The Jefferson School District Board of Trustees has thus far ignored the outcry of its constituency calling for the district to seek creative new ways to increase revenues, and thus allow the retention of the music education program in kindergarten through fourth grade. Current budget estimates put the district reserves at nearly $1.1 million, or 12.5 percent of projected expenditures next year. The state requires that the reserve be a minimum of 3 percent.
Despite increasing revenues, the district projects that the reserve will fall off by over 50 percent in just two years. Therefore, now is the time to take advantage of the extra reserve and invest some of it to acquire additional funding sources and stop the bleeding, rather than merely watching it spiral out of control. There are two sides to this equation reduce spending (which the district has equated to cutting academic programs) and increase revenues. So far, the district has only chosen to work on one side of this equation the side that lessens the quality and effectiveness of the students' education.
District projections as of April 18th estimate a deficit of $256,531 for school year 2002-03. Only five weeks earlier, this deficit was projected at $66,163. The district would have us believe that the increased deficit is due to decreased revenues from the state. Actually, projection comparisons show a slight increase in total projected revenues. They also show over a $229,500 increase in salary costs over the March projections. There is your deficit increase. The district will say that class size reduction is a reason for the increased salary costs. It is hard to fathom that this difference is entirely due to the hiring of new teachers to cover growth while maintaining or decreasing class size, as the difference in growth between projections is only 8 students (½ of one percent) and the March projections surely already accounted for new teachers. Cost of living adjustments (COLA) would be the other reason. The state has provided a 3.81 percent COLA for the current year, but analysis shows that "Classified" salary costs will have increased by over 5.7 percent while Certificated teacher/administrator salary costs will go up by only 3.5 percent including the "Step and Column" advancement scheme which is supposed to be above and beyond any COLA. Go figure. I have approached the district about this, but am still awaiting their response.
Other line item expenditures include "Capital Outlay" and "Other Outgo" each of which are projected at over $80,000 per year. No detail was provided as to what these expenditures actually include. Usually when one outlays capital, it is an investment that hopefully reaps a return. Furthermore, there is no indication that the existing reserve is even being kept in an interest bearing account! Surely the $400,000 block of reserve funds defined by the district as General Reserve (EC 42124) could earn at least $10,000 per year in a Certificate of Deposit account. Then there is the annual fund transfer out of the General Reserve averaging over $125,000 that just seems to disappear from the budget! What happens to this money?
During the April 9th board meeting, it became evident that the district was not putting forth efforts to acquire grant monies. In this case, the effort would have been minimal, as the county automatically mailed the grant application to the superintendent's office. Sadly, this application was left uncompleted and was not submitted, ensuring that the district would not receive the $25,000 funds. The superintendent has since offered (after the fact) that the district "probably wouldn't have qualified for the grant anyway." The district excuses its inaction by stating that its superior test scores disqualify it from a majority of federal and state grants. While this may be true, given the sheer number of grants and programs out there, even if we didn't qualify for fifty-one percent, and only qualified for 40 percent or even 30 percent of the millions of dollars available why wouldn't efforts be made to cash in on some of this?
The Delta Charter High School, with a current enrollment of 65 students, just received a $400,000 federal grant for a new, high-tech, "distance learning" program. Surely a district with an enrollment 20 times as large could qualify for a sum nearly 1/8th the size of this for the retention of an existing program directly affecting five years of education, and according to the research, affecting the students ability to learn not only music, but science, mathematics and reading (the very foundations of technology) for the remainder of their lives.
Then there are grants from the private sector. The test scores criteria mostly applies to public (federal and state) programs. Grants from independent corporations have different requirements. I recently provided information to the superintendent on a program offered by Chevron-Texaco via the Texaco Foundation, called "Early Notes: The Sound of Children Learning," that showed a history of providing $100,000 grants to several different public school districts specifically for music programs in the early years. I am aware of no action that has been taken on this.
We are asking the board to consider investing in a grant writer that would dedicate time to seeking and following up on funding for which the district would qualify. If this investment were successful, it would not only pay for itself, but would be able to entirely fund the music program and likely other programs as well. Instead of hiring a full-time employee, the district could contract a grant writing firm, thereby eliminating additional employee benefit and payroll expenses. Furthermore, such a firm could pool resources from several consultants, thus increasing the likelihood of success.
During our efforts to raise awareness of this issue, I have had the privilege of speaking to some influential people within the community. More than one has intimated to me that if the district showed an effort to invest in the students in this manner, that funds could be found to continue the music program for the next one to two years, until such an investment could take over the program's funding. The reason for this was repeated that it is hard to start something back up once it has been stopped. Newton's first law of physics says this very thing, "An object at rest tends to remain at rest "
Raise your voice. Tell the district you want them to invest in our children's future. See the facts and sign the on-line petition at www.musicforjefferson.org. If you disagree, click the feedback link. Better still, attend the board meeting this coming Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. in the Jefferson School cafeteria. Whatever you do, don't remain silent. Silence is the killer.
Dan Wells is a parent of two children currently attending Tom Hawkins elementary school in the Jefferson district, and is a former physics and mathematics teacher.