Westport Education

Westport Central School Budget FAQ

At last night's Board of Education meeting, there was a sheet with answers to frequently asked questions about the Westport Central School budget handed out. You can download it here: School Budget FAQs with tax chart, May 2010

And here is the text:

Frequently Asked Questions Concerning the Budget  

and the School Program 

 

1. What is the budget voters are asked to approve? 

The spending plan for 2010-2011 is $5,200,000. Each household/ 

taxpayer will receive a budget card which lists the budget by category. 

The 2010-2011 budget represents a 2.45% (approximately $125,000) 

increase in spending and a 4.45% increase in the tax levy. The 

increase in the tax rate, based on current assessments is .575 cents 

per one thousand dollars of assessed value.  Currently, our tax rate is 

$12.061 per one thousand.  Based upon the current assessments the 

tax rate for the 2010-2011 school year would be $12.575 per one 

thousand.  An ESTIMATED Change in Property Tax Bill chart is 

attached. 

 

2. What is the impact of non-resident students on the budget? 

Westport Central School accepts non-resident students when the 

enrollment will have no additional financial impact on the school. We 

will not accept students when classes or programs are full. In the past, 

our State Foundation Aid has increased because non-resident 

applications to the school have risen. Based on this additional 

enrollment, the District has realized an increase in state aid.  The new 

Foundation Aid model is a “share” or “foundational” approach, 

wherein each student does indeed generate an allocation. This 

approach is a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit which 

yielded the decision that the state must provide fiscal support for each 

student.  This can be calculated by dividing Westport’s total 

Foundation Aid by the number of students enrolled. This will give an 

approximate amount of aid per student including the non-resident 

students. When the Foundation Aid System is operating correctly, 

there will be an increase of additional state aid generated by our 

rising enrollment. The 2010-2011 foundation aid will be calculated 

using the 2008-2009 data. Non-resident students have generated 

significant aid in the past. Enrollment has remained constant over the 

past several years, while acceptance is based on classroom availability 

and size.  

 

3. Where have the reductions occurred in this year’s proposed 

budget? 

We have made reductions in all areas of the budget with the exception 

of BOCES services, health insurance, and retirement contributions. 

The District has reduced the position of Superintendent of Schools to 

one-half time. A retirement will reduce professional salaries. Supplies 

and materials and plant operations have been reduced as well. 

 

4. What costs have increased, year over year? 

Our costs for BOCES services, mostly in special education, have 

increased dramatically. Our contributions to health insurance and 

state retirement funds have also increased. 

 

5. What are unfunded mandates? 

We currently have more than 145 unfunded or underfunded 

requirements for schools.  A listing of unfunded or underfunded 

mandates is available.  Graduation requirements have increased over 

the years and not all requirements are funded. Students are required 

to complete 22 credits of high school classes. There are new testing 

requirements that have been phased in. Graduation requirements 

change with each cohort of students. 

 

6. Why have no positions been eliminated? 

We have reduced the Superintendent’s position to half-time. We have 

not cut any teaching positions, since doing so will have a direct impact 

on program. The Board of Education has made the decision to keep the 

program intact and to reduce areas of expenditure to ensure that the 

education of the student body is not compromised. This year and next, 

the school was awarded approximately $107,000 in ARRA (federal 

stimulus) money. This money was used to keep our current 

instructional staff in place.    

 

7. What is the retirement incentive? 

The BOE passed a one-time incentive for teachers to retire.  This 

incentive was limited to those eligible to retire under TRS (teacher 

retirement system) rules this year. There were five faculty members 

who qualified for this offer – one responded. There is an additional 

program offered by the State for members of NYSUT with 25 years of 

experience and who are 55 years of age. The window for this incentive 

starts in June. All faculty members eligible for this program have 

been informed. 

 

8. What is a contingency budget? 

A contingency budget is prepared and adopted by the school board when the 

voters reject the board’s proposed budget. The contingency budget funds 

only teachers’ salaries and those items the board determines to be ordinary 

contingent expenses.  Examples of ordinary contingent expenses include 

legal obligations, expenditures, specifically authorized by statute and other 

items necessary to the maintenance of a school district’s educational 

program, the preservation of school property, and ensuring the health and 

safety of students and staff.  The Westport Central School District 

contingency budget would be $5,078,356.  This is $3750 higher than last 

year’s budget. 

 

9.  Is a contingency budget automatic after voters reject a proposed   

spending plan? 

No. Should the voters defeat the budget, the District has the option of 

offering a revised budget to voters for a revote, or immediately adopting 

a contingency budget.  Districts are only allowed one budget revote to be 

held on the third Tuesday in June.  If the budget fails a second time, 

then the Board of Education must adopt a contingency budget before 

July 1st.  In the case of a contingency budget, districts are constrained 

in two ways – determination of ordinary contingency budget 

appropriations and the statutory caps. Ordinary contingency expenses 

are defined as the expenditures absolutely necessary to operate and 

maintain schools (except for those items over which the statutes 

themselves either provide mandates for or give discretion to the board). 

 

10. If we go to a contingency budget, what will that mean? 

We will need to cut program by about $121,000. The BOE will need to 

consider all aspects of the program at that point. 

 

 

 

Additional Contingency Budget Information 

 

A. What legal obligations are considered ordinary contingent expenses? 

• Debt service (both principal and interest payments). 

• Judgments from courts and orders of the commissioner of education and 

other administrative bodies or officers. 

• Social Security and retirement obligations as well as other payroll taxes 

and assessments. 

• Pre-existing contractual obligations, including collective bargaining 

agreements under the Taylor Law. 

• Payments made to a former superintendent in settlement of claims 

arising from a contract. 

 

B. What ordinary contingent expenditures are specifically authorized 

by statute? 

• Teachers’ salaries. 

• Interschool athletics, field trips and other extracurricular activities. 

• Transportation within the state-mandated mileage limitations. 

• Transportation to and from school under the mileage limitations last 

approved by the voters if more generous than the minimum mileage 

limitations required under state law. 

• Transportation related to interschool athletics, field trips, and 

extracurricular activities. 

• The cost of providing transportation in a child safety zone. 

• Expenses for cafeteria or restaurant services. 

• Textbooks. 

• Expenses in connection with membership in the New York State School 

Boards Association, Inc. 

• Convention and conference expenses. 

• Admission of nonresident pupils upon payment of tuition in accordance 

with Part 174 of the commissioner’s regulations. 

• Under limited circumstances: youth bureaus, recreation and youth service 

projects, and other youth programs. 

• The district’s share of BOCES services. 

• Health and welfare services. 

• Grants in aid received from either the state or federal government, other 

gifts, and insurance proceeds not involving the expenditure of local 

money. 

• Kindergarten, nursery, and night schools. 

• Pre-kindergarten, if the board chooses to offer a pre-kindergarten 

program. 

• Accident insurance for students. 

• In-service training for teachers. 

• Eye safety devices. 

• Library books and other instructional materials associated with a library. 

• Energy performance contracts entered into by either a school district or a 

BOCES. 

 

C. What are some examples of necessary items deemed to constitute 

ordinary contingent expenses? 

• Necessary travel expenses of board members and employees on official 

business. 

• Amounts needed to pay for necessary legal services. 

• “Teacher supplies” but not “student supplies”. 

• Employment of security guards to ensure “safety of students and staff”. 

• Salaries for necessary non-teaching employees. 

• Utilities, including fuel, water, light, power, and telephone. 

• Use of school buildings for teachers’ meetings and parent-teacher 

association meetings with school-connected purposes.  However, this does 

not include programs of entertainment or of a social nature. 

• Emergency repairs of school plant. 

• Maintenance of necessary, sanitary facilities.  

• Necessary expenditures for complying with the commissioner’s regulation 

pertaining to such items as fire alarm systems and fire escapes. 

• Rental of temporary classroom facilities with approval of the 

commissioner, in the case of an unforeseeable emergency. 

• Required civil defense equipment. 

• Certain expenses, such as for emergency repairs, or to equip a classroom 

or classrooms where it is essential to house additional students.  This 

does not include equipment. 

• Materials used in classes by students where uniformity is essential to the 

program or to preserve health and safety. 

• Newspapers and periodical subscriptions for libraries and classroom use 

where essential for instruction or to preserve continuity of sets. 

• Expenditures necessary to advise district voters concerning school 

matters. 

• Preliminary plans and specifications needed to submit propositions to 

voters. 

• Options on land where the price of land is nominal. 

 

D. What are some examples of expenditures that do not constitute 

ordinary contingent expenses? 

• New equipment. 

• Public use of school buildings and grounds, except where there is no cost 

to the district but a district may charge a fee that meets or exceeds its 

actual costs. 

• Nonessential maintenance. 

• Capital expenditures, except in an emergency. 

• Consultant services to review district operations and make 

recommendations necessary for the creation of the budget. 

 

To see the tax chart showing estimated effects on property taxes, download the PDF.

"Kids Must Have a Voice": Nicole Suddath's letter to the editor on the Press Republican's April 5th Speakout column has appeared

From this morning's Press Republican, Nicole Suddath's response to the controversial April 5th Speakout Column, a column which allows people to vent anonymously. In the same issue that this letter was published, the Press Republican announced that it is tightening editorial standards for the Speakout column.

Kids must have voice 
TO THE EDITOR: Unlike you, I will sign my name to this letter. I just read Speakout and there were two letters questioning why parents let their children speak at budget workshops.

Why shouldn't kids be allowed to speak? Who is impacted the most when budgets get slashed? The kids!

My daughter was one of the students who spoke at the most recent budget workshop at Westport Central School; she spoke with honesty and from the heart. How dare you tell her she should not have a voice. These kids are the real future of Westport; why not let them speak? Furthermore, why don't you listen?

In case you haven't noticed, there are many who have a great love for WCS and all it stands for. If a second-rate school is what you want, go elsewhere. Second best is not in the vocabulary of any student or alumni from WCS. Why do you think we are one of the top-rated schools in the United States? Stop trying to short change the education of our kids to save a few pennies.

You say that kids should worry about homework and parents should worry about money. My daughter did her homework before the meeting. I think it is only right to teach our kids the value of a dollar and to support their beliefs and to teach them to stand up for what they believe in.

I support my daughter and know that what she said is the truth. I listened to what all of the students had to say that night and I will be at WCS on May 18 to vote "Yes" for the 2010-2011 budget.

In the meantime, I will be at all of the softball games, as many of the baseball games I can get to, the John F. Geyer Memorial Concert, the Drama Club show and whatever other student-based activity there is, and yes, the budget meetings. What are you going to attend besides the budget meetings?

Nicole Sudduth

Westport

See also my posts:

• Ulrich Hoffmann weighs in on the April 5th Speakout column in the Press Republican
• A few comments on the discussion of the Westport Central School budget

Dr. Gallagher's Powerpoint presentation on the Westport Central School District budget

Here, for your home viewing, is Dr. Gallagher's Powerpoint presentation on the Westport Central School District budget that was approved by the Board of Education on April 8th:

Ulrich Hoffmann weighs in on the April 5th Speakout column in the Press Republican

Ulrich Hoffmann writes regarding my post about the Press Republican's April 5th Speakout column:

Kathryn -- Regarding your Westport Education piece -- be careful at whom you point your finger or appear to point your finger. Why would I want to hide behind anonymity when I have spoken my mind publicly and signed every piece of writing that I have authored? That's a rhetorical question but take care how you generalize. -- Rick

I'm glad we all agree that the anonymous attacks on the participation of an 8th grader in a public meeting as published in the Speakout column of the Press Republican are inappropriate and beneath the level of discourse we wish to maintain.

A few comments on the discussion of the Westport Central School budget

Not content to attack the school budget itself, several opponents of the expected school levy have stooped to attacking individual Westport Central School students and their parents via the anonymous instrument of the Speakout column of the Press Republican. Shame on the editors of the Press Republican for publishing such a thing. Have you no competent editors there?

Anonymous attacks are socially corrosive enough. In a small community, one looks at such a thing and immediately suspects people of being the authors without any way of checking. Don't do this, people!

Meanwhile, in the Valley News, Colin Wells calls for civility in email exchanges about the budget. I have posted a comment in the comment section there:

A couple of key issues
April 08, 2010 | 05:46 AM

No one goes to school board meetings for fun, and we need to recognize the time and effort that are being put in by people we disagree with.

Two key issues underlying the discussion are: (1) the definition of "taxpayer," a word that has often served as a euphemism for "property owner," when in fact New York State taxpayers pick up a substantial portion of the tab for education; and (2) the authentic financial anxiety of the wealthiest 10% of residents and property owners (who also tend to be the oldest Westporters). The volatility in the stock market can reasonably be expected to have diminished the wealth of the wealthiest 10% by as much as 40%. Their feelings of financial anxiety are real and need to somehow be addressed by the community without costuming them as the poor. 

New York State has frozen at least some of the figures used to calculate the wealth of our community in determining what the state contributes to our school budget. In the case of the much-discussed NYS "Foundation Aid" which gives the district a specific amount per pupil, they have frozen the wealth figures at the 2006-2007 school year. The stock market crashed in July of 2007.

With the arrival of Fiberoptic Internet to Westport through the efforts of our phone company, Chazy-Westport, I think the prospects of the Westport economy bouncing back faster than New York State as a whole are very good, since it can now reasonably attract suburban telecommuters (like myself) as home buyers. But for that to work, we need to keep our infrastructure intact, and that includes the Westport Central School District.

Kathryn Cramer

On "taypayers," school financing, & prosperity

In the discussion of the school budget, the term "taxpayer" is used a lot by those arguing for a $400,000 reduction in the budget (a reduction of approximately $1,433 per child). Nearly everyone is a "taxpayer," even children -- anyone old enough to buy a candy bar probably pays sales tax. 

There are many things my tax dollars are used for that I am upset by, from paying for privatized military companies such as Blackwater, to financing ill-considered wars, to bailing out banks and bankers. Mostly, we are not given line-item veto on how our tax money is spent. School levies are a rare exception.

Although the rhetoric of the "taxpayer" vs. the school budget suggests that local property owners foot the whole bill for education, the money for the public schools comes from a combination of federal, state and local taxes. The precise amounts are hard to track, in that the federal government gives money to the state and then the state divides it up among school districts. There is no fixed ratio for the portion of the school budget picked up by state and federal taxpayers and the amount picked up by local taxpayers in the form of property taxes.

In an appendix to a report by the New York State School Board's Association, there is this interesting table showing local taxes as a proportion of a school budget for a "wealthy" district and a "poor" district.

The implication of smaller districts having a larger portion of financing from state and federal taxes is that when state aid is frozen or cut,  poorer districts need a much larger tax levy (percentage-wise) to make up the difference; the levy is larger because poorer districts start out with a larger percentage of the budget paid for by state and federal taxpayers.

Another implication of this chart is that over the long-term, as a town becomes more prosperous, property taxpayers take on a larger role in school financing. As we prepare for a brighter future for Westport we must recognize that state and federal taxpayers will have less of a role in financing our schools if we succeed.

Cutting the school budget a form of tax relief for the local low income elderly? No. It doesn't work that way.

At the most recent meeting of the Westport Central School District's Board of Education, it was suggested by a man in the row I was sitting in that deep cuts in the school budget were necessary to provide tax relief for those senior citizens living in Westport solely supported by their Social Security benefits.* (Cutting property taxes to provide relief to the poor is, on the face of it, an absurd idea.)

What was suggested by those dissatisfied with the extent of the Board of Education's budget cuts thus far, those apparently seeking another $400,000 in budget cuts, was that staff layoffs are necessary to keep poor people on Social Security from losing their homes. I have been thinking about how to look at this by the numbers. Just today, I got an email suggesting that some of the WCS employees should "get the axe."

We could identify low-income elderly home owners by looking at what properties qualified for Enhanced STAR tax exemptions, but that program was discontinued in 2009,** and so the data might be hard to come by in 2010. Enhanced STAR exemptions were formerly available to "available to senior homeowners whose incomes do not exceed the statewide standard." I am going to see if I can get the data on this from the town.

The idea of cutting taxes to aid the poor is in principle an appealing idea, but one should bear in mind that 33% of the students at the Westport Central School qualify for reduced price lunches. And so one third of the school budget is already providing services to the low-income population.

It is not clear how cutting money from the school budget translates to cuts in what taxpayers in the Town of Westport pay in taxes. But from a standing start, if -- hypothetically speaking -- a $400,000 cut from the school budget translated frictionlessly to $400,000 less collected from taxpayers, that tax cut would have to yieild $133,000 in tax relief for low income households for the low income population to break even.*** This seems unlikely.

Off the top, for richer or poorer, 38% of the residential tax relief would leave the area because it was given to residential property owners with zip codes outside the Adirondack Park. So that leaves about 62% of the potential residential tax relief of which a bare minimum of $133,000 must go to the poor for the poor to break even on this deal.

Not all property tax bills are created equal. Property tax relief enacted by unilateral cuts in the tax rate per $100,000 is in proportion to the value of the property. For every dollar of tax relief delivered to the homeowner of a house assessed at $64,000, the home owner of a water-front property assessed at $649,000 gets $10.14; for a property assessed at a million dollars, the owner gets $15.62 in tax relief. So for every person with a million-dollar property, it takes 16 homeowners with $64,000 homes to equal him in terms of tax relief. In an area where there is such a large range of property values, the idea that  unilateral property tax cuts are tax relief for the poor just doesn't work out.

I don't have all the numbers to work this out properly, but I defy anyone to demonstrate numerically how, collectively, the low-income residents of Westport can possibly realize a net gain out of a school tax cut. When evaluated as a tool for helping the poor, cuts in the school budget seem to be a regressive form of tax relief.

One further issue that needs to be addressed is how poverty is distributed in our community. My understanding is that a Westport resident age 18 or under is twice as likely to be living below the poverty line than a Westport resident 65 or over. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to cut programs benefitting children to give tax relief to those over 65 in order to address the problem of poverty in our community.

(Meanwhile, someone should do an analysis of the economic impact of Westport Central School along the lines of the report recently commissioned on the economic impart of Moriah Shock. It is possible that that kind of analysis would show a net gain for Westport taxpayers for each school employee, not a net loss.)

A further thought: There is one struggling segment of Westport resident homeowners that would benefit from school budget cuts as tax relief. In a column in the Valley News, Colin Wells, who is supportive of the school budget, discusses his struggle to hold onto a family property that he inherited. Cuts in the school budget might, in the short-term, benefit the owners of properties than have been in families for more than a generation, since the value of those properties may have no relationship to the earning capacity and other assets of the owners. 

However, manipulations of the school budget are not a good instrument for helping such families. Their difficulties stem from much larger governmental systems than what can be controlled through the WCS Board of Education. Ironically, economic development and smart growth, the tools most likely to help everyone else, may ultimately force such owners out of their homes, since gentrification causes a rise in property values which is usually followed by a rise in tax assessments.

---

* Former school board candidate Ulrich Hoffmann summarized the comment as follows in an email apparently circulated to the Future for Westport email list:

It was noted, as well, that the Board should bear in mind that continued school tax increases in the high-single and double digit percentages are an intolerable burden on a major portion of Westport taxpayers. These persons are on limited incomes and/or are over the age of 65 and have incomes that come solely or primarily from Social Security which promises no increases in the next couple of years.

I'm not sure where these demographic claims come from. Using the figures from the Adirondack Regional Assessment Project, about 26% of the residents of Westport are over 65 as of 2000; the 2000 Census put the figure at 20.4%. Not everyone over 65 is retired. Surely, it is not being argued that we need to bail out second home owners who are solely supported by Social Security. Entitlement programs like Social Security were never intended to afford recipients a vacation home, nor should they be. 

So this "major portion of Westport taxpayers" would need to come out of that 25% of the Westport resident population over 65. Using the figures from the Adirondack Regional Assessment Project, in Westport, of the three demographic groups they list -- under 18, 18 - 64, and 65+ -- those over 65 were the least likely to be living below the poverty level. (I don't have figures on the number of Westport residents living on Social Security who are under 65, but the number is unlikely to be large.)

It is possible that Mr. King's analytical framework is accomplished by first subtracting children from the community when assessing educational needs, or that "taxpayer" is a euphemism for "landowner." Even children pay sales tax. It has been a quite long time in America since only the landed could vote; suffrage only for the landed went out in the 19th century before women and non-whites got the right to vote. Surely, Mr. King is not consciously positioning himself as the champion of Westport's landed gentry.

Another implication of Mr. King's formulation is that adult recipients of income from government entitlement programs are more entitled to their benefits than children receiving an adequate K-12 education at public expense. That seems to me unreasonable.

Also, as far as I know, the double-digit tax increase under discussion and coming up for a vote is to fund the municipal center, not the school.

** The STAR tax relief program may be coming back. Its restoration apparently passed the NY State Senate. Also, as reported, it appears that Enhanced STAR exemptions would not be a good measure of "low income": the household income cap is $150,000 which is substantially above the median household income for this area.

*** Since a portion of the Town's retired people supplement their Social Security income by working part time for the school district and are among those most vulnerable to losing their jobs in the case of deep budget cuts, this figure should probably be higher.

Private or Public Negotiations between the School District and the Teachers Union?

Last night, at the Westport Central School Board budget hearing, it was suggested that negotiations between the school district and the teachers' union should be open to the public. That was an idea I'd never heard before, so I spent a while online looking for support for the idea that public hearings would be preferable to private negotiations.

There is one circumstance where public hearings seem to be of use: when there is an acrimonious game of he-said she-said between district and union in their claims to the press about what is at issue in private negotiations, having negotiation meetings open to the public keeps everyone honest. But that is not what is at issue in the request that budget hearings be open to the public here.

The existing teacher's contract is available online. To make a proposal to the district  about what should be negotiated, all one has to do is print THIS out, mark it up, and hand it to the Superintendent or to a member of the school board. The opportunity to give feedback on possible contractual terms is already freely available to the public.

The contract available online is pretty invasive to teacher privacy as it stands. I don't think the public is entitled to more information about the earnings of individual teachers than is already available in the 2006-2010 contract.

Given the circumstances of the Westport district, opening the hearings to the public would give the public the illusion that individual taxpayers are entitled to participate in the negotiations. We have an elect school board and a superintendent who reports to our elected officials.  We should let them do their jobs and not open the door to the possibility that the contract would  end up formed to shape the opinions of someone we didn't elect.

---

It appears that district labor relations with the teachers are governed by something called the Taylor Law which is discussed HERE. It appears that the Taylor law and its amendments give the union the right to (in effect) the same or better terms than teachers had in the previous  contract in exchange for losing the right to strike.

Some interesting articles related to Westport Central School District budget discussions

• An article on school districts' use of reserves in hard times: School budget cuts may not be necessary by Cathy F. Creagh in The Chicago Tribune:

  Certainly, at a time like this, schools must take stock and make prudent cuts; but good gardeners prune carefully, in a way that allows new growth, not by hacking at the trunk or roots. As school boards go about the business of budget cutting, we must scrutinize their actions and always be mindful of the consequences.
  
  Solidly built on fiscal responsibility and a commitment to excellent education, Maine Township’s three high schools have evolved over the past 100 years. Suddenly, however, the current school board has declared an unprecedented financial crisis while still holding over $85 million in reserve, and they may actually instigate their debilitating plan if enough people react to the frantic cry, “The sky is falling” instead of investigating the details.

• Rural school districts are effective and don't need consolidation, an Op-Ed piece by Jim Kowalkowski, superintendent of the Davenport School District, which serves 585 students in Northeast Washington's Lincoln County, from The Seattle Times.

  Washington's small and rural districts are successful. Perhaps the most compelling example of this is graduation rates. Most of the rural school districts in Washington state are small (less than 1,000 students). According to recent research conducted by the Center for Research and Data Analysis at Educational Service District No. 113 in Olympia, these small and rural districts have the highest average on-time graduation rates and the lowest dropout rates.

• Still too many schools? by Melissa Maynard, Stateline.org Staff Writer

  Consolidation of anything related to schools is notoriously difficult, and doesn’t always turn out to provide the fiscal windfall states hope for. Implementation is fraught with complexities, as the Maine example illustrates, and communities worry about the possibility of local schools closing even when it's promised that proposed changes would be largely administrative. “It’s very easy to conflate consolidating school districts with consolidating schools,” says Jennifer Bradley, a senior research associate at the Brookings Institution. “The subject seems to drop straight to, ‘We're going to lose our football team.’ I don't think anybody particularly rallies around their school district administration building."

  Still, for communities such as Somerville in Maine, the distinction between school districts and schools is largely a technical one. Somerville contains only one school, which until recently comprised its own district. Advocates for rural schools say administrative consolidation efforts make it far more likely that places such as Somerville will ultimately be forced to close their schools by a less sympathetic regional school board, with dramatic implications for their local economies. "It's never about district consolidation, even when they say it is; it's always about closing schools,” says Marty Strange, policy program director at the Rural School and Community Trust. “School district consolidation is just a shoehorn. It's a lot more pleasant to talk about off wasteful administrators than it is to talk about laying off someone's child's teacher."

• The Case for Saturday School by Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Education, as seem in The Wall Street Journal this weekend.

  In the face of budget shortfalls, school districts in many parts of the United States today are moving toward four-day weeks. This is despite evidence that longer school weeks and years can improve academic performance. Schoolchildren in China attend school 41 days a year more than most young Americans—and receive 30% more hours of instruction. Schools in Singapore operate 40 weeks a year. Saturday classes are the norm in Korea and other Asian countries—and Japanese authorities are having second thoughts about their 1998 decision to cease Saturday-morning instruction. This additional time spent learning is one big reason that youngsters from many Asian nations routinely out-score their American counterparts on international tests of science and math.

  Some U.S. schools have figured this out. Those that boast extraordinary success with poor and minority youngsters typically surround them, like Mesopotamians, with learning from dawn to dusk. The celebrated Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), a network of over 80 charter schools around the country, subjects its middle-schoolers to 60% more instructional time than the typical public school—including eight- to 10-hour days, Saturday morning classes and abbreviated summer breaks.

  (In my opinion, 5 days of school a week are enough, but this article does provide an interesting counterpoint claims that a 4-day school week would be a good way to save money.)

Are We Exceeding Our Mandates?

The following are my remarks relayed to the Westport School Board last night. I verbally gave a quick summary of this during the first 5 minute comment period, and then submitted the full text to the board for their consideration. —Kathryn

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My name is Kathryn Cramer and I am a Westport parent. This is our first year in this district.

In response to questions about the budget raised in some widely circulated emails, I set out to find answers about education spending in our school district. By far, the most complex question is whether the Westport Central School District is “exceeding its mandates” and giving its students a “Cadillac” when a “Chevy” will do.

One first must identify the unfunded and underfunded educational mandates. I found a group of Westchester County school districts that had put together a spread sheet. 

The “unfunded mandates” explored in the spread sheet include “Special Education & Special Services”, “NCLB Requirements/Academic Intervention Services (AIS)/RTI”, “Transportation”, “Health & Safety,” “Buildings & Grounds (Not included in Health and Safety)”, “Professional Development”, and “Finance.” In the Westchester districts reporting, “unfunded mandates” amounted to about 16.3% of the budget. If the proportions are the same for our district, that would be a dollar amount of roughly $815,000. 

In terms of the relative size, No Child Left Behind, compliance with Megan’s Law, asbestos abatement, DEC compliance, etc. pale in comparison to the first category “Special Education & Special Services,” which is mostly Special Education. That first category makes up three quarters of the un- or underfunded mandates for the Westchester districts that created the spread sheet.

So the question we are REALLY asking when we ask whether the district is “exceeding its mandates” is whether it is overfunding Special Education—which is to say whether we are buying our Special Ed kids “Cadillacs.” The law entitles all children an “adequate” K-12 education, including those who are more challenging to educate.

I looked at Essex county special ed instructional spending for 2007-2008 from the The New York State School Report Card Fiscal Accountability Supplements. Special Ed instructional spending is a highly volatile number, more volatile for smaller districts, and depends on the needs of individual students which fluctuate from year to year.

The average district spending for Essex County for the school year 2007-2008 was $37,216.09 per pupil. Willsboro and Ticonderoga spent the least per pupil and were substantially below average for New York State, spending only about 75% of what the average NYS school spends. Newcomb and Minerva spent the most per pupil. The ratio between the highest per pupil expenditure and the lowest (Newcomb:Willsboro) is a little shy of 8:1. (The smaller the district, the more volatile the number.)

The bottom-spending five school districts were on average spending only 82% of what the average NYS school spends per pupil on special ed, strongly suggesting that special education is systematically underfunded in some or all of those districts. New York State itself has a special education graduation rate of just over 50%—only slightly better than the graduation rate of Rhode Island school that is in the news because the district fired all the teachers and administrators and is starting from scratch.

I checked where New York State ranked nationally in terms of overall graduation rates. I was surprised to find that it has the worst graduation rate in the Northeast and fits comfortably in the bottom quarter of states along with Nevada and most of the American South. By contrast, our school in Westport has the SAME graduation rate for Special Ed students as for general education students, which is to say about 100%. 

I doubt that anyone would argue that any of these WCS graduates lead such a charmed life that they didn’t need the diploma and to provide it was the equivalent of buying them a Cadillac. The New York State average is nothing to aspire to. The law is that Students are to receive an adequate education, and if these students can reasonably be expected to leave high school with a diploma, we are supposed to make that possible. That is the mandate against which spending is to be measured.

It is technically possible for us to fail to meet these obligations in order to save money, but special education spending is like spending money to comply with building codes. Sure, we could save a bunch of money on the proposed complex up the road if we don’t build to code, but it wouldn’t be a good idea. Ignoring special education mandates makes for more fragile communities less able to bounce back from hard times, just as not building to code makes for more fragile buildings.

An interesting sidelight to this is the issue of how districts that are systematically underfunding Special Education can get away with it. The reason it is possible for them to shirk their responsibilities is that the policing of what services districts provide is largely left up to parents. The annual cost of having a neurologist consult with the parents about this can easily run $800/yr. A private occupational therapy evaluation run $400 - $1,000. A neuropsychological evaluation, the tool of choice for assessing what is really at issue with a child with a complex of learning disabilities, runs $3,500 to $5,000 and private insurance may decline to pay for any of it. A special ed. lawyer costs $500 for the first meeting, and $1,500 for each CSE meeting attended (which could amount to $6,000 a year just for meeting time). So how some of these districts—spending only about $18,000 a year for Special Ed instruction in districts where more than 2/3rds of the students qualify for reduced price lunches—can get away with failing to provide mandated services is unpleasantly obvious.

My general conclusion is that Westport is not “exceeding its mandates” in any large scale way. Rather, Westport Central School is doing a cost-effective job of satisfying its mandates in a state that systematically underfunds Special Education, and that we should be proud of our school and of the community that supports it.