Another community rallies for SPLOST project funding

As we move into the time period for promoting SPLOST IV, look for more neighborhood initiatives like the one below. This is as big an issue as redistricting, and many feel that promises have been made in the past that may be slipping away in SPLOST IV. In my experience, this is exactly how all SPLOST spending has gone.

Click here to read the actual proposed referendum. Every category reads "Includes, but not limited to"... Now that is vague and opens up the flood gates for additions and special projects (akin to the gorgeous Palace reno snuck in SPLOST III, which incidentally has another year to go).

Furthermore, as we have stated on the blog in the past, most of us do not plan to support another SPLOST tax unless and until we get highly qualified, trustworthy, ethical leadership in place. We think it is best to wait a year and make a much more structured plan – one that is educationally driven (form follows function, right?)  Make a sound education plan and then let that drive the numbers and types of buildings necessary to complete the task – educating children.


----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Coralwood School
Sent: Wed, June 1, 2011 8:45:37 PM
Subject: Urgent: Coralwood School Needs Your Help!

Dear Friends,

Coralwood School needs your help! For the last 5 years, members of the Board of Education and the Superintendent and the Superintendent's staff (both Lewis and Tyson) have pledged funding to Coralwood for a renovation and additional classrooms that will allow us to better serve the needs of our children. In fact, the County has already funded architectural drawings for this expansion at a cost of nearly $400,000. This project would provide dedicated music and art rooms, a sensory room, therapy space, 8 additional classrooms, renovated bathrooms, a dedicated computer lab and expanded library. Thousands of volunteer-hours have been dedicated to this plan and it is ready to go! Over the last year, members of the Board of Education, Ramona Tyson and Barbara Coleman have all given us their personal promise to see our project through. Now they are reneging on that promise.

This is what we need you to do. Please email the following TODAY and every day through Monday, June 6 (the day of the vote) to Board of Education members, the Interim Superintendent Ramona Tyson; Barbara Colman, Chief Operating Officer; and Dan Drake, Demographer responsible for data collection and reporting.

********************************

Subject: CORALWOOD SCHOOL


1. Coralwood School is an inclusion program that serves children from all over the county and EVERY Board of Education member has children of voting constituents at this school.

2. Our community has worked tirelessly these last 5 years to create an award-winning, model program and have self-funded initiatives to improve the program and facilities, but now we need DCSS to step up to improve our facilities, as promised, so that we can adequately meet the needs of our students.

3. DCSS has already spent, as part of its commitment to the Coralwood expansion, almost $400,000.00 in architectural drawings. Without following through with the complete project, this money spent is evidence of further waste and lack of accountability to tax payers. We demand wise decision-making and fiscal responsibility from DCSS and the BoE.

4. We dispute our utilization number. We are, in fact, at capacity based on the disabilities of children we serve. Our classroom sizes are mandated by law based on our inclusion model and the severity of the disabilities of children placed in the classroom.

5. We dispute the argument that Coralwood has a higher expense per pupil. Federal Special Education funds, not local dollars, cover those additional expenses as required under IDEA to meet the educational needs of disabled students.

6. DCSS is legally required to meet the IEP goals of our students. This is not and has not been the case in providing adequate therapies. Our children have received inadequate services in inadequate space for years in violation of IDEA.

7. You are rushing through this process and not giving the public adequate time to digest and respond to the information, much less considering prior commitments you have made to the children of Coralwood School.

8. Our community will not support SPLOST IV, and will actively campaign against it, unless the funds are made available for the Coralwood project as pledged.

Thank you for fulfilling your commitment to Coralwood School.

Sincerely,

(Your name)

*****************************************
Please make this a priority TODAY and every day through Monday, June 6 before it’s too late! The Board will be voting on SPLOST IV projects Monday, June 6. Ask your neighbors and family members to also email this message on behalf of Coralwood School.

Limbo is no fun - Will the board choose a new superintendent or are they secretly planning to maintain the status quo?

The AJC is reporting on the progress of several metro school systems searches for new superintendents.  Guess what - DeKalb is going NOWHERE - and now we have some well-placed people (apparently feeling content to speak for others) saying that they think Ms Tyson should continue.  To which we say, No. Absolutely not.

Key dates approach in superintendent searches

[The] DeKalb school board is rebounding from the public collapse of its last attempt to hire a new superintendent.

In March, the board introduced three finalists for the position, but none ended up getting the job. Board conflicts and contract disputes caused top pick Lillie Cox to withdraw from consideration.

Now, the board is trying to figure out what direction to go in next. No one has been formally interviewed since the last round of finalists, Chairman Tom Bowen said.

“Obviously our goal was to have the permanent super in place by July 1, but forcing the deadline isn’t as important as making the right selection,” Bowen said.

Bowen said board members are having more discussions about who they want to pursue for the job. Bowen said the meltdown of the last search hasn't deterred other candidates from applying. Potential applicants have since come forward and expressed an interest in the job, he said, but the district hasn’t decided to reopen the search.

DeKalb parent Marshall Orson, co-president of the Emory LaVista Parent Council, said Fulton and Cobb county schools, which recently completed successful searches for new superintendents, have attracted the kind of high-profile candidates that DeKalb should be looking for.

Orson said he thinks the board should consider keeping Interim Superintendent Ramona Tyson for two years to allow her to implement reforms and offer some stability as the Board of Education prepares to downsize from nine to seven in 2013, as mandated by state law.

Still no superintendent --Have you emailed the board?

Refer to our post from 10 days ago and use the email listing to insist that the board address this issue ASAP. All other decisions and all future plans hinge on who we have in place to lead the school system in the next year or two. We simply cannot spend this time in a continuing limbo. Ms. Tyson will not make the changes necessary. She does not have the background in education required to improve the success of our students. She has done an admirable job of steering the ship away from the big rocks, however, it's time to press ahead with a truly experienced captain from someplace else.

Furloughs Return

It appears that the declining property values in DeKalb have impacted the school system budget more than anticipated. So, without even discussing other options*, our board seems to be following the superintendent's recommendation to now have four furlough days for 10 and 11 months employees and 7 days for 12 month employees. I can't stress enough that there was ZERO discussion from any board member besides Sarah Copelin-Woods about any alternatives.

*-- Sarah Copelin-Woods did make inquiries about consultants and programs and asking why these aren't being cut since test scores keep dropping. She was first told that was all federal dollars, and when she wouldn't back down, was promised a list of all programs and consultants and funding sources. She really was the ONLY ONE who pushed for alternative cuts. She was clearly angry and discouraged. Of course, she went a bit off topic, trying to make her points about not closing schools.)

Several board members repeatedly said that 90 percent of the expenses in DCSS are salaries and benefits. And that there isn't enough in the remaining 10 percent to cut. Huh? Figuring a 750 million dollar budget, wouldn't that be about 75 million to look at for 15 million. (Each furlough day for ten month teachers saves about 3.2 million dollars. How about a combination of cuts?)

Dr. Walker says that Marcus Turk is one of the top people in his field in the country. (SCW isn't quite as sure he is the best.)

To see the meeting for yourself, go here:

http://www.dekalb.k12.ga.us/vision-2020/master-plan

then click on video (June 1st)

The remainder of the meeting is about SPLOST.

The Office of School Improvement: An Oxymoron

Since 2003-2004 – for 7 years! – DCSS has NOT made AYP. In 2003-2004, 18 of 132 DCSS schools (14%) did NOT make AYP. Fast forward to 2009-2010. Fifty (50) of 133 DCSS schools (37.6%) did NOT meet AYP!

That’s a 23.6% increase in FAILING to meet basic requirements!

Since the Class of 2010 entered middle school – and earlier – DCSS students with learning needs have NOT gotten the help they needed from the Office of School "Improvement." These students have graduated further behind than when they started. Millions of dollars have been spent on friends-and-family and useless "programs" without ever addressing the real problem, straightforwardly and effectively.

So, that naturally raises the question: Why do the folks charged with school improvement still have jobs?

If you or I had failed so spectacularly at our jobs we would have been fired.  The people in school improvement got raises!

That’s right. Raises.

According to Open.Georgia.com, between 2008 and 2010 (the only documentation publicly available), Employees in school improvement enjoyed an average raise of 7.5%.

Umm … Teachers? How much of a raise did you receive during those years?

Did these employees lose DCSS’s retirement contributions during that time period?  How many days were they furloughed during that time period?

Five (5) of the fewer than 30 employees in the "Office of School Improvement" on the payroll in 2010 received more than $100,000 per year. Another 15 "improvement" employees received from more than $50,000 all the way up to just under $95,000. This includes a data entry clerk paid $50,532, an administrative assistant (1 of 5 administrative assistants in a department of fewer than 30 people) paid $51,561 and two accounting associates each paid more than $52,000.  Most of it paid with federal Title 1 funds –  It looks like federal funds have become a playground full of money trees!

===
Thanks again to Sandy for her great research on this subject. This was originally posted in the comments of her post entitled "FOUND! DCSS Has The Money for Education Excellence"

School System Presents Proposed Master Facilities Plan

On Friday, May 27th, Interim Superintendent Ramona Tyson, Interim CIP Operations Officer Barbara Colman, and members of the consulting firm MGT America presented the proposed 2020 Vision Master Facility Plan and SPLOST IV list to the DeKalb Board of Education.

To view the presentation and see the Facility Needs Assessments for each school, click here. Scroll down to Updates and look under Friday, May 27th.

Stakeholders are invited to provide feedback on the SPLOST IV draft project list. The survey closes this Wednesday, June 1st at 11:59 p.m. To take the survey, click here.

The DeKalb Board of Education will continue the discussion about the 2020 Vision and SPLOST IV at a Committee of the Whole meeting this Wednesday, June 1st at 9:30 a.m. at the Administrative and Instructional Complex, 1701 Mountain Industrial Blvd., Stone Mountain, GA. The meeting is open to the public.

The DeKalb Board of Education will hold another Committee of the Whole meeting this Friday, June 3rd at 9:30 a.m. to continue the discussion about the 2020 Vision and SPLOST IV and to receive a copy of the final draft of the Facility Master Plan. It will also be held at the Administrative and Instructional Complex, 1701 Mountain Industrial Blvd., Stone Mountain, GA. The meeting is open to the public.

The Board of Education plans to vote on the SPLOST IV referendum and the Ten Year Facility Master Plan at their monthly Board meeting on Monday, June 6th at 6 p.m.

Please take time to familiarize yourself with the proposals and provide any feedback you have this week.

To view the plans as well as the video of Friday's meeting, click here.

To read an interesting blog post on the subject click here to visit Dunwoody Talk Blog.

FOUND! DCSS Has The Money for Education Excellence

Folks, it is time to stop giving DCSS leaders and the BOE the benefit of the doubt.

They are flat-out “raiding the cookie jar” – taking what they can from us and from our children.

Their chutzpah is amazing! This is not happening by accident – and they clearly feel no shame.

DeKalb is a majority Black county. DCSS is a majority Black school system run by majority Black administrators and a majority Black BOE. This is a Black-on-Black outrage, if not an outright crime. Disadvantaged children in DeKalb County, most of whom are Black, have no chance. As long as DCSS leaders, the BOE and their friends-and-family “get theirs” they simply do not care what happens to the children.

I have spent nights and weekends pouring over DCSS employee payroll information from 2008, 2009 and 2010. While the state is to be commended for putting this information online, a lot of work was required to get it to a point where the data can be sorted and analyzed:

• An online document with nearly 17,000 rows had to be downloaded to a CSV document, then converted to an Excel spreadsheet.
• All of the dollar figures had to be converted from CSV fields that read-as-text to Excel fields that read-as-currency using a separate text editor. Not as easy as it sounds!
• Significant, multiple data entry errors originating in the online information had to be corrected in order to properly sort and analyze the data.

This is an unfinished project. But, I want to share with you what I know so far, based on the 2010 payroll as published on Open.Georgia.gov. I have not had time to go to this level of detail for 2008 and 2009.

Mission Critical

Administrators, Teachers and Other Professionals – $453,840,260

9,227 school-based professionals* who have direct contact with students.

Support Staff – $12,912,876

334 school-based Support Staff **(who keep the schools running) for the 9,227 professionals (above) and DCSS’ 96,000+ students. These support staff are paid as secretaries/clerks when in reality many are trained professionals in their fields and should be paid as such.

*(This does not include vocational/nursing assistant/health tech instructors and administrators or psycho-ed personnel.)
** (This does not include custodial staff because it was impossible to determine how many were school-based.)


NOT Contributing to Mission

Central Office Clerical – $12,889,567

376 Central Office Secretaries/Clerks supporting 39 Superintendent/Deputy/Associate/Assistant Superintendents/Directors and their overstuffed departments. This includes:

• Betty Guthrie ($74,100), secretary and gatekeeper to HR Czar Jamie Wilson ($166,008) who refuses to publish his business number.
• Cointa Moody, now indicted on RICO charges, who made $79,546 as Pat Pope’s secretary – that was more than the Superintendent’s secretary! This begs the question – which arises again and again and again – what did Pat Pope and possibly others have on Crawford Lewis?

Other Central Office Secretaries/Clerks

• 6 making more than $71,000+ (including Frankie Freeman)
• 2 making more than $60,000
• 17 making more than $50,000
• 6 making nearly $49,000

Miscellaneous Activities $4,414,673

145 people. Doing what?

• Interesting, familiar names on this list. Are they related to anyone we know? It’s hard to tell because DCSS and the BOE will not reveal the names of family members on the payroll.
• Of the 145 here, nearly 33% received more than $50,000 from DCSS in 2010; 41% received “salary-sized” payments.
• Five received more than $100,000, including Ralph Simpson who topped the list at $122,928!

Outsource to Gain Performance and Savings:

Finance – $2,133,111

27 Business Services personnel, including 7 auditors who aren’t, really.

• Heading up this department is Marcus Turk ($166,008), the guy who told Crawford Lewis “no” to using his DCSS P-card (credit card) illegally and inappropriately – and then Turk approved paying the bills, anyhow.
• Turk had to know about Lewis’ illegal activities that eventually earned him a RICO indictment.
• No Open Checkbook as long as Turk handles the money.

Human Resources – $2,483,990

35 HR personnel.

• This includes DCSS retiree Robert Tucker ($57,168) who does Ronald Ramsey’s ($114,057) “job” three months (January, February, March) of each year while Ramsey busies himself with commendations, recognitions, condolences and congratulations (32 in 2011) in the legislature as a state senator ($16,007). Of the 16 mostly forgettable bills Ramsey co-sponsored in 2011, only one made it to the Governor for his signature.
• Tucker also is eligible to collect a pension from Georgia’s Teacher’s Retirement System.
• Apparently, Tucker is one of many DCSS retirees who retire and are brought right back as “contractors” making a full-time salary in addition to being eligible to collect a pension from TRS.

Security and School Safety – $9,812,575
 
213 Security Personnel.

• This massive group of school-based security officers, along with administrative detectives, and their two overpaid directors ($214,752) have not been able to prevent thefts – most of which appear to be “inside” jobs. Nor have they recovered hundreds of stolen laptops.
• What is the dollar value of all the theft from DCSS in 2010 and so far in 2011?
• Why have none of the thieves been brought to justice? At least one was caught red-handed.
• This cost does NOT include the fuel and maintenance costs for the cars these folks are given to drive to and from work.

Technology Services – $13,337,208

246 Technology Services personnel.

• These are the people who are unable to bring DCSS into the 21^st Century of technology and who already outsource even the basics.
• Why isn’t DCSS using the sophisticated, free, open source Open Office software? It’s FREE, completely compatible with Microsoft Office, comes without the bloatware that must be removed from Office and works better in many ways.

Food Service – $18,090,861

1009 Food Service personnel.

• There are 8 – count ‘em – 8! – food service administrators; 4 make more than $70,000 including Joyce Wimberly who makes $110,187.
• Do your kids eat the food – or is there a lot of waste? Outsource for tasty, nutritious food your kids will eat – for lower cost and less waste.

Transportation – $31,926,958

1198 Transportation personnel.

• Would an expense this size be necessary with smaller neighborhood schools?
• DCSS also has other options under AYP instead of transferring students across the county and providing bus transportation for that crisscrossing.
• The budget for magnet transportation (no longer legally required) was saved by the BOE -- instead of saving parapros at neighborhood schools.
• Transportation to Fernbank’s Scientific Tools & Techniques science program for 160 freshman delivered from their homes to Fernbank and then from Fernbank to their home schools costs a fortune.
• NOT included in the above costs are the constantly rising costs for fuel and maintenance.
• Does DCSS also pay mileage costs or MARTA costs for transferring students who select that as their transportation option? How much additional does that cost?

NOTE: The payroll costs shown above do NOT include the cost of benefits that DCSS also must pay.

Did You Know:

Did you know that DCSS 2010 revenues were approximately 3% more than expenditures for teachers and paraprofessionals? That is actually a lot of money! Did you know that DCSS spent only 40.8% of its funding for teachers and paraprofessionals? Teachers and paraprofessionals are Mission Critical!

DCSS has a staggering number of substitute teachers – 1,450! – with a total payroll of $9,161,313!

We could dismiss at least half of the Central Office clerical staff, never miss them, and gain nearly $6.5 million for education. (In the business world, there are very few secretaries anymore. With the advent of computers, most managers have easily been able to type their own communications and answer their own mail for years now. Most can also answer their own phones and check voice mail.)

We could dismiss all who are paid for “Miscellaneous Activities,” never miss them and whatever it is they do, and gain nearly $4.5 million for education. 

We could dismiss ALL of Crawford Lewis’ inner circle, never miss them and gain more than $3.6 million for education. 

What if we could outsource Finance, Human Resources, Security, Technology Services, Food Service and Transportation (greatly scaled down) for 80% - 90% of the 2010 personnel cost for these areas? We would have an additional $7.7 million – $15.5 million to spend on educating our children well. DCSS could give disadvantaged children the education they deserve to have a decent life. DCSS could give ALL DeKalb children the education they deserve to become productive and contributing citizens.

That’s an annual windfall of $22.3 million – $30.1 million!

And, folks, ALL of these savings are just from right-sizing payroll!

Without the Open Checkbook we have repeatedly called for, we cannot even begin to identify the millions more dollars in legal costs and other questionable payments buried deep within the budget. Yet.