Pat McCandless, June Hunt, and Jerry Bassett, majority-supersupporter Nina Bagshaw, Butch Frei, Jim Parsons, and Richard Yost, acted despite the fact that the administration came to the meetings with their lists, pushing to do what is always done - go through the lists item by item, and see what might be cut. But the committee members, surprisingly, and to their credit, listened to the dissenting voices, and didn't fall back into the old ways. They started The Halloween Revolution by choosing to make their recommendations based on revenues, not threats.
Stepanoff went on: "If we had played Dr. A's game, and kept everything on her red list, the tax increase would most likely have been closer to seven percent, with a dangerous zero Fund Balance. I believe that's where the chairman (Mosley) and administration wanted us to start. The committee leap-frogged that, and most discussions of the lists, and simply moved forward on a recommendation to the board."
Andrejko and Lenz have never satisfactorily explained why their proposed budget (and, make no mistake, the budget is theirs, and theirs alone) was $12 million over last year's actual spending. And they haven't explained how this year they - once again - were so inaccurate in their budget projections that we ended up not tapping our Fund Balance as they direly warned, but actually added $2 million. Projections show that it will exceed the legal limit by June. Despite the Halloween scare of last year, we paid for all operations, and will have $7-8 million left over!
But it has always been their modus operandi to frighten the community into thinking that there won't be enough funding, thus bringing out the angry parent lobbies. You can almost count on an encore in upcoming meetings, starting January 28, when the preliminary budget will be made public. We will again be threatened with the evisceration of sports, music, arts, band, and miscellaneous "important programs". Our children will die miserable deaths. And, on cue, special interest parents will demand that our schools provide everything in life, regardless of our community's ability to pay.
There will also be senior citizens, residents on fixed incomes, and those suffering from the down economy, who will explain how the ever-increasing taxes are destroying their lives, but they have historically been ignored. The board's spend-spend majority simply capitulated to the loudest voices, and the administration. But now, for the first time, the community may finally benefit from the years of work by the reformers. And The Halloween Revolution.