Thursday, September 3, 2015

Field Fiat

At tonight's school board meeting Oyster River Superintendent Morse put forth a $2.3M plan that puts a new artificial turf field directly into next year's budget.  Last March the warrant article for the $2M project failed to get the required 60% of the votes.  State law dictates a 60% threshold is required to approve the $1.7M bond portion of the funding.  The plan presented tonight does not appear to put the field issue as its own ballot question, but as part of the large budget appropriation.

New field funding plan (the Goal should read "with NO Bonding")

The $2.3M budget is a $300,000 increase from last year's plan.  The additional money is intended to go into a higher quality fill than the rubber tire crumb fill in last year's field budget.  A committee is expected to give the board its recommendation on field fill by the next board meeting, September 16.   Now that I think about it, by skipping the bond the district saves $300,000 in interest, so this really isn't an increase over last year's field proposal.

The memo explaining the plan (right) claims "36 additional positive votes and the plan would have been approved" which is terribly wrong - 339 additional YES votes would be needed to switch the result.  (The vote was 1382 to 1147, 54.6%; with 339 extra YESes you get 1721 to 1147, 60.0%.)  "56%" isn't quite right either.  I conclude that the vote wasn't all that close and that any plan involving a bond is likely to fail.

The appraisal for the Orchard Drive Land came in at $287,000.  The disappointing appraisal was attributed (in a 130 page report!) to Durham zoning laws that prevent the parcel, which the district received as a gift in 1971, to be more than four buildable lots.  Board member Kenny Rotner, who also serves on Durham's Town Council, suggested the district seek a variance from Durham to improve the valuation.

The money from the capital account comes from delaying planned capital improvements, in particular a generator at the middle school and something else I can't remember.  The superintendent reports Facilities Director Rozycki enthusiastically supports the plan and sees little downside from the delay.  The district is about halfway through the backlog of $4M of building problems identified in early 2012.

The insurance settlement refers to ongoing payouts from a judge ruling LGC had overcharged customers (including Oyster River and its staff) for health insurance.   LGC's successor HealthTrust didn't have the money to pay the judgement in one shot, so it's being doled out a bit every year.  The plan puts two years' worth of the payouts toward the field.

The $300,000 track fund is mostly private donations collected over the last couple of decades and I think includes $50,000 the district itself has contributed.

At the last board meeting I suggested that instead of bonding $600,000 that the board just put it on the ballot as a one time appropriation.   I meant it to have its own ballot question, so the voters can register their choice.   The advantage of a one time appropriation is that it only requires a simple 50% majority.  Similarly, at tonight's meeting board member Denise Day suggested that the shortfall from the land sale of $300,000 be placed on the ballot as a one time appropriation.

I like the idea of including the question of the field as its own warrant article.  Four times in the past a majority of voters said YES but the majority never reached 60% so the bond always failed.   This time, if the same majority votes for a one time appropriation of around $300,000 (possibly less depending on fill costs) the article would pass and the project would go forward.

I'm less enamored with the idea of including the field in the large budget appropriation.  Opponents to the field would be forced to vote against the full budget to register their disapproval of the field.  Combined with the substantial number of voters who vote NO on the budget anyway, this might be enough to tip the balance into NO territory triggering the default budget and a whole to-do.  I'm not sure if the superintendent intended to do it this way, somewhat bypassing the voters, but it seems to me a very bad idea.   It's up to the school board anyway, which I believe will let the voters directly decide on the field with a simple majority vote on election day.



In other news, Assistant Superintendent Carolyn Eastman has quit, tendering her 60 day notice.  She's off to big-time greener pastures that she told me about but I didn't think to get permission to write about.   Her legacy will be how she proactively embraced Common Core and Smarter Balanced and moved the district to a comprehensive assessment system that quickly focuses teachers on individual students' needs.  I've gotten to know Assistant Superintendent Eastman over her three years here and I'm going to miss her very much.  Thank you for all your great work Carolyn.  Fortunately, Carolyn will still be a district mom.

Today was the first day of school and the superintendent announced that 381 students are enrolled at Moharimet.  Recall two years ago the overcrowding at Moharimet had gotten out of hand, with 407 students in a school with nominal capacity 389.   Back then I estimated it would be "two years before Redraw with Full Grandfathering got Moharimet down to capacity" -- score one for me.  This is in contrast to last November's Long Range Planning Committee report that forecasted 411 students would be enrolled at Moharimet today, off by a distressing 8%.  Board member Rotner asked that the LRPC look into the discrepancy.

Let's recall a quick history of how the board eventually settled on Redraw with Full Grandfathering, our traditional elementary imbalance remedy.   I think the distractions of tweets, lawsuits and almost full administrative turnover in 2011 & 2012 let the creeping problem go unaddressed, maybe even unnoticed, for a couple years.  It didn't help that the LRPC was forecasting a substantial 6% enrollment decline, with the December 2012 forecast for FY16 Moharimet (that's today) of 358.  Then the new superintendent spent an extra year getting everyone riled up deciding while the problem got even worse.   The superintendent liked a K-2, 3-4 split, a pretty bad idea that didn't really solve the problem.  It was soundly rejected by the community early on but the leadership inexplicably kept pushing it.

There's also news about the budget.  I'm happy to report that the board is considering my ideas to include revenue and not exclude certain expenses when setting budget goals.    But the real surprising thing to come out of the meeting is that the superintendent thinks he can fund Full Day Kindergarten and a new field and still keep growth below a nominal 3%.  I'm sure I'll write more as the budget develops so I'll just say good night now.



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