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The above photos are charts that allow you to "Follow the Money Trail" (in 10 easy steps). Click on them to view them larger or to download them. The data for the graphs came from the Georgia Department of Education -
School System Financial Reports.
Perhaps you are familiar with this state website. It offers a wealth of information in a nicely condensed format. One of our bloggers very kindly made graphs of the state data because DeKalb Watch posters grasp visuals easier than numbers - true of most of us.
Going through the charts you can easily see that direct instruction (i.e. interaction with students) has been where DCSS has placed the LEAST emphasis. This category/area has grown slower than revenues and every other expenditure category.
Revenues have risen 28% while expenditures on Direct Instruction have only increased by 10%. Meanwhile, Pupil Services, Staff Services, and General Administration have grown by astounding percentages far outpacing increases in revenue. There is a direct correlation in the decline in direct instruction of students with the decline in student achievement over time in DCSS. The schoolhouse has been starved of funding (reference not only Direct Instruction but also School Administration as contrasted to General Administration), and this is showing up in student achievement.
2003 was chosen as a starting point because this was the last year that Dr. Brown was superintendent. This allows us to see what happened to revenue and expenditures when Dr. Lewis became superintendent. Where did he and the BOE spend our money? The largest increase was not General Administration (although that saw an
84% increase).
Pupil Services experienced the largest increase with a 133% increase in expenditures - understandable since Dr. Lewis headed up staff development before he was superintendent. Staff Services was third in expenditure increases with
61% more in expenditures.
One other interesting factoid is that more and more of our funding is coming from the Federal Government -
currently 14% up from 3% in 2003. This is extraordinarily high for a school system, even by today's standards. We are running
$128,000,000 in federal funds most likely concentrated under the Office of School Improvement since they handle federal funds—making this department a real power center within the Central Office.
Look at transportation cost in the last two years (chart #9) as the DCSS administration reined in "choice school" transportation. We can actually see the decline in transportation costs in the last two years. This gives us definitive proof that
prudent fiscal action by the DCSS administration and BOE can result in an immediate and substantial decline in non-instructional expenses.
A real storm is coming in terms of budgetary cuts. The federal government money that has taken over a large percentage of the DCSS budget is short term and will end in the near future. This administration and BOE must make some real cuts outside the schoolhouse now, not later. They must understand that cutting direct instruction for students has disabled our core business of educating students. The schoolhouse has no more to give.
The BOE needs to ask Mrs. Tyson for the data, analyze that data, and make decisions based on that data. They are responsible for our tax dollars and ultimately for our students' achievement. They have to have the tools and information necessary to make responsible, future-minded decisions.
48 comments:
If the numbers on the first chart ("DeKalb Schools - Number of Students") are correct, the percent increase from 2003 to 2010 was 1.5, not "15". Did they have anyone proofread these things?
I think someone at the blog put together the charts from the GA DoE data. It seems like a typo.
The federal increase in dollars is not at all unique to DeKalb. Most large school systems, with enough poor and special ed students to count, have received a tremendous influx in dollars, especially in the last two years. The stimulus packages have been a real boon.
The US Representative who will take over the House Education committee in January with the shift in power from Democrats to Republicans has indicated that he wants the feds to have a much smaller role in education. It should be interesting to see how this plays out.
Oh yeah, good job on the charts.
Simply put, any Federal, State or local funding should go directly to the classroom. All this "non-teaching" funding should be cut drastically and all funds should go to the main mission of DCSS, educating OUR kids!
You are right but last night on one news program or another a local government official was speaking about the cost of accepting federal monies for their state. Not a school system, but a state government. The official said that the money sounds great but then you are spending $ to get $$. And the paperwork, etc is beyond belief.
Utah had briefly considered not participating in NCLB. This would have met no Title 1 monies. It was a hard decision because they believed that the costs associated with NCLB would far exceed the monies from the Feds. I think they were right.
Thanks for pointing out the typo, Anon - all fixed. (And, FWIW, no, we don't have anyone on "staff" to proofread - we're just volunteers - so we're very appreciative of your help in that area.)
I think this is why our budget is so frustrating. We get a vast amount of our funding from the federal government in Title 1 funds, but they can only be used in Title 1 schools. So we can't simply divide the total budget by the number of students and get a per pupil spending number. Obviously, the Title 1 schools are getting much more money than the non-Title 1s. So instead of say a cost of $9000 per student, we are actually spending $10,000 on Title 1 students and $8000 on others... (hypothetical numbers but you see the point). Our school system relies heavily on parents in non-Title 1 schools to pick up the slack in everything from educating transfer students to general maintenance.
Heck - Henderson parents are right now painting the whole darn building interior themselves and Lakeside is taking up a collection for athletic fields and extras that SPLOST won't even pay for - this is AFTER they went in and renovated the formerly moldy weight rooms.
@ anonymous 3:24 pm
"Did they have anyone proofread these things?"
Actually, I made those graphics and I did proofread it. I went back to my original slice show and the percentage was 15%. I don't know how it got changed since I didn't do the slide conversion. I've asked Cerebration to repost the original slide with the correct information. Thank you so much for expressing such tact when seeing a problem.
All fixed. The point is, the population only increased 1.5%, however, funding increased many, many more times that. Certainly, much is due to the central office explosion under Lewis. It's really a simple fix if you think about it - and I am certain that the board is aware and working very hard to re-balance the system spending.
The first step was at the last meeting where they passed a new policy that they no longer have to "RIF" from "last in first out" (in many, many cases, the "last ins" are the ones doing the work) -- they can reduce force by eliminating unnecessary jobs and/or jobs that do not show a return on investment.
Watch them go to town - Paul Womack has already let us know that they intend to insist Ramona really do some serious housecleaning. Let's hope they put those budgets back into the classrooms!
"The point is, the population only increased 1.5%, however, funding increased many, many more times that"
The population increased 15%, but you're right - the increase is smaller than the increase of revenues (28%) almost by half.
This data hopefully will show those who insist that the schools in the "north" somehow get "more" than those in the "south" that this is simply not true.
In fact, here's a quote from an old tech plan put forth by DCSS to the State DOE dated July 2006 - If Ms. Woods has this report, then she has known for a very long time that her schools are well-funded, thanks to Title 1.
Instruction/Instructional Technology
(Access to Technology)
I. Current Reality – High Schools
A. Ratio of High School Students per Computer
... The average high school ratio of students per computer is six (6) students per computer. ... Six (6) DCSS high schools out of 21 meet the national average of five (5) students per computer. Funds from grants and ESOL and the Instructional Department funds have been used to purchase additional technology. Most of these funds have targeted Title I schools. As a result Title I high schools have a slightly more favorable student to computer ratio than non-Title I high schools. Ten (10) Title I high schools have an average of 5.3 students per computer while 11 non- Title I schools have an average of 6.7 students per computer.
http://www.dekalb.k12.ga.us/mis/files/e0079762382040f5ab783682d4d3c5d3.pdf
More from that report
Non-Title I elementary schools have approximately two (2) more students per computer than Title1 schools.
Non-Title I middle schools have approximately one (1) more student per computer than Title I schools.
Non-Title I high schools have approximately two (2) more students per computer than Title I schools.
Now, obviously this is rather old info, and as we have reported, several schools (including DSA and Dunwoody) were recently awarded very nice technology grants. Hopefully we are leveling the playing field a bit.
Where are you getting 15 percent? The population increased 1.5 percent. If it had increased 15 percent we would have about 108,000 students. We don't.
The increase in income and expenses is therefore much more dramatic. However, I expect that you would find the same trends in many systems across the country.
Once of the impacts of the booming economy was the increase in property values, both residential and commercial. Most school systems saw an increase in property tax revenues, very few lowered millage rates.
I'm sure this is off topic - but it is tangentially related. Just got letter from DCSS with passwords for OAS. How much time and money and resources are we spending for these kids of "prep for the test" resources rather than actually teaching students content. I teach in the university setting and the focus on testing and the sheer amount of resources spent on preparing students for standardized testing is staggering.... but teachers seem to have little time to spend developing lesson plans that actually inspire learning. Is the problem simply a local problem, or have we bought the bigger problems of top-heavy administrative requirements associated with NCLB. I seriously don't know. The OAS system seriously seems like an online study for the CRCT drain of wealth.
@ Anonymous 7:30 am
"The official said that the money sounds great but then you are spending $ to get $$. And the paperwork, etc is beyond belief."
We can't lay the blame on the federal regulations. Look when the the steep increases occurred in Staff Services and Pupil Services occurred - directly after Dr. Lewis became superintendent. Meanwhile, the 2004-05 "buyout" (bonus paid for personnel with 30 years of experience to go ahead and retire) of Central Office personnel started under Brown to reduce Central Office staff. After the buyout occurred in 2005 (end of the buyout period), Dr. Lewis began to increase Central Office staff. That is reflected in slide 7 - General Administration.
If what you say is true the sharp increase in the non-teaching areas of Pupil Services, Staff Services, and General Administration should correlate with sharp increases in federal funding. It doesn't:
DCSS federal funds
2003 $31,707,056
2004 $44,384,016
2005 $50,359,969
2006 $56,670,988
2007 $62,239,004
2008 $50,533,144
2009 $77,227,391
2010 $128,255,748
As you can see the sharp increase in federal funding came in 2008 and then really escalated in 2010 with the Stimulus money.
Source: Georgia DOE School System Financial Reports
http://app.doe.k12.ga.us/ows-bin/owa/fin_pack_revenue.entry_form?p_fiscal_year=2010
@ Anonymous 11:41
"OAS. How much time and money and resources are we spending for these kids of "prep for the test" resources rather than actually teaching students content. "
Do you want to add insult to injury? eSis and SchoolNet ($11,000,000) were bought by DCSS to:
1. Provide benchmark data analysis in a timely and easily accessed and comprehensible format
2. CRCT and other standardized testing data to teachers.
Benchmark testing is not timely nor is it delivered in the manner and format that would be useful to teachers. Instead it is a drain on teacher planning and instructional time.
The CRCT and other standardized testing data is already available to teachers on OAS so much of the rationale for eSis and SchoolNet was not valid.
In essence, DCSS taxpayers paid twice for teacher access to CRCT and other standardized testing data for their students - first with OAS (taxpayer dollars paid for this) and then for eSis and SchoolNet.
DCSS taxpayers began to pay $11,000,000 for eSis and SchoolNet in 2007 (we're still paying) - a system that gives teachers absolutely nothing they didn't have before. And think of the MIS personnel cost to run this system and train on these systems. Add hundreds of thousands a year more for those costs. In addition, add Central Office personnel costs of hundreds of thousands a year more to develop benchmark tests (which still are bulky to administer and score, do not provide timely information to teachers, AND contain errors to boot!)
And BTW eSis is much more difficult and slower to use than the system it replaced (SmartWeb which by the way DCSS was only paying $102,000 a year for). Ask teachers how they feel about eSis as compared to SmartWeb.
What a waste of student resources in a time of scarcity. Millions and millions down the drain and absolutely no one accountable in the DCSS administration for this spending which does not improve student achievement let alone "inspire learning". At least 2 BOE members were held accountable as voters replaced two of them. With any luck, the BOE will be cut to 7 or hopefully 5 and voters will have another chance.
"If the numbers on the first chart ("DeKalb Schools - Number of Students") are correct, the percent increase from 2003 to 2010 was 1.5, not "15". Did they have anyone proofread these things? "
Yes. You are right. My bad. The increase in students was 1.5% while the increase in expenditures was 28%. Sorry for my defensive post of 9:01 am.
The conclusion is even more egregious since we stayed virtually flat in student numbers and also teachers (see DeKalb Report Card under personnel and fiscal for 2003 and 2009 on DOE website), but increased revenues by 28%.
Just want to say thanks for taking the time to put all of this info together. Seeing the facts broken down this way is such a valauble resource that will serve us all well as we advocate for change!
Great work in putting that together.
Charts 5 -8 seem to show a rather startling amount of payroll padding for non-teaching positions
One thing that seems to be overlooked is that from 2003 to 2009 about $700 million in SPLOST funds were collected and spent. DCSS does not seem to be able to provide for maintenance and capital improvements from its normal budget. I wonder how the other school systems do it
I bet no one on the BOE is either aware of this info., or worse, even cares.
Please Donna and Nancy, follow the money! Put it back into the school house. Not into the Central Office Mountain indistrial Mega-Complex!
Pictures are worth a thousand words. Slide presentation is very informative. Bottom line...dollars need to be put into the school house. Teachers need resources to facilitate well planned creative lessons. $$ spent for AIC staff to dictate what teachers need to do is stopping creativity. DCSS BOE need to look at successful large school districts and how they spend their monies to produce life long learners, offer high schoolers technical skills as well as college preparation. DCSS BOE needs to look at how to maintain our campuses too. Monies should be put aside for necessary repairs. Contract services for repairs. DCSS BOE needs to consider doing away with Title I monies. Texas opted to not accept NCLB monies because they analyzed that the cost to obtain and keep the $$ was more than they were receiving. In addition, when DCSS books were audited for correct spending and documentation of federal monies, they were cited, costing DCSS $$.
As long as we have CRCT has the only measure for AYP for NCLB, than OAS, eSIS, IDMS, TieNet, etc. are here to stay. Bottom line, students must be exposed to benchmarks and other CRCT formatted items in order to be successful on the CRCT, especially our ESOL population because the wording is so foreign to them. Once again, thanks for the great slides!
-One thing that seems to be overlooked is that from 2003 to 2009 about $700 million in SPLOST funds were collected and spent. DCSS does not seem to be able to provide for maintenance and capital improvements from its normal budget. I wonder how the other school systems do it -
For capital improvements, other school districts pass bonds, which are paid back by property owners. Factor in that other school districts don't have as many buildings as DeKalb and not as many capital improvement needs.
Bonds are part of how other systems do capital improvements, but having been in schools across the country, many aren't doing many improvements, just barely maintaining what they have.
And the previous poster is correct, DCSS has an inexcusably high number of facilities to maintain.
The government officials are looking at the money they spend in Title I Schools and saying wait a minute. I am giving you all this money and where is the improvement in achievement? This has been a big problem across the country in many school systems and that is one reason they government is pushing teachers getting paid on achievement improvement. Maybe teachers should get bonuses on great achievement improvements. We must change what we are doing in order to improve achievement. Just throwing out money to Title I schools does not appear to be doing the job in many locations across the country.
I want to thank whomever took the time to make these graphs. It is minor that there was a mistake. The mistake could be corrected. It is volunteers like you that really make a difference. Thanks for doing this.
I just watched a video of a Florida man shooting at school board members in Florida after his wife was fired from school system.
Video is called God blocked the bullet.http://www.cnn.com/video/
Not advocating violence but DCSS better take note. People are under a lot of stress and they have done so much dirt. You never know who might snap and take measure like this guy.
The vison portion of the DCSS web site has now posted the consultants ratings of the educational adequacy of school facilities. The range from 20 to 98 on a hundred point scale. Yet to come are the engineers evaluation of facility conditon, needed repairs, projected costs, and energy efficiency. Also the consultants' count of the seats and capacity of each school are also posted. The vision process seems to be producing some reliable numbers which will allow us to decide rationally which schools to close. I asked one of the consultants to summarize their findings in a sentence. He said everyone agrees that changes are needed and that it shuoldn't affect my child's schooling.
"I asked one of the consultants to summarize their findings in a sentence. He said everyone agrees that changes are needed and that it shuoldn't affect my child's schooling."
So true!
Anyone know why our schools are now being grouped into "Super Clusters"? What rational is used? As if multiple school districts weren't confusing enough, now we have even more of a cluster____ to deal with.
"Anonymous said...
Anyone know why our schools are now being grouped into "Super Clusters"? What rational is used? As if multiple school districts weren't confusing enough, now we have even more of a cluster____ to deal with."
Call them regions if you wish.
We already have 5 regions in our system based on feeder patterns elementary to middle school, middle school to high school. The regions have changed depending on the politics of the situation The consultants redid the regions into what they think is a more ratinal division so that Dunwood, Cross Keys and Chamblee HS are in cluster 1 or region 1, Druid Hills, Lakeside, and Tucker are in region 2, Stone Mt, Stephenson and Redan in region 3, etc.
The consultant grouping is far more ratinal and less a ___ tha before.
It is appalling that the new LEED-certified Arabia Mountain High School scored only 75 on the educational adequacy of the facility. "Fair: The facility has some problems meeting the needs of the educational programs and will likely require some remodeling."
I believe the presenters at the last school board meeting said that the SuperClusters were simply a means of organizing the data.
I don't understand why there are waiting lists for KMS, etc., but the facilities clearly could hold more. Why, if we are not going to ensure such services in local schools, do we make them available to such a limited amount of kids.....
The capacities listed make no sense for any of the schools that I know personally. They seem very inflated to me. I look forward to an explanation of where they have come from.
Is it icy where you are? In Dunwoody roads are starting to get very slick... wondering about the rest of the county.
I know it is off topic but the roads are terrible in some spots. I could not get into my subdivision. By the Grace of the Lord, my sister and her son were behind me. His car had AWD. I left mine went around a total different way to get home and about 90 mins later I was home. The subdivision sreets are very icy. Black ice that you cannot see but you sure can feel it under your tires.
Please be careful out there. It was cold. The water froze. I love ATL but we are not prepared for ice.
What are the odds of no school tomorrow?
Delayed by two hours but still opening.
"The capacities listed make no sense for any of the schools that I know personally. They seem very inflated to me. I look forward to an explanation of where they have come from."
That's the beauty of hiring an outside consultant. They get to leave after the report and don't have any political axe to grind. They came up with the the count after analyzing how rooms were being used as well as the room capacity. You were not very specific about what schools seemed inflated so it would be hard to answer your criticism. Perhaps it would be instructive to compare these counts to the earlier ones given to us last year?
It is appalling that the new LEED-certified Arabia Mountain High School scored only 75 on the educational adequacy of the facility. "Fair: The facility has some problems meeting the needs of the educational programs and will likely require some remodeling."
It ranks higher on the technology scale (9%) and 75 is only 5 points from just needs tweaking. The grading sheet is very thorough and includes everthing from traffic flow, security, parking, cafteria, storage, physical education, office space, labs, classrooms, and much more. The consultants will release the score sheet for each school and you can then see what needs work everywhere. I understand one of the defficiencies at Arabia was physical education equipment.
However, the 75 doesn't bother me as much as some of the other high schools cores which include 22, 38, 56.
@11:53 A good outside consultant is always available to answer questions after their report is complete. It is up to those in charge to ask questions. From what I have seen from this BOE and administration, they are not willing to ask further questions.
I'd prefer to have an outsider, than an insider who will definitely skew the data. Honesty and transparency in DCSS and DeKalb is not existent from what I can see.
What question do you want to ask? Sign up at the board meeting and ask it. Or see if you board member will ask it. These consultants seem as good as any and they are posting their stuff to the web site. How much more transparaent can they be?
Here is the thing. How should room use be defined? Is one school allowed to have an art room, while another isn't?
This is very frustrating to me.
So a school that doesn't have an art room because of lack of space, gets a higher capacity but a school that does have room for the art room gets a lower capacity.
Does this make sense to anyone? Is it right?
So a school that doesn't have an art room because of lack of space, gets a higher capacity but a school that does have room for the art room gets a lower capacity.
Does this make sense to anyone? Is it right?
Makes perfect sense. It is right-look at the whole proces.
The vison study includes several kinds of surveys and facts. The capacity alone without the educational adequacy or the engineering report gives you nothing. The lack of the art room will show up in the grades on the adequacy. If the building has great capacity and great adequacy but has terminal mold then that will show up in the engineer's report.
Not sure where to post this, but I'd like to give a strong shout out to Mr. Swanson, the principal at Dunwoody High School. He served the kids lunch today by himself to fill in for some of the cafeteria workers who couldn't make it in because of the ice. I've heard he's also cleaned one of the boys' restrooms. I know that he's one Dekalb's best principals, if not the best.
It was upseting to watch the Bay County School Board meeting on all the national TV stations. I used to teach in Panama City and knew many of the individuals involved. I also recognized the gentleman who finally got shot. I am in shock that this is someone I knew from working in the Bay County Schools. I used to teach with his wife so I knew her and so I also knew him from social events around school. I am totally in shock. It is a small world. It did not really look like to me he intended to kill anyone but himself. His aim was pretty bad. I think he wanted to make a scene and kill himself. I really do not think he wanted to shot anyone else. He really could have if he wanted to but his aims appeared not to be directed at individuals but around them. It was very sad and this really could happen today in any school board meeting. This is why security is present.
"So a school that doesn't have an art room because of lack of space, gets a higher capacity but a school that does have room for the art room gets a lower capacity."
I'm not sure it's that simple. I went on the tour when the instructional use survey was done at my school. As I understood the process the questions is, do you have a music room? Are you using it to teach music? Trailers were not counted as classrooms. Not only were they looking at the number of rooms, but also the size of those rooms. Are teachers teaching in storage areas and conference rooms? The number of restrooms, ADA accessibility, etc. were also part of the assessment. As for the capacity estimates, the formula used may be different from the one that DCSS has been using. I will be very interested to see the individual school reports that are expected to be published tomorrow. I hope it will answer a lot of my questions.
"Not sure where to post this, but I'd like to give a strong shout out to Mr. Swanson, the principal at Dunwoody High School."
He was a great AP at DSA!
@ Ella: I saw that news clip too, and it looked like he fully intended to shoot them all, but the trigger squeeze threw his aim off.
You said, "This is why we have security." Security were the ones who checked all the law-abiding citizens and the school board members for weapons before allowing them to enter the room, leaving them defenseless to the criminal who sneaked a gun in. Security were the ones who were outside the room when the jerk was waving his gun around, and did not know what was happening until he got off several shots, barely missing one of the board and forcing the rest under their desks.
This is why we have Amendment One in our Bill of Rights, (paraphrased): Organized training in the care and responsible use of weapons by all citizens being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms in all places at all times, and teach same to their children, shall not be infringed.
You have mentioned before how dangerous things get at some of the high schools. If teachers were allowed to carry weapons and if students having passed certain levels of training were allowed to carry certain weapons, I dare say the wild, unruly behavior at those schools would disappear.
The recent event in Florida was just a lucky break in a long history of such events since the fall of the free state. The Columbine and Virginia university tragedies particularly come to mind.
Think about this - if all the airports did was hand out box-cutters, airline staff and passengers could fly securely and wouldn't be groped on the way in. And we would not need to pay tax money or extra fees for TSA and their X-radiation/microwave energy, virtual strip-searching machines!
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