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Bon Homme Sees New Money Drop Two Thirds Under Amended Funding Formula

Time to suspend the rules and pass a new bill on Veto Day?

The Bon Homme School District has a problem. The Sly Amendment to the new school-funding formula in Senate Bill 131 just shorted his district a whole bunch of money. I yield the floor to Bon Homme superintendent Dr. Mike Elsberry (in a letter mailed to Governor Daugaard on March 17) to explain who removing the declining-enrollment cushion from the K-12 funding formula just whacked two thirds off the raises he could’ve offered his teachers:

Governor Daugaard:

The employees and school board of the Bon Homme School District were obviously surprised at the effect of the amendment to SB 131 had on your Education and Property-Tax Relief Plan. Also, I believe many school districts were blindsided by the amendment that removed the two-year average on fall enrollments. In the instance of the Bon Homme Schools our fall enrollment count of 523.73 (when averaged) dropped to 486. I would also state, that in my opinion, some in the Senate knew, in advance, that this amendment would take away monies that were sorely needed. Others, in the Senate, were not paying attention.

The results of this amendment were catastrophic for Bon Homme. Instead of providing a teacher increase of at least 85% of $236,760.00 we are now going to have to deal with a teacher increase of 85% of $76,875.00! I don’t believe that’s what you intended, and I would be surprised if this is the only correspondence you receive on this issue [Dr. Mike Elsberry, letter to Governor Dennis Daugaard, 2016.03.17].

Dr. Elsberry is understandably surprised and alarmed. He tells me that printouts circulating during the Legislative Session were promising his district as much as over $330,000 in new state aid. According to my spreadsheet (and Dr. Elsberry tells me I’m darned close), if Bon Homme maximizes its Sly-amended new money for teacher pay, the district may get its average pay up to $37,810.

Dr. Elsberry has several questions:

There are several questions that should be asked, but I’ll pose only five:

  1. How does this new amount of money help us meet the target of $48,500 for instructional staff salaries?
  2. How do we compete with districts who do receive their total new monies, and grant significant increases in pay to their staff?
  3. When prospective new teachers apply for teaching positions in our school, and then compare our salary schedule to those districts who received their full increase, what do we tell them? Basically, how can we compete for teachers within this scenario?
  4. It appears that around 50% of South Dakota School Districts were negatively affected by this amendment. Do you believe that the true goal of HB 1182 (with the corresponding Senate Bills) was intended to punish schools with enrollment decreases? Was HB 1182 actually written to force further school district consolidation? If so, that’s not the way that your bill was presented to the public.
  5. This inequity of pay, between school districts with increasing and/or decreasing enrollments will vastly impact teacher retirement. Teachers receiving an $8,000.00 pay raise, versus those that will see a raise of $1,000 or less, will have a huge advantage upon retirement. How will this be explained to those who thought HB 1182 was for all teachers, and not just those in school districts whose enrollment has increased? Again, that’s not how your bill was presented to the public [Elsberry, 2016.03.17].

Dr. Elsberry is disappointed, but he has a proposal to fix the formula before it takes effect:

Hopes were high this year. More than ever before. Now, not so much. In my opinion HB 1182 was presented as one that provided every school district with a sustainable funding source for teacher salaries. In fact, this is the first time in my forty-five years as an educator that I truly believed something positive was going to happen for all South Dakota school district’s teachers. I obviously made a serious error in judgement.

Someone dropped the ball when SB 131 was amended, and allowed to move forward to the Governor’s desk for signature. I would urge you, when the legislative bodies return for their last day, to suspend the rules and revisit the amendment to S.B. 131 that has so devastated most of our schools [Elsberry, 2016.03.17].

The Legislature reconvenes next Tuesday, March 29, for its final day, which is reserved solely for considering vetoes (of which there are none to be considered… yet… but come on, Dennis! Give the team something to do!). Legislators would have to introduce a whole new bill, run it through committees and both chambers, and send it to the Governor by the end of the working day. Sounds like a fun challenge, fastest bill ever passed, right?

Undo the Sly Amendment, and you put back $5.95 million for 73 school districts. 14 schools, including Bon Homme, would see over $100K put back in their state aid. Rapid City could get back just over $1 million in new state money. Bon Homme could boost its salaries over $41K, still a far cry from the $48,500 the Governor set as the target salary for the state, but better than where the Sly Amendment sticks them.

Come on, Legislature, be a bon homme, a good guy—do something wild on Veto Day. Repeal the Sly Amendment, and you help nearly half the districts in the state raise their teacher pay another $2,700 (though I see only eight of those districts affected by the Sly Amendment getting pushed past the $48,500 target salary).

45 Comments

  1. M.K. 2016-03-22 19:54

    This is just sad.

  2. IMHO 2016-03-22 20:15

    FY15 stat digest shows 49.2 instructional staff FTE. Formula desired target with 14.14:1 ratio indicates that number of instructional staff should be closer to 34.33. Can’t be 14.87 FTE’s over the target and expect to be competitive with wages. Even if they cut 10 staff members with an average salary of $35,000 + benefits would be a savings of about $45,000 per reduced FTE or a total savings of $450,000. Combine that with the new money and they could be very competitive with neighboring schools.

    Now, I understand that the end result maybe isn’t what they thought it was going to be bc of the 2-year averaging, but the 2-year average would have just bought them 1 more year before they had to deal with the fact that they have more staff than is likely needed to serve 486 students. The amendment isn’t the problem, it just makes them address the real problem one year sooner.

  3. LuAnn Werdel 2016-03-22 20:17

    M.K: You have hit the nail on the head…”This is just sad.” In our district (Oelrich’s) we get zero pay raises for our staff. We do not get any new monies…thus 85% of zero is zero. Our demographics are unique, at least 99% of our students come from Oglala County (formerly Shannon County) on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, one of the poorest counties in the United States. Parents bus their students to our school (45 miles) in the hopes of receiving a good public education. One of the issues identified as a factor in poor student achievement is the ability to recruit and retain quality teachers. As mentioned above in Dr. Elberry’s post, “How do we compete with districts who are able to significantly increase teacher pay?” Thus, who are the real losers in this scenario besides the teachers? It is our students…once again being marginalized in the great state of South Dakota.

  4. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-03-22 20:35

    Wow—we’re already adopting the arbitrary student-teacher ratio of SB 131 as some immutable gold standard for how many teachers every school should have? Unless someone shows me the research on which the Governor and the Legislature based their choice of target student-teacher ratios, we must be as open to the argument that the formula is flawed and that every teacher on staff at Bon Homm is adding value as to the suggestion that somehow Bon Homme is providing too many teachers and services for its students.

    I do understand the argument about the timeframe. If Bon Homme’s enrollment is declining, the Sly Amendment only makes the fiscal impact happen sooner… although, since the enrollment cushion was an average of the two previous years, it’s two years earlier, not one. Plus, the enrollment cushion stabilizes funding in case of enrollment swings: if a district has one odd year where enrollment dips amidst an otherwise steady increase, the school doesn’t have to drop every “over the target” FTE for a year and then try to hire them all back the next year.

  5. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-03-22 20:39

    LuAnn, your experience and Dr. Elsberry’s suggest that we are on the course he envisions: we will make progress toward raising teacher pay, but only at the same time that we bring down the velvet hammer to get rid of teachers and school districts deemed superfluous by the Legislature and the Governor. We can’t muster the political courage to order another round of consolidation, so we revamp the funding formula to exacerbate market forces and make it even harder for small schools to recruit quality staff.

  6. IMHO 2016-03-22 21:34

    No research to support ratio is correct. I am guessing no research to support 49.2 is the correct number of FTE’s with 486 kids either. Local school boards/admin know their schools best. A quick review of some similar schools for perspective.

    School/ADM/FTE’s
    Deuel/507/36.8
    Webster Area/503/37.5
    Hill City/490/37.7
    Bon Homme/(519/486)/49.2
    Garretson/469/35.8
    Baltic/446/34.6
    Stanley Co/426/39.1
    McCook Central/349/33.3

    I feel for the BH school admin and board…tough decisions ahead.

  7. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-03-22 21:47

    Hmmm… if local school boards/admin know their schools best, then isn’t the Bon Homme board and admin in a better position to determine the “right” number of teachers for their district than the Governor’s arbitrary formula?

  8. Rorschach 2016-03-23 01:29

    When school boards determine the right number of teachers for their districts, part of that calculation has to be the funds available. Does some consolidation need to happen as the number of people in rural South Dakota decreases? yes.

    Here’s what I’m concerned about. We’re all saddled with a regressive tax increase ostensibly to increase teacher salaries, and I think we’re not going to move out of last place nationally. We’re going to continue training teachers at our universities to teach in neighboring states where they will be able to earn significantly more, live more comfortably, and retire more comfortably.

  9. Mark Winegar 2016-03-23 05:32

    ‘The devil is always in the details’ and I believe changing the funding formula was an unnecessary detail and wonder why the goal on average teacher pay was set as low as $48,500. Was the goal to stay at the bottom?

  10. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-03-23 07:20

    Ror, that’s all the more reason we need our school business managers to weigh in as soon as possible come July and August when they nail down their final staff and salary figures to let us know whether the SB 131 funding formula has made possible the salary gains that justified the HB 1182 sales tax increase.

    I do agree with Mark that we did not need to change the funding formula to make this increase happen. The Democrats had a superior, less regressive plan that raised the sales tax one percentage point, set the food rate at zero, and simply raised the per-student allocation to the level necessary to raise the statewide teacher pay average by $10K. But no one in power wanted to fight for that plan, so we accepted the Governor’s plan on the promise of gains. We need to see those gains this year, before the election.

  11. twinsfan 2016-03-23 09:16

    Sure, the Bon Homme School Board can determine their ratio. No one is stopping them. They can either make their ratio fit more in line with the funding formula and give raises, or they can keep their current ratio and not give the raises. If they choose to keep the same ratio, they can use their student/teacher ratio as way to try to bring in more students and teachers.

    Living in a district that has maintained a 15:1 ratio for years, I would love to see my district be able to add more staff. But I also know the kids are getting a great education right now, and I know that the teachers are going to a get a nice raise this year. Hopefully in Year 2 we can bring those ratios down a little more.

  12. Just a small town boy 2016-03-23 10:51

    If no one saw this bill as a way to start consolidation from the beginning, you were drinking the juice before you saw the ingredients.

    1. The bill was not ready by the start of the session for study by anyone.
    2. The Gov said in the state address that SD had 400 teachers to many.
    3. Watertown pushed a raise into the bill for their vo-tech teacher….Solum, or it might not have passed.

    Thrown on the table and with-in a week legislators were being threaten with non re-election when they tabled it. This was done by educators who never promised to do a better job if paid more, just that like a lot of other South Dakota citizen, they are at the bottom of the pay scale nationally and wanted more…understandable.

    Some of “Leaders” instead of setting down and debating the bill lowered themselves to public temper tantrum and name calling. Some of the same people that are getting the raise, praised this show of behavior. Why? Because of the gold at the end of the rainbow.

    Now all of sudden some of the school are not getting the big piece of the pie and feel cheated? I am sorry but you are suppose to be educators, you should have been reading and studying this bill before you were so quick to push to pass.

    Most unions believe in equal pay for equal work and every one gets the same raise. Teachers are a union, I believe one of the few unions where a new teacher may receive $40,000 less the older teacher. If ran like most unions, most of the bigger schools would probably be well over the $48,500 mark for every teacher already.

    Going to always have a problem when it is all about the money. But if this bill does not kill private and small school districts, I will be surprised. And if you are not getting the money you thought you were promised, pay close attention to the legislators that are thumping their chest for praise.

  13. O 2016-03-23 11:11

    Are two separate issues being blurred: 1) the effects of the new formula, and 2) the effects of declining enrollment (especially in light of the repeal of averaging). I am not convinced that the challenges of one equals the failure of the other.

    IMHO makes the salient point that if student population is declining (and remember, both the old and new formulas are student population driven at their cores) by 75.46 children (if I did the math correctly for Bon Home) shouldn’t that trigger a reduction in staff? Wouldn’t even the old formula require a reduction in staff or a reduction in salary with declining enrollment?

    The teacher-per-student target is an attempt to keep SD in the average of our neighboring states. This argument becomes infinitely regressive on purely educational ground: 14 students per teacher is better than 15 students per teacher; 13 is better than 14; 1 is better than 4 . . . No matter what ratio you name, lower is “better.” Here is where education policy is driven by economics – what’s best for students is overtaken by how much are we willing to pay.

  14. Donald Pay 2016-03-23 13:59

    I haven’t followed the formula changes as closely as I would normally.

    It seems to be just another top-down state education funding formula. It has some small basis in education (student/staff ratio is educationally relevant), but when you have districts varying in size from Sioux Falls to Smee (is that still the smallest?) a target ratio makes absolutely no sense from an administrative or educational standpoint. To be more realistic you would have to put that ratio on some sort of elastic band that is stretched and compressed based on school district size (really on school size). It would still be top-down, but a bit more realistic.

    The formula will certainly drive school closures, not necessarily consolidation of districts. I think RC schools have plans to close the 300 pupil schools and build fewer 600 pupil schools, but that’s probably been in the works since the early 2000s.

  15. Darin Larson 2016-03-23 14:55

    I’m sympathetic to the challenges faced by small schools, but there is a limit to what makes economic sense. Should the rest of the state subsidize school districts that refuse to become efficient?

    Sparsity is a problem in South Dakota and the new law is far from perfect, but on the other hand, some of these school districts have decided not to adapt. Even Bon Homme is getting $75k more than the previous funding formula when they have fourteen certified staff more than other schools of a similar size. And we are talking about averaging the last two years of enrollment versus just taking this years enrollment. I could be wrong, but I think Bon Homme is only one year away from what it would otherwise have faced without the Sly Amendment. If it had a problem in terms of being over-staffed, Bon Homme was going to be facing the music next year in any event.

    Please realize what the bigger picture is here: Legislators like Disanto, May, Haggar & Haugaard are going to use the criticism of the new funding bills as cover for their opposition to adequate education funding in South Dakota in general. You are making life easier for them right now and playing into their hands. You are letting them off the hook for their opposition to adequate funding for education.

    These small schools were in trouble before the new law and they will remain in jeopardy after the new law. The difference is that the teachers in the vast majority of schools will get the largest raise they have ever seen during their time teaching in South Dakota. The law will also take us out of last place for average teacher pay and give us hope to retain the good teachers that we have in South Dakota and instill the confidence in students to go into the teaching profession in our state. The new law will also increase revenue for teacher pay as our economy expands. We had none of this before the new law was passed.

    Don’t give cover to the Dark-Agers! If you are going to criticize the failing of the new laws, first emphasize that for 95% of school districts this is a game-changer. If we need to work on some tweaks for the 5% left behind, we can have that discussion as well but put it into context so that people don’t just hear that the new laws are failures already.

  16. Douglas Wiken 2016-03-23 16:53

    Elsberry was Supt. in Winner. Based on that, I am not sure anybody wants to believe anything he says.

    The funding increase will do nothing to make it easier to recruit new teachers if it is given as a percentage of current salaries. If the school gets a new $million and has a hundred teachers, give each them $10,000 increase. Otherwise the beginning or starting salaries will remain too low to recruit new teachers and already well paid teachers will make out like bandits.

  17. 1254 2016-03-23 20:47

    Here are the top ten lowest % increase in new monies for 2017.
    Olerichs 98 kids ($3264) 0%
    Newell 289 $15261 .85%
    Tripp Delmont 158 $14690 1.43%
    Britton 432 $42402 1.79%
    Andes Central 300 $37821 2.03%
    Redfield 601 $66371 2.15%
    Bon Homme 486 $76875 2.9%
    Desmet 286 $51409 3.02%
    Northwestern 243 $49419 3.54%
    Groton 582 $129050 4.47%

    Most districts are in the range of 8 to 14%. Why are these so low? 4 schools over 430 students. Kinda blows the theory of forced consolidation out of the water. Maybe the the legislators and the BRTF as well as the governor have trouble with math.

  18. O 2016-03-23 20:57

    1254, are these ten schools low on their percentage increase because of the new formula or because of declining enrollment (or some other reason)?

  19. grudznick 2016-03-23 22:03

    Mr. 1254, now that you have asked the question I bet you Mr. H has a math sheet already explaining it. And if this Groton town complains about only getting an extra 4% raise, why they ought to have to forfeit it.

  20. Spencer 2016-03-23 23:24

    It is more than Olerichs. The number of school districts to not likely ever see a funding increase from this is around 20 to 30 school districts. Some may even experience a rapid decline in funding with the mil levy changes in the companion bills. What a disaster! Now I have every hothead wondering what I am going to do with my $10,000 pay raise. I would rather have the same pay minus the delusions perpetuated by this legislation.

  21. Darin Larson 2016-03-23 23:53

    Spencer, you say “The number of school districts to not likely ever see a funding increase from this is around 20 to 30 school districts.” Where did you come up with this number?

    1254 showed the lowest percentage increase schools under the new law. All but Olerichs gains under the new law according to 1254.

    Who ever said the new law was going to raise teacher pay by $10,000?

    $60 million in new sustainable money for teacher pay and you call it a disaster? What were you expecting from a legislature that allowed SD to languish in last place in teacher pay for a generation?

  22. Scott 2016-03-24 07:58

    I haven’t seen anyone mention what I think the issue in BonHomme is. They are still running attendance centers in Tabor, Tyndall, and Springfield, thus they have alot more teachers than other districts. These aren’t colonies, that have to stay open but are a choice by the school board. If they brought everyone to Tyndall, their ratio would go up but they would have to cut staff. This is a tough decision that many districts in SD have faced, and most have chosen to close attendance centers. Maybe that’s what needs to happen here.

  23. Darin Larson 2016-03-24 09:20

    Thanks for the information, Scott.

  24. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-03-24 10:38

    Good point, Scott! Is each school a full K-5 elementary? Internal consolidation would be a lot better than consolidating with another district.

  25. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-03-24 10:58

    O, I agree that there’s nothing SB 131 could have done to solve the problem of declining enrollment. The only solution for that is to make more babies (or repopulate our rural counties by banning CAFOs and directing all Department of Agriculture and GOED programs toward promoting small-scale farming focused on organic production and local market sales).

    The problem here is that the last-minute change to the formula pulled the rug out from under a whole lot of districts whose support was predicated on the funding gains promised when calculated on theold formula’s enrollment-cushion option. We can’t fix or forestall declining enrollments—heck, in 20 years, this discussion may all be academic, as everybody with kids will be living in our 30 biggest towns, and farmers will sit in their home offices in Yankton monitoring via smartphone their robot tractors in Bon Homme County.

    But for now, for every school, the enrollment cushion, letting schools base their budgets on the previous two years’ average enrollment, provides a safe, predictable baseline for funding decisions. If more kids show up in September, the state kicks in the appropriate dollars; if a bunch of kids move or open enroll out, we don’t have to cut teachers or resources right away. I can see a critique from lean management specialists, but the cushion provides some useful stability.

  26. Scott 2016-03-24 11:32

    CH
    Yes, Tabor and Springfield are K-5 and Tyndall is K-12.

  27. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-03-24 12:35

    The Tyndall building has elementary and secondary all under one roof… or at least on the same block? Does the Tyndall facility have enough classrooms to accommodate all of the Tabor and Springfield students?

  28. Scott 2016-03-24 13:00

    Yes the Tyndall building is all together and I’m told has plenty of room for the few kids at the other attendance centers. Most of the Springfield kids already go to Avon, and the others would probably follow if they close it. The same may be true of the Tabor kids going to Scotland or Yankton.

  29. Scott 2016-03-24 13:03

    I think it’s rather disingenuous of the BonHomme Supt. to cry publicly about the situation without disclosing this situation as the reason for the difference.

  30. Darin Larson 2016-03-24 13:20

    Cory, this might be off the topic of this thread but since you raised it I’m going to respond to your comment about banning CAFOs. You might have been speaking tongue in cheek, but I’m going to respond as if you were serious.

    Banning CAFOs makes about as much economic sense as banning cars in favor of horses would have made in the 1930’s. CAFOs are not all good or all bad. If they are done right, they are the bright future of modern animal production agriculture. Some CAFOs have been poorly planned and have given CAFOs a bad name to some people.

    People want low-cost, high quality products and food and the efficiencies and technology in well planned CAFOs enable that efficiency and quality. We are not going to feed our 7.3 billion people on earth with a 19th century vision of agriculture. You do realize we need to feed 9.7 billion people a year by 2050. That is 2.5 billion more mouths to feed in less than 35 years! That is almost the equivalent of adding another China and India! We are not going to do this without modern technology and efficiency.

    I also realize that you can’t plunk a giant CAFO down just anywhere in SD. They have to be well-planned and sized for the area in which they operate. They can’t unduly burden neighbors and they must be well-regulated.

    I am also not against organic farming and local production. Consumers obviously have the right to decide what food they are going to buy. Our family buys produce from farmers’ markets in the summer. But we are not going to feed the world on high priced organic food or have good quality fresh vegetables in South Dakota in the middle of winter without modern agricultural methods.

    Finally, we are competing against the world in agriculture just like most industries today. If you hamstring SD agricultural practices so that they cannot compete with the world, agriculture will not prosper and grow in SD.

  31. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-03-24 13:36

    Scott, you’re right that Dr. Elsberry doesn’t explain the entire difference in his school’s situation versus others, but I don’t think he’s pleading for some special treatment. Bon Homme gets the same amount of new money and sees the same two-thirds cut in new money from the Sly Amendment whether they house those 486 students in one building or three, and whether they teach those kids with 49 FTE or 40 or 30. Whatever choices Bon Homme makes, the Sly Amendment has deprived them and 72 other districts of a significant amount of additional cash.

    Therein lies the problem. Schools thought they would have X amount of new dollars to help them offer competitive wages. Now they are getting 0.8X, 0.5X, or 0.3X. I can understand those districts’ disappointment.

  32. Darin Larson 2016-03-24 15:14

    Mike, The study that you cited says that uncooked pork often has bacteria on it and that bacteria can be antibiotic resistant. I thought that it was common knowledge that you don’t eat uncooked meat for fear of bacteria and we know that antibiotic resistant bugs are a growing problem.

    I don’t see that this study concluded that CAFOs had anything to do with the antibiotic resistance. Antibiotics have been used on farms for many years before CAFOs came along. That is not to say that it is not a problem. It is to say that the problem is not just a CAFO problem; it is a potential problem on all farms.

    I think there is a concerted effort on the part of livestock producers to reduce the use of antibiotics. That will take place whether or not you have a CAFO. That movement is already underway.

    You have to remember also that people over-using antibiotics on people have been the biggest problem in developing antibiotic resistance, not animal agriculture.

    Confinement of animals in barns has allowed animals to thrive in a lot of ways. They are out of the elements more commonly. Pigs no longer commonly root around in the dirt and feces. They have climate-controlled conditions with fresh water and fresh feed. They get better medical care as well.

    Pigs no longer typically carry trichinosis largely because of animal confinement. “Infection was once very common, but is now rare in the developed world. The incidence of trichinosis in the U.S. has decreased dramatically in the past century. From 1997 to 2001, an annual average of 12 cases per year were reported in the United States.” Wikipedia

  33. Scott 2016-03-24 15:20

    Well I could be wrong, but I don’t think they’re serving any uncooked Pork at the BonHomme School.

  34. Sheila 2016-03-24 15:29

    I don’t know where Scott got his information regarding the Bon Homme District, but the “few kids” at the other attendance centers (Springfield and Tabor) total almost 100 and there is not enough room at Tyndall in the elementary for all of them. That has been looked into by the school board many times! Further, his comments about Springfield kids going to Avon are off the mark — a few who live between Springfield and Avon go to Avon, but the majority go to school in Springfield. Same with his comment about Tabor kids going to Scotland and Yankton — another statement that has no factual basis!

  35. Mike 2016-03-24 18:15

    The much ballyhooed teacher salary increases were sold as raises to ALL teachers, not just those in districts with increasing enrollments.

  36. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-03-24 18:40

    (Darin, how about we cap CAFOs at 1,000 animal units? That still leaves room for more producers, who will have more families and put more kids in our schools. :-) )

  37. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-03-24 18:42

    Spencer, I second Darin’s request for your source. I’m working with DOE data, incorporating this year’s enrollment numbers, just as Dr. Elsberry does above. Show me your source for 20–30 districts seeing a new decrease in state aid in the coming school year, and I’ll make that a whole post of its own.

  38. Darin Larson 2016-03-24 18:51

    Cory, why stop with agriculture? We could limit the productivity of all industries so that they require more labor and thus increase the needed workforce. See 19th century China. :)

  39. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-03-25 07:06

    (Darin, I think I could come up with a policy justification for stopping with agriculture—i.e., with focusing on a CAFO cap and redirection of agricultural development dollars. The CAFO policy works first as environmental policy, reducing pollution. The ag development shift makes sense from an classical conservative perspective: big corporate farms don’t need financial assistance, since the market is already trending toward factory farms and consolidation. Both policies have the ancillary benefits of encouraging more population, more people and families on the land, engaging in more ecologically sustainable agriculture.)

  40. 1254 2016-03-25 07:08

    Yes I understand that lower student numbers should mean less funding. But if you go through databank a significant % of schools lost students and still got higher % increases in new money. Faulk ton lost about 4% and got 6.23%raise, Highmore Harold 3.8%loss and 12.5% increase. In my previous table Redfield had a 5% loss and only 2.15% increase. Here is one of their quandries. They run turtle creek youth program for the state, all sped. A lot of those students are not in their number because they show up after the day adm is figured, thus receiving no Gen fund dollars for. Attendance at turtle creek may be 10 to 20 kids more at end of year vs beggining. I thought goal was to raise teacher pay. Doesn’t necessarily look true to me.

  41. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-03-25 16:17

    1254, I don’t have any special ed funding incorporated in my spreadsheet—I’m looking strictly at the general fund state aid. Are there funds that take care of those special ed needs?

    To make sense of disparities between percentage enrollment changes and percentage new money changes, we’d have to look at the original formula and see if it was distributing funds fairly and effectively. It is possible that the previous formula shorted some schools and overly advantaged others and that changes in the current formula could level some of those old disparities. I’m not at all sure that the current formula is practically superior in any way; I’m just saying it’s a possibility we’d have to look into to move 1254’s statement above from descriptive to normative—i.e., from something that is happening to something that we need to do something about.

  42. 1254 2016-03-25 18:50

    Just looks as though there are areas of adm where schools can be extremely efficient. Some that are small and most large. I’m going to continue to go over the data. I think something is fishy about the LEP monies. If I’m thinking right they have about 10M in for LEP and the current year is about 3.5M. Gonna be sad when some teachers are not even get a CPI based raise.

  43. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-03-25 19:28

    1254, keep looking! Let me know what you find!

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