Tulsa Schools Expects Cut Of $8 Million For Year

[FOTD]

The $500,000 a month was due from what revenue source? Did the tax grab pie get larger during the past 2 years? This resulted from what? Local news media sucks.

So, teacher cuts before football programs?

http://www.newson6.com/Global/story.asp?S=11148567

" By the end of the fiscal year, the total could be close to $10 million in lost money."

SHAMEFUL. Is it no wonder the suburbs are taking us into the third world?

[MDepr2007]

Do the cutbacks put them back to spending what was spent before Katrina ?

[swake]

The $500,000 a month was due from what revenue source? Did the tax grab pie get larger during the past 2 years? This resulted from what? Local news media sucks.

So, teacher cuts before football programs?

http://www.newson6.com/Global/story.asp?S=11148567

" By the end of the fiscal year, the total could be close to $10 million in lost money."

SHAMEFUL. Is it no wonder the suburbs are taking us into the third world?

This will hit all school districts. The state is cutting 5% from all departments budgets due to tax income not meeting estimates.

[FOTD]

This will hit all school districts. The state is cutting 5% from all departments budgets due to tax income not meeting estimates.

Please. The impact on TPS cuts far deeper than those other districts.

Also, is it not time to help Public Schools by forcing those 5013c's and churches into paying their fair share in taxes?

"Social welfare programs may be a matter of ethics and generosity, but education and training are not.
I am willing to pay for, indeed insist upon, the  education of my neighbors' children, not because i am generous but because I cannot afford to live with them uneducated."

Lester E. Thurow MIT

[swake]

Please. The impact on TPS cuts far deeper than those other districts.

Also, is it not time to help Public Schools by forcing those 5013c's and churches into paying their fair share in taxes?

"Social welfare programs may be a matter of ethics and generosity, but education and training are not.
I am willing to pay for, indeed insist upon, the  education of my neighbors' children, not because i am generous but because I cannot afford to live with them uneducated."

Lester E. Thurow MIT

How does a 5% cut hit one district more than another?

5013c's I agree should start paying property taxes. Churches are off limits unless you change the constitution.

[Wrinkle]

If they chose to do so, they could handle a 5% cut without going outside the west wing, 3rd floor of Building #13 on the ESC site.

[FOTD]

How does a 5% cut hit one district more than another?

5013c's I agree should start paying property taxes. Churches are off limits unless you change the constitution.

Give me a break, Swake. The Jenks Union et al. get favorable funding because they have separate ad valorem   income and braces on their programs with much higher parental financial support.

This sucks. It drags down the attractiveness of our city and our competitiveness for future jobs.

[cannon_fodder]

Tulsa Public School's Expenditures - General Fund (total district expenditures):

2004-5: $260,314,914

2005-6: $275,501,022 ($409.5mil)

2006-7:  ($407.4mil)

2007-8: $300,755,752, ($417.2mil).  Revenue: $481.8mil

2008-2009: $323,931,900 ($439.3mil). Revenue: $517.2mil

2009-2010 [predicted]: $346,793,614 ($525.1mil). Revenue: $534mil

(last three numbers from http://www.tulsaschools.org/district/BudgetFinancePlan0910.pdf, p.13)
- - -

TPS Salaries  + Benefits

2005-6: $239,673,774

2006-7: $257,922,041

2007-8: $272,495,711

2009 budget: $284,152,565
- - -

Enrollment has been 41,500 +/- 1,000 kids throughout. 
- - -

Data somewhat sporadic, all from here (feel free to correct me.   Tried to keep prelim/amended and actual numbers seperated.  But, as always, grabbing #s in a hurry. )
http://www.tulsaschools.org/district/finance.shtm

The 2009-10 budget can be found here:
http://www.tulsaschools.org/district/BudgetFinancePlan0910.pdf


My son is in TPS, I think the district does a fine job.  It is in my interest (and yours, regardless of if/where you kid goes to school) for them to do well.  But as a citizen i have to question why we thought the budget we jump this year.  One would think prudent budgeting in a recession would be to hold the line or plan for reduced revenues. 

I get that we have seen growing revenues and that we budget less than the past years growth.  But still, it seems imprudent to assume the good times will continue to roll.  Nonetheless, the difference we are looking to cover is $8,000,000.  That's 2/3rd of the increase in salaries from last year, or 1/3 the total general fund increases from last year, or a small fraction of the total increase in the predicted expenditures.  Why can't we figure this out without a serious crisis?

With predicted revenues of $534,000,000, an actual take of $526,000,000 is a reduction of 1.5%.  We can't find a way to cover 1.5% without some kind of crisis?  You'd think we would have MORE than 1.5% built into the budget.

On a broader picture, our TPS expenditures are growing fairly rapidly. $44,000,000 more in salaries (from '05).  If an average teacher is compensated Salary+Ben at $50,000 that should be 880 new teachers.  Lets knock off 80 positions for admin jobs and other junk.  Still, that's 1 additional teacher for each 50 students, assuming my numbers.  What are we doing with the extra ~$90,000,000 per year in general fund money that still sees TPS under performing in many categories?    We aren't supporting any more kids but are spending significantly more money for seemingly the same results.

I shouldn't comment without reviewing the numbers in more detail, but we are talking about significant money.  More than $12,000 per kid in TPS.  Our revenues this year look like they will STILL be higher than last year.  The amount of money spent in 2009-10 will be tens of millions more than a couple years ago.  So why the crisis and why do we still under perform?

/frustrated by the schools overall performance in general

//frustrated that a 1.5% revenue margin isn't worked into the budget

Again, feel free to point out where I was wrong or assumed incorrectly.  I'm not trying to call BS, just trying to understand.

[edit] $20mil in increase in revenue from 2007-8 to 2009-10 is due to Federal Grant money.  Which we have available to spend this year.  We predicted local revenue to grow $3mil [1.5%], state revenue to fall $1.5mil, and Federal revenue to grow $1.3mil.  So that explains much of the increase . . . but still [/edit]
http://www.tulsaschools.org/district/BudgetFinancePlan0910.pdf , p 14

[swake]

Give me a break, Swake. The Jenks Union et al. get favorable funding because they have separate ad valorem   income and braces on their programs with much higher parental financial support.

This sucks. It drags down the attractiveness of our city and our competitiveness for future jobs.

That only helps with the capital budget. Parents can't vote themselves higher taxes for the regular day to day operation of schools. Jenks tried to get a rule to allow that and it died in the state legislature a couple of years ago.

Anyway, wasn't there a Oklahoma Court ruling 15-20 years ago that said that all districts had to have similar funding for operations? Jenks and Union have no more money to operate their schools than Tulsa does. In fact, last I saw, average teacher pay in Jenks is lower than in Tulsa.

You can (correctly) argue that it's cheaper to operate schools in Jenks and Union than it is in Tulsa. It's true that TPS actually needs more money to deal with the problems that come with teaching in poorer areas with more challenged kids with fewer involved parents but to say that this isn't going to hit all districts is wrong.

As for the attractiveness of the city being impacted by TPS, almost half of the school age children inside the city of Tulsa attend Union, Bixby, Jenks or private schools. And the city of Tulsa now only makes up well under half the metro area.

[nathanm]

Does building maintenance come out of the general fund or is there a separate account for that?

Urban school districts are often at a significant disadvantage, not only because of the increased maintenance that comes with a drastically older building stock, but the drastically higher energy bills that come with the older buildings if they haven't had lighting, insulation, windows, doors, and HVAC replaced.

In general, the suburbs will have much newer school buildings, with the attendant O&M savings.

[Conan71]

Does building maintenance come out of the general fund or is there a separate account for that?

Urban school districts are often at a significant disadvantage, not only because of the increased maintenance that comes with a drastically older building stock, but the drastically higher energy bills that come with the older buildings if they haven't had lighting, insulation, windows, doors, and HVAC replaced.

In general, the suburbs will have much newer school buildings, with the attendant O&M savings.

I would assume that maintenance would come out of the general fund as it's own account.  I would think you can get this info off the TPS web site.  It should be public record.

Following the construction wire for as long as I have, TPS has been doing HVAC overhauls for the last 15-20 years trying to make the buildings more efficient and replacing obsolete and inefficient systems.  Driving by older schools, it appears many have had window and roofing overhauls as well.  I don't think the whole system is done yet, but it's close.

The footprint of TPS campuses is way more far-flung than the suburban schools.  Mowing and lanscaping is another large cost TPS has to deal with that the closer-knit systems don't have.

[godboko71]

Forgive me, going to go off on a tangent that said it is related. Let it be known, though I may have many negative thoughts about TPS, I do support them, and yes I have worked with TPS in the past.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way let me say I am impressed with many of the changes at TPS over the last 5 years, many in the right direction but much work is left to be done and parents must become more involved.

On the more related note, costs keep going up because TPS as a whole has too many administrators and to a lesser degree to much support staff. Most of the middle and high schools have too many Assistant Principles, disciplinary deans and full time administrative staff in the Principles Office. TPS also has too many service jobs in house that could be outsourced and save the district money. TPS also needs to stop worrying about trying to be parents babysitters and set a schedule that not only makes sense financially and with other measures could help improve performance.

Performance is rightly a major concern of parents, being more involved is the biggest steps parents could make to improving performance. That said the school system could help insure better performance by changing how we think about education, though they have made major strides in making education more individual more could be done with little or no extra cost.

IEP and Teacher Pairing:

Special Needs students, students with learning disabilities, and others have IEP's, starting in middle school, during the week before school when councilors are making schedules all students should go through an IEP or similar process, the staff is already there, and I would hope parents could take a few hours out of there day to make sure there child gets there "once over." This IEP could be used to pair students to teachers and classmates better, since people learn differently and that is the main thing the IEP helps determine (the IEP could also be done at the end of the school year before, the week before school was an example only.)

Another way to keep track of student development would be to use an incident report type system there teachers make regular notes about their students how they are doing what their needs are. Using the IEP and incident reports, teachers, parents, consolers, and the student can help determine what can be done to improve their learning experience. Be that more study time, more one on one time with the teacher, inclusion teachers, student aids, or extracurricular help provided by a tutor or parents or what have you. 

Starting Later

Though the teachers union is against it TPS should start school in September, not only because we save several million dollars a year on energy costs but because with "training" early the winter break can be a great time to study for midterms, if we instill smart learning and study habits early we can break this current habit of any testing right after the material is presented. It instills a laziness and low expectation level that only hurts our goals to improve performance. Other standardized scheduling may be helpful, I have no studies on the subject.

Volunteer

On another more related note TPS could save money by opening up more volunteer positions, sure we should still spend the money to do background checks, but I bet some schools could reduce lunch room staff by having volunteers work the lines, more importantly though I think parents/grandparents/retirees would be willing to volunteer time in the classroom, helping the teachers (teachers aid) with tutoring and mentoring.  Not only would letting more volunteers help save costs it would help foster a feeling of community and make schools safer, troubled students would get noticed, and hopefully get the help they need.

These are starting points to jump with to get things going in the right direction. They aren't meant to be standalone or perfect.

[Wrinkle]

Seems TPS has decided the cuts would be much less than they first reported. Only around $2 mil now. Probably has that much in the bottom drawer.