BLEKE'S BLEAK BUDGET

Just a few facts about the Grand Rapids Public School District's budget as Superintendent Bert Bleke tries to avoid driving the district into bankruptcy.  The big ticket items, as is usually the case with government agencies, are related to personnel.  For example, health benefits for district employees alone account for eleven percent of the annual budget.  Altogether employee benefits eat up one fifth of the budget.  This is why Bleke can save $5 million by outsourcing the 400 support service jobs (i.e., janitors, cooks, bus drivers) currently on the district payroll.

Of course, teachers, not support staff, account for the lion's share of the district's budget.  Bleke announced that he will have to lay off 90 teachers because of shrinking enrollments which will save the district $6.9 million.  Do the arithmetic.  That means on average a teacher's salary and perks cost us over $76,000 a year, and that just the teachers with lower seniority!  Another way to look at this is that a typical teacher makes nearly sixty bucks an hour.  Yet Bleke is balancing the district's budget on the backs of its laborers.  That should please the district's principals who are slated for a pay increase out of these savings.

Comments

[Douglas Keachie]

Of course now the outsourced individuals with no health benefits will show up at the emergency room for health care, funny how you can't just make people's needs just vanish with "privatization" magic... In CA Walmart made part of their employee manual a "how to" on getting public benefits....CorpCo has no moral values whatsoever.

Again, as before, if public teaching is such a plum job, how come the college educated Republicans aren't lining up to sign up in droves ? They could be off indoctrinating the little kiddies, as state education standards can be spun, framed, etc., either way. But, too bad, they're all off in Iraq fighting for BushCo ? Yeah, right !

A retired California teacher, who now has the Terminator Gubenator out to steal his pension, and is sick and tired of whiney-belly-aecher, yuppie dink wannabes who try to grab it all. The median income (half above, half below, for the statistically challanged) for lawyers in CA was $130,000.....in 1994, guess where it is now !

Douglas Keachie

[Jim Chapman]

I seriously question your $60 per hour income for teachers. Teachers are required to teach 180 days in Michigan. A school day is about 7 hours in length. That means they are teaching for 1260 hours in a year. That's not all. They are also required to undergo about 40 hours of district lead training per year. This brings the total to about 1300 hours of in school time teaching and training. Now let's look at the rest of the issue. Teachers don't just pack up and leave when the bell rings. They have meetings with parents, meetings with students, papers to grade, and lessons to write. Most teachers I know will spend at least 1 hour per night doing that each day which adds another 180 hours to the total. That means even if a teacher is getting $67,000 total including benefits (which may be a stretch anyway) they are making only $45.27 per hour. That also doesn't include the additional training sessions that teachers are required by state law to undergo (and which are normally not paid for by the school system). Teachers are required to gain certain additional continueing education credits over time also, which is usually in the form of college courses and in many cases a Master's degree. Using GVSU as an example, a master's degree costs at least 13000 over at most 5 years. That takes a chunk out of the 67000 per year they "earn" becuase the school doen't pay for it. Now assume that 67000 is down to 64500 with the same number of hours. They pay is cut $43.58 per hour. Still good money, but not as good as it really seems.

Let's take a deeper look at what is really going on with school funding. Before I go farther I will let you know a little about myself. I am a graduate of GVSU with a degree in physical education and minors in Biology, Chemistry, Geography and Health Education certified to teach all those subjects in grades 7-12. Iam currently being forced to substitute teach and work 2nd and 3rd jobs because there are NO teaching jobs available within the state. Why?

In large part it is due to school funding. The voters of this fien state passed Proposal A of 1994 which changed the funding source for schools in Michigan from property taxes to 2% of the 6% sales taxes (the 2% that was added was for school funding). This was a great idea when the economy was sky high like it was in 1994. The problem is the economy is nowhere near that level now. People are losing jobs left and right (Steelcase, Electrolux, Meijers (I'll explain later)) and don't have money to spend on anythign extra that would bring in sales taxe revenues.

Currently the schools in the State of Michigan get $6700 per student in grades K-12. This funding is the major funding for schools in the state and is solely based on the # of students in a district. As students enter (or in GRPS's case) leave the district the funding changes.

Here is an example. If GRPS loses 100 students before next year they will lose $670000 in revenue. The problem is the 100 students lost district wide may come to 4 students per school. That isn't enough to cut teachers from the classrooms, or clse schools. It is enough to cause problems within the district though. $670,000 is enough to pay 10 teachers (using your above estimates) which can't be cut because they are still needed. You can only cut class sizes so far before another set of legislation comes into play. No Child Left Behind has mandates on almost all aspects of education including class size. You can't just keep increasing class sizes when revenue disappears because you run into issues with the requirments of NCLB. Even worse with NCLB if your school or district fails to meet certain requirements one of the penalties is reduction in funding for the programs. GRPS is in a tough spot due to the urban nature of the district. They are required to offer certain programs by law which the state and federal funding for is in adequate of non-existance. Special education students must make the same progress as any other student, which in many cases is not possible due to the students "disabilities", but if they fail to meet the requirements the school loses fudning for the programs.

Other issues also exist also. Over the past 10 years the amount of money school districts are required to pay into the state mandated retirement system has doubled. In 1995 schools had to pay 8% of the districts total payroll amount into the retirement program. This year is it nearly 16%. The schools don't get a say in the %, it is determined by the state of Michigan. Basically, due to the short sightedness of the state government in the past districts are forced to must pay more to cover retirement benefits of teachers. The schools don't get the option of offering the retirement pension either. The state requires all school employees to be covered under the program with a few exceptions. This is kinda like the social security issue we may be facing. As teachers retire there isn't going to be enough money to cover the benefits that need to be paid out so the districts must pump more money into the system.

Another issue is the ever rising health care costs in the US. School districts are like any other big company in the fact that health insurance costs keep going up faster than revenues. Teachers may be able to pay more into thier coverage, but just like any other unionized group they will want other concessions. The problem is health insurance costs are increasing som much more than revenues that districts have to spend more and more on insurance and are often bound by teacher contracts just like GM is bound by the contracts with the UAW.

It is unfortunate but when money is tight certain cuts need to be made. Usually schools look for the things that will do the least to affect the learning process first. Schools have been cutting things like that for years, including high school busing. The next thing to occur is school closing and consolidation. After that you need to start cutting programs. Normally non-instructional stuff gets cut first. This normally includes maintance and janitorial staff being outsourced. The next things to be cut are instructional related programs including athletics. Schools usually try to come up with pay to participate fees prior to actually ending programs. If those fees fail to cover the program costs then you must cut programs. Usually this is when teachers are let go.

Right now with the state economy going as it is, the issue isn't getting better. It won't get better until the leadership in Lansing does something to help schools out. Schools want and need the best (highly qualified) teachers which requires them to pay for them. If a school uses inferior teachers they risk losing funding because they don't meet NCLB requirments. Until something in Lansing changes how schools are funded, and some sort of healthcare reform is passes there will continue to be struggles within schools.

It isn't just schools that face issues. I work at a Meijer store. In my departments we used to have 30 people total. We know have 13 people doing the same or more total work, plus we have to cover other departments. Why? In large part because of health care related costs to the employeer. We are a union compnay and the union gave in as much as it could and we are still losing employees. Schools are the same way. You can only cut so much fat off the steak before you start cutting into the steak.