DFP Full Analysis of Blue Ribbon K-12 Panel Final Report:
- Most Important Blue Ribbon Finding: South Dakota Must Raise Teacher Pay
- Crunching Blue Ribbon Numbers: Change K-12 Funding from Per-Student to Per-Teacher
- Blue Ribbon: Stuck on Sales Tax
- Blue Ribboneers Call Plan “Package” Not “Menu”
- What the Blue Ribboneers Didn’t Say
- Blue Ribbon: Blame Medicaid for Stymied K-12 Funding?
Worn out by four posts (here, here, here, and here!) on the final report of the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Teachers and Students? Take a Pabst break—I’m still serving!
The Blue Ribboneers’ final report says quite a bit about the need to raise South Dakota’s rock-bottom teacher pay. But it’s worth noting a few things the report does not say:
Accountability: The Blue Ribboneers recommend spending $75 million in state dollars to raise our average teacher pay by $8,000, but they do not recommend mandating that local districts spend that additional funding on teacher salaries. They speak vaguely of of adopting mechanisms and adopting benchmarks, but they leave crafting the hammer (and you know there will be one) to the Governor.
Consolidation: The Blue Ribboneers don’t talk about combining and closing school districts. They do suggest spending money to expand sharable services that the state could provide. We do that now with the state K-12 e-mail and Web system, online gradebook and parent portal, and teacher evaluation system. The Blue Ribboneers suggests we could find savings in analogous sharing of food service, accounting software, purchasing, and payroll. They recommend incentives for districts to share teachers. They also acknowledge the additional difficulty smaller, more remote communities may have in recruiting teachers and recommend expansion of e-learning options. But the only time “consolidation” appears in the final report is in a quote from Governor Daugaard. (Listen closely for that word in the Governor’s budget address—Tuesday, December 1, right?)
Praise for Presenters: Speaking of distance learning, the Blue Ribboneers praise NSU’s Statewide Center for e-Learning and the Technology and Innovation in Education folks who dazzled them with technology at their August meeting. They even recommend spending at least $1 million to expand those organizations’ efforts. But the panel doesn’t mention the other big distance learning presenter from that August meeting but didn’t mention Mid-Central Educational Cooperative director Dan Guericke for his presentation on using technology to share instructional resources. But Guericke probably didn’t notice; he’s busy with other things right now.
Capital Outlay: The Blue Ribboneers expend some ink complaining that schools have been increasing capital outlay spending (buildings and equipment) faster than the Legislature has increased the per-student allocation for general fund expenses (salaries, instructional costs). They note with this chart that South Dakota now spends more on capital outlay per student than the national average.
The panel does not point out that this unusual flip, South Dakota spending more than the national average on some aspect of education, did not happen until 2011. They do not posit a possible cause for that dramatic change: as Governors Rounds and Daugaard used a recession that didn’t hit South Dakota nearly as hard as the rest of the nation as an excuse to freeze and then slash the state’s K-12 general fund spending, the local districts hitched up their britches and raised their spending per student as best they could, through the capital outlay levies that they control. It’s as if local school boards responded to the Rounds-Daugaard austerity by saying, Pierre may tie our hands on paying our teachers what they are worth, but we can at least try to give our teachers and our kids some decent buildings to work in.
Rather than press that argument, the Blue Ribboneers say they couldn’t reach consensus and walk quietly away from recommending changes to the rules on capital outlay.
When Do We Get There? The Blue Ribboneers say they want the whole package of reforms (29 measures on which they reached consensus) implemented within three years—i.e., by the time school year starts in fall 2018 (when gubernatorial candidate G. Mark Mickelson will need something to take credit for). They were not able to agree on when the central reform of the package, $75 million for an average $8,000 raise in teacher pay, should be done. Some say (and I’m with them) that we need to implement that funding all at once, in the 2016–2017 school year. Others say we have to wait for the Legislature to figure out those “mechanisms” and “benchmarks” and give schools time to redo their salary schedules.
Meanwhile those South Dakotans who registered as Democrats have continued decline with the latest numbers from the SoS on Nov 2nd is at 170,444 with an increase to Independents. Hmmm! I wonder why?
South Dakota Democrats have registered as earth haters and unaffiliated because i’ve told them to.
From the looks of the chart on capital outlay; 2011 was evidently the year that schools were allowed to charge certain expenses to capital outlay that were previously charged to the general fund. A little Daugaard sleight of hand. How could the panel not know this?
Paul is right, as part of the school funding sleight of hand more and more things are paid for with capital outlay funds.
One major theme the Blue Ribboners did not say was that it is in the best interest of the rich and politically powerful in South Dakota to do NOTHING. EB5, Gear Up, Gant, and education funding will be buried deeper than Davey Jones locker. As long as voters cover their eyes and hold their noses the beat will go on.
The state needs to present a simple to use uniform accounting system that any secretary can use to enter income and expense. It also needs as part of that a different set of accounts. A Capital Asset Maintenance account, A Capital Asset Acquisition account, and an Athletics account. The Capital Asset Acquisition account should only have funds in it if voters have approved the acquisition in a vote. A couple ego-maniacs on a board and a complicit administrator intent on building monuments to their egos can literally waste millions of dollars on non-essential structures. The Winner Auxiliary Gymnasium scheme is a perfect egregious example that should be a warning to all taxpayers and all legislators.
When some of you comment, stay on subject matter of the post. The only thing the graph shows is that we spend more capital outlay per student. For one reason,sd school accounting methods are different than other states. But mostly it’s economies of scale. To many school districts with too few students. Consolidation is some of the answer. Don’t use politics as the soul source of the problem when it’s simple math.
How are 65+ county seats, their accompanying bureaucracies and six+ state-supported universities conservative or sustainable?
JSR, that’s an interesting observation about comparisons with other states, but I don’t think that explains the sudden jump in 2011 in our per-student spending. Our schools didn’t suddenly become more rural and less able to access economies of scale and more than the recession suddenly made schools elsewhere become bigger and more efficient. There is a political aspect to that chart.
I believe the year the legislature allowed moving certain general fund expenditures was pretty 2011, I was thinking 2008. As tax bases grew, because of there revaluation of ag land this allowed a lot of school districts to catch up on facility upkeep. We can’t make macro blanket statements on how districts handle the capital outlay fund. Each district is unique. Look how some of the mid sized (adm) districts have small taxbases vs small districts with large tax base. Out of 4 schools in spink county the largest district is redfield with 600 plus kids, but the 3rd in tax base. Both northwestern and HTULARE have larger tax bases. Way easier to provide facilities for 200 kids vs.600. This is the struggle that some districts face.