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What we've been doing...During the past couple of months we have been busy attending public budget meetings at the Monroe-Woodbury School District. Additionally we have been obtaining documents under New York's Freedom of Information Law. We've been trying to turn a very complex issue into something which the ordinary taxpayer can understand. We want you to understand that in almost everything there are different points of view. If you and I were in a waiting room, sitting with a coffee table between us. If I pick up a magazine and hold it up and ask you what you're looking at, you might say; "I'm looking at the March issue of National Geographic, it has a Harp Seal on the cover, and lists articles about the Rain Forest, Armenia, China, and Talladega. It has a yellow border." I would say, "I'm looking at a small size magazine with a print ad of an advertisement for a Toyota 4Runner that I've seen on TV." We both are looking at the same thing...but with a different point of view. Please try to see ours. What we've found and our analysis may be of some interest to you. Please read on for more! First the good news...Yes, there actually is good news in all of this. We'd like to recognize Mr. John Staiger, the new Assistant Superintendent for Business for his efforts to regain fiscal responsibility in the district. Mr. Staiger has performed some fiscal moves with some of our bond issues that have resulted in savings in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Additionally, he seems to know the ins and outs of school district finances much better than what we've been used to. And he has even been quite responsive to our annoying requests for details about the districts finances. We hope that these items are just the tip of the 'berg. Secondly, we feel that in a general way, the budgets presented so far (prior to March 10th, 2004) have been quite reasonable. Some senior managers seem to be sensitive to the cost to the taxpayer and are trying very hard to present a budget that we can live with and pass. But we do have some questions though that we will get to later. Now for the rest of the news...The budgets presented thus far are those budgets that acquire, maintain, and produce items that the people in those areas use to execute their mission. They are primarily a "thing" kind of budget. The personnel who work in each of these respective budget areas are paid for in a different budget. That personnel budget will be presented on March 10th, 2004. We suspect that the budgets below constitute less than 30% of the total budget. The lion's share is the personnel budget. Please attend the March 10th meeting to listen and/or voice your concerns. NOTE: After the discussion which follows on the budgets already presented we will give you some history on some of the personnel areas that you might find interesting. The budgets presented so far have been: (and their change from this year)
There may be other budget items that we missed. We tried to attend all meetings and get the handouts prepared for the public. Our analysis is based on what we have and what we heard. Understand that none of these budget categories include any personnel costs. Those costs for salary, special pays, health, dental, vision, and life insurance, retirement contributions, retirement payments, and a myriad of other costs will be presented at the March 10th meeting. That budget will be the lion's share of the school budget, accounting for probably 70% or more of the total. Some specifics on the budgets presented above.There are a few budget categories that caught our attention. Either where they were placed or the difference from this year's budget or the outright size of the line item stuck out to us so we took a closer look. Professional Dues & Publications: This budget item does not stipulate if these dues are for individual persons or for an organization. Probably 70% or more of the budgets listed above have line items for this category. The total of $34,220 is a 5.68% increase over this year's austerity budget (which means during austerity we paid $32,380 in professional dues and publications while our children were denied field trips.) We wonder what these specific request are for and why they are allowed as a general rule. None of our members have professional dues & publications paid by our employers so we think this discretionary item warrants further scrutiny by both the board and administration. Since our examination of six employment contracts does not reveal that payment of professional dues & publications is a requirement for any employee group we feel that such payments should be come the exceptions rather than the rule. If you agree please contact a board member and let them know how you feel. Conferences & Meetings: This budget request, which appears in almost half of the above budgets, and totals $103,450, a whopping 54.45% increase over this year's budget, also has no real explanation. Again, a through look at six contracts reveals no contractual obligation on the districts part to fund conferences & meetings. At over $100,000 we can only assume these meetings take place outside of the district. Our suspicion is that these would be fees paid to take training or seminar courses elsewhere. Some of our members employer's do pay for outside training so we feel that is an area that has it's place. A funny thing is that there actually is a "Conferences & Meetings" budget category #8100 which totals $32,163 leaving the remainder 69% of the total being spent in other budgets. But we feel the drastic increase and the sheer number of these items deservers closer scrutiny. If you agree please contact a board member and let them know how you feel. Travel Allowance: We imagine this budget request item goes hand in hand with the conferences and meetings, although they don't correlate completely from budget to budget. At $28,130 it is some 16.3% greater than this year's austerity budget. Again we find no contractual requirement that the district provide this type of payment to any employee group. And as with the conferences and meetings some of our own employers do pay travel expenses when we go on a trip. We just hope that the managers and board members know exactly what these items are and that they truly are being spent responsibly. Other Misc Expense: This is the last item which concerns us. It's $1,006,080 price tag is just 6.8% higher than this year's austerity budget. It kind of makes some of us wonder how the district couldn't find the $69,000 that field trips for our children costs when so much money was spent with no explanation to the public. None of the budget documents distributed to the public at the budget meetings detail what these expenditures are. But hey, a million bucks in our 100+ million budget is chump change, eh?! Well, we hope not. The budget documents that each board member gets seem to be different than what is made available to the public. We don't know because we haven't seen them! If you think that you want to know what this one million dollar expenditure is please contact your favorite board member today and ask them if they really know what all those dollars are buying the taxpayer. You can see the budget figures on our work sheet here. Note that we do this research part time. Not to mention the operator of that sheet isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. It's all done in a simplistic way to try to understand a very complex process. We hope you can make some sense of it. If you can't we are happy to chat with you. Please send a note to our webmaster and the appropriate person will get back with you. What we found from our FOIL requests...Unfunded mandates is a phrase we have been hearing quite often. At the May 14, 2003 BOE meeting BOE member Dr. Carl Gold is on record: Dr. Gold thanked central office for the list of unfunded mandates and recommended the list be made available to the community. We have not seen the list. So we don't know if these unfunded mandates are for education or personnel costs? What we found in our examination of employment contracts is that our district has been very generous these last few years. Let's take a closer look. What contracts did we look at:
A few thoughts from one of our members on the teachers contract.In my opinion, the teachers are well compensated for the work that they do.
Here are some facts and thoughts. Employee Compensation in GeneralWhen evaluating employee compensation it is necessary to look at many factors beyond just base pay. We have examined the contracts listed above and have been able to draw some common points between them as well as specific differences. In looking at total compensation we considered base pay, raises from year to year, step increases (many times combined with the annual adjustment), health insurance, life insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance, holidays, vacation days, sick days (although these are often times called different names), and work year. Our idea is to normalize somewhat some of the conditions and allow you to look at them with a similar perspective as compared with your own employment. We hope we accomplish this.
Teachers Salary:We looked at salary tables contained in the contracts. Some of those we
have performed some calculations on and present here for your examination.
The teachers contract stipulates two contracts, a
standard
and
alternative. I believe the standard contract applies generally to
employees who have been with the district a long time. The alternative
schedule is for new employees since the mid 1990's. These two charts show
that a 2.76% to 3% raise exists for each schedule from year to year. But
as mentioned above, few employees would receive just this annual adjustment
because through their 14th year they get a step increase. What we found
was that combining the annual adjustment with the step increase results in
annual raises from 5.21% to 25.02% during the life of the three year contract
from 2001/2002 to this year 2003/2004. Note that during this time the
U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of
Labor Statistics shows the CPI for metro NY area to be:
Administrators Salary:We also looked at the contract with school administrators. This group would be the highest paid group and includes persons such as the school principals, assistant principals, and other top managers. This group has lots of pay tables so we decide we would just show a representative sampling here. The chart examines the HS Principal table; the MS Principal/Director of Pupil Personnel Services; Elementary Principal/Director ESS; Director of Computer Ed; and AP/Dir STFDV AD ESS. We are not exactly sure what some of those abbreviations are but were sure they are part of the highest paid employee group in the district. This chart is somewhat different in that it examines each category of personnel over five specific date periods from Feb 01 to Jun 04. Although each category has different pays for different years of service to the district the raises from one time period to the next is the same for each; that is: 5%, 2%, 5% and 5%. Over the life of the contact the annual raises amount to 18.xx% for each category...surpassing the CPI by about 10%. If one of these administrators also achieved a step increase (which does NOT come each year except from 3 to 4 to 5) their pay would increase more than what is shown on the chart. If you are curious about someone who fits the chart and you know their years you can do the math and figure the real raise they got. In any case we feel that the district has been quite generous with raises for this group of employees. What do you think?
CSEA Salary:To be continued... |
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