Summary paragraph: In which Menin briefly explains again why zero-based budgeting is an abstract exercise when it comes to creating School Budgets, but how a budget that is organized around a central idea makes more sense.
One of the unfortunate smokescreens blown during the override campaign was the need to change our approach to school budgeting to one based on the principles of "zero-based budgeting"- you start from Zero, and then begin to add in fixed costs, operating costs, costs incurred statutorily and keep building your budget from zero to whatever it becomes. Virtually no school systems use this format in it's purest form; because the variables that go into School Budgets are very volatile. It is hard to start from zero, because you very quickly move to meeting those expenses required by federal and state law-- classroom/teacher ratios, curriculum emphasis; then you add in known fixed expenses that are predictable- salaries, benefits, etc.
Since salaries in any municipal branch of government are going to amount to the great bulk of the expense- about 80% for education, and 88-94% for the last three years in the police and fire departments here in Newburyport, you have very little left for the operating costs like heat and electricity, which have varied wildly over the past five years.
With Special Ed costs, there are four principles that make projecting them an exercise in frustration-- 1) We have one of the highest rates in the state of serving Sp Ed students in the our district, as opposed to sending them out to other placements; 2) Costs for the specific services themselves are rising at an unpredictable rate from year to year; 3) It is, at best a crap shoot to estimate how many students will need special education services from year to year, with move-ins, move outs, new diagnoses, etc; and 4) It is hard to estimate the level of direct services these students will need. They represent about 10% of our students, and 25% of our need.
There is a better way to create a budget, though; something that is now possible for the first time, because Kevin Lyons has a year under his belt and the administrators and teachers share his vision for the schools.
Prior to this year, one of the most frustrating aspects of preparing the budget wasn't so much the steady cutting, but the lack of a coherent principle to justify those cuts. What should we cut to survive was the dominant question; some of us argued for a different question as the basis for budgetary action- why should we cut this. What is the impact on student achievement if we cut this? Prior to Dr. Lyons, or at least the five years I served under 2 previous Superintendents, at no time was a draft budget presented to us predicated on the simple question 'what can we do to preserve and promote student achievement.'
Several of us asked the question, repeatedly, in several different ways; we tried to tie the budget to a focus on student achievement. It didn't happen; simply because the information was not collected and tabulated in a way that allowed us to create a big picture, a driving vision for our schools. No real vision (except for vague ideas about best practices, excellent schools, and bricks and mortar).
And when that information was available, it was glossy, incomplete, with little year-to-year trend analysis.
So the common practice was to start with the budget of the previous year, and cut from there. The Committee would ask for a "level services budget" (one that projects the costs for keeping programs currently running, without assuming new or restored programs.). Once we had seen that budget, we would then ask the Superintendent to prepare a "level services budget"-- one that assumes no additional income. from the current year, which was, in effect, the "cuts" budget. And the the theory behind how we cut was to leave enough of the bare bones left, so that when money started flowing, we'd be able to bring it all back.
There are two flaws that were obvious in this approach, both of which I argued about on the floor of the SC for years. The first is that it assumes the way we have been doing things is the way we should always do things. The second is that such an approach is divorced from student achievement. What we were spending money on did not have a direct relationship to student outcomes. We kept class sizes small, and then watched the curriculum being taught die from neglect. Changing institutional cultures and practices is slow work; I have likened the first five years I spent on the school committee to 'riding shotgun on a glacier'.
There was, and is, and now will be a better way.
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