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7 Dear Editor:
Last week, the Eanes school board approved a 2010-11 budget, which includes pay raises for all the district’s personnel and the addition of a lawyer and a publicist to its staff. The budget anticipates an operating loss of $4.3 million (on top of last year’s $3.5 million loss), and continuing losses that district officials say will continue until either the state overhauls the school finance system or the district runs out of money.
Incredibly, a majority of the board remained committed to calling a $150 million bond election which, if successful, would more than double the district’s long-term debt.
There are three proposals in the bond package, but the board probably recognizes that neither the proposal for an unnecessary new elementary school nor for the construction of a natatorium and a covered practice facility are likely to pass. The majority apparently hopes, however, that taxpayers will approve a $70 million package, which is being sold under the rubric of funding ‘critically-needed’ items.
These include $5 million for Astroturf football fields for the middle schools, $2 million for Chaparral Stadium (including scoreboard improvements and $17 million for technology purchases, including laptops and electronic blackboards.
Because the district is now addicted to long-term debt to finance its maintenance budget, the bond issue also includes $1.2 million for light bulbs, $1.1 million for painting, at least $1 million for preventive maintenance, $1.3 million for flooring repairs, $150,000 for erosion control, $4.1 million for roof repairs and $500,000 for ‘bond-planning costs’ for the district’s planned 2014 and 2018 bond issues.
These are inappropriate uses for long-term debt, particularly in a district where finances are in disarray and which apparently has a stagnant – if not eroding – tax base and a soon-to-be-declining student population. It is particularly inappropriate for bonds to be issued in the midst of a world, state and district financial crisis and on the eve of a legislative session that may affect the district adversely.
I therefore believe that all three proposals should be rejected and that the board should instead spend the year determining what really is necessary and submit a pared-down proposal to the voters next spring.
William Allensworth
Pasaguarda Drive
Ed- Can the Picayune look into the finaces of EISD?? IS there an audit report somewhere out there??
If we are asking for 4m from the fund balance and 1m from EEF we are really 5m in the whole. We need to encourage cuts as far from the students as possible.
Ed, I’m sure that EISD would happily provide you with financial data. After all, the administration is very easy to deal with. It’s an easy process:
First, you file a freedom of information request.
Weeks later, EISD will provide you with a stack of documents
Then you study the documents and discover they are non-responsive.
Next, you file an amended request.
Then, EISD will ask for an attorney’s general opinion as to whether or not they have to respond.
After the AG rules in your favor, EISD will deliver a stack of documents.
Those documents will be non-responsive as well, only this time they will be heavily redacted.
You will file another request.
EISD will then charge you because you’re “abusive” in your requests and they are allowed, under the law that they supported in Texas, to charge you when you make excessive requests.
Then you’ll give up.
Just like our trustees have given up. EISD will never, ever provide easily understandable financial management information to the public. They simply won’t do it.
But hey, go ahead and try. Maybe the Picayune can get information that the rest of us can’t.
The loss last year would have been a million or more higher except if EISD had used the Federal stimulus money properly. The stimulus money was supposed to go to school districts so that they could fund some multi-year programs for children with special needs. A condition of taking the funds was that they could not be used for the general fund.
Yet that is exactly what EISD did, but so did most of the school districts in Texas, even though that still doesn’t make it right or legal. EISD reduced its expenditures in Special Ed by the amount of the stimulus, and then added that same amount to the annual operating expense for the district. EISD is right that no parent is going to sue them; and maybe in the grand scheme of things it was a reasonable choice.
But that doesn’t change the fact that the stimulus was a gift from the Feds; and the fact is that when one adds in the money from EEF and the money diverted from the Federal stimulus EISD’s 2009-10 loss would have been gigantic: over $5 million.
Stimulus dollars don’t drop into our pockets every year. EEF could dry up in this economy (other local charities are feeling the pinch–I’m on a couple of boards and believe me, the money has stopped coming in).
Financial stewardship demands that the trustees go back to the drawing board and figure out how we can live within our means.
Vote no. To all 3 bonds. Its the most rational thing you can do.
Or, you know, you could just find it all here:
http://www.eanesisd.net/departments/business/financialreports
But you don’t want to actually read anything do you? Just complain about what you don’t know…
Interesting that a construction litigation attorney, William Allensworth, has taken a recent interest in the classification of expenditures….In the list of bond projects found on the EISD website, there are “capital lighting improvements” but not “light bulbs”, “capital roofing projects” not “roof repairs”, etc. Are those twists in language something that can feed a fee hungry attorney’s case? Or does he simply not understand the difference between the classification of assets and operating costs? Makes me suspicious of his true motives….
Thanks to all the brave souls who endured the slings and arrows from the administration advocating, meeting after meeting for several years, for the district to actually publish the reports referred to in post 4 on the web.
But to be clear these are not management reports. Financial reports do a good job of saying everything adds up; that’s about it. That’s their purpose, and it’s a necessary purpose. But read the latest month report and then answer these questions:
What is the cost of AP instruction? What is the average cost of AP instruction per AP student vs the cost of regular instruction per regular student?
How much are we spending on gifted programs? How has that changed over the years? How much does the Alternative Learning Center cost? How much per student?
What is the cost of the individual sports programs? How much do we spend per student athlete on coaches, transportation, etc.? What does it cost in operating costs to play a home football game? Since the average guy thinks that WHS football pays for itself and adds back to the general fund, just much profit does the sports program make?
What is the cost of special education? Lots of people on this board think that EISD is spending too much on this. How has that changed over the years? How many teachers are allocated to it? How has that changed?
What is the cost of operating VV? Eanes? The High School?
Financial reports show (thankfully!) that all dollars are accounted for. That’s a good thing. But only management reports create true information about the way we spend our money.
Those are the reports that people on this board are talking about.
We returned from a vacation abroad, yesterday, and only now saw “something fishy’s” post [no.5], which questioned my characterization of some of the items on the bond issue.
While indeed the District has characterized light bulbs and roof repairs as “capital lighting improvements” and “capital roof improvements”, the underlying line items include $1.2M in flourescent fixtures and a maintenance program for the District’s roofs. Indeed, the District itself characterized a number of its preventative maintenance items as being exactly that in its May 18 bond summary, which I can no longer find on its website. I discussed these at some length in my letter to the Board of May 26, which is on the CAEE website, http://eanesbond.org, together with my other correspondence with the Board.
I pointed out in all of my letters to the Board that I recognized that reasonable minds could disagree about the characterization of the items in the bond issue, and thanked them for the courtesy and respect they showed me throughout the process.
I therefore deeply resent your insinuation that my efforts to learn about the bond issue and to voice my opinions on it were “twists in language [to] feed a fee hungry attorney’s case”. If you had been present at any of the study sessions or Board meetings at which I discussed the bond issue, or knew anything about me or my background, I don’t think you would have gratuitously [and anonymously] questioned my motives on this website.
I ask that you read the Disclosure Statement in my July 1 letter to the Board. In the future, I think you’ll find that all of us would be better served by polite discussion of the facts that by implying venal motives to our opponents.