Half a million here ...

A fair amount has happened since school started so I thought I'd do an update.

We're Newsworthy

Welcome to Kimberley Haas, a reporter Foster's sent to the 9/17 school board meeting.  Ms. Haas has written two articles about us since then:

Foster's, September 19, 2013 Plans for cafeteria at Moharimet School discussed

Foster's, September 20, 2013  If OR tuitions more students, taxpayers could realize $400g

Jeff McMenemy of SeacoastOnline is also on the beat:

SeacoastOnline, September 06, 2013 Newmarket seeks lower school tuition offer from Oyster River

SeacoastOnline,  September 10, 2013  Towns seek to lower proposed tuition rate

SeacoastOnline, September 18, 2013 Oyster River H.S. lowers tuition price for Newmarket, other towns

SeacoastOnline,  September 24, 2013  Newmarket favors new tuition proposal (Oyster River lowered proposal by 12 percent)

You can always watch old school board meetings on YouTube (9/18/13, 9/4/13).  But you don't have to because I sit through them and report back to you here.

 Mohariment Cafeteria, $500,000

The initial enrollment figures for the two elementary schools were startling.  Mast Way began with 287 students, Moharimet with 409.  That's 122 students, 43% more, at Moharimet if you're counting.

Moharimet has an official functional capacity of 388, so it's a little tight in there.  The pain is most acutely felt in the multipurpose room, which serves as a cafeteria when not a gym or auditorium.  And sometimes, we found out, at the same time that it is a gym.

This leads to the first of our half-million dollar items alluded to in the title.  The board gave Superintendent Morse approval to explore building a cafeteria at Moharimet.  The intended capacity is 360, the expected price tag is $500,000 and the size is 10 feet longer than Mast Way's (inequity?).  It would be sited near the kitchen, either in the parking lot or toward the church.

The superintendent wants to begin construction this April, so the cafeteria is ready by September.  This means spending money in the current fiscal year.  This is possible due to some found money (more about that next).  This district plans to seek approval for the Moharimet cafeteria from the voters in the March election before proceeding.

$500,000 is 1.25% of the $40M budget.  Found money or not, if the board decides to build a cafeteria at Moharimet your FY15 school tax will be about 1.25% more than if they decide not to. 

The superintendent preemptively defended himself against the implied charge that it's only the overcrowding from the imbalance that's moved the Moharimet cafeteria to the top of the priority list.

Local Government Center Fraud Payout, $500,000

From what I can tell, despite the name, Local Government Center (LGC) is a private, for-profit company. LGC is an insurance agency.  It was rather dubiously formed by merging non-profits that were administering insurance for municipal employees.   It got in trouble for mixing pools, which is a fancy way of saying LGC didn't return excess health insurance premiums to the towns and school districts who paid them that it was required to by law. 

The district's share of the settlement is $688,555.  Since employees pitch in a certain percentage of their heath insurance premiums, some of this money belongs to them.  The superintendent speculated that the district would retain around $500,000. 

ORCSD is getting the settlement in the form of what I think was called a premium holiday. Basically, LGC is giving us a discount of $688,555 on our health insurance this year.   Seemingly sensible local governments (including Durham) that sought insurance elsewhere in the wake of the scandal are crying foul, as only current customers are in a position to take the premium holiday.

 LGC was also in the news recently as the conflict of interest that ended the NH Senate Presidency of Peter Bragdon. NHPR has been covering LGC well for a long time.   

My main concern is that every time there's some revenue that comes into the district it becomes an excuse to spend with "minimal impact on District taxpayers"  (agenda).   New projects add to taxes whether or not they are offset through found money or tuition profit or spread over the years through financing.  Instead of a minimal impact on the taxpayers, we should aim for a positive impact: lower taxes.

Oyster River Cuts Proposed Tuition $500,000 per year

The prospects for a tuition deal improved after we lowered the proposed tuition for Newmarket from our cost per pupil (CPP) ($16,324) to $14,500.  As before, this tuition deal does not include transportation and places a ceiling on special education support.   Dr. Morse proposed a plan where the board approves a single proposal that it offers to each of the interested districts.

The Newmarket Perspective

There's been a somewhat odd dynamic to the negotiation with Newmarket.  It was announced last spring that Newmarket was willing to pay our cost per pupil.  Somehow it only occurred to Newmarket in September to ask for a lower rate, which we gave them.

There is some drivel going around that Newmarket could actually save money by building a high school rather than tuitioning out to Oyster River, given the high rate.  That seems ludicrous to me, but let's do the math to be sure.  [In a comment below, Mike M. reports that it has been admitted that there was a math error by the Newmarket folks.]

NH DOE has Newmarket FY12 CPP at $15,159 and Oyster River at $16,502.  DOE also provides CPP for high school only: Newmarket $16,194, OR $16,304.  Let's make a guess (probably a lowball) that a new high school costs $30M.  [MM says $53M.]  If we believe the high school DOE numbers, at the initial high rate the extra tuition Newmarket would pay to Oyster River would pay for a new High School in 30M/((16324-16194)*250)) = 923 years!  Let's say we compare to Newmarket's lower district-wide CPP -- then Newmarket's increase would pay for a new High School in only 30M/((16324-15159)*250))  = 103 years.

As a matter a fact, the new deal saves Newmarket so much money that in 30M/((16194-14500)*250) = 71 years the taxpayers of Newmarket would have saved enough to buy a new High School, courtesy of the taxpayers of Oyster River.  (It's actually much faster than this when you consider the inflation adjustment discussed below.) 

Now, I like the idea of a tuition agreement and despite some trepidation I want to help our neighbors over in Newmarket.  I just don't see why we need to be so generous we save their taxpayers over $400,000 the first year and an increasing amount in the years beyond. 

The Oyster River Perspective 

The discount just offered amounts to 16,324 - 14,500 = $1,824 per student, or $456,000 per year for the expected 250 students.  

The superintendent promised 25% of the tuition to taxpayer relief, down from the 40% promised when Newmarket was willing to pay up.  Let's see, 25% * 14,500 * 250 is around $900,000,

a bit more than 2% percent off your taxes.   The old figure, 40% * 16,324 * 250  is around $1,600,000, around a 4% tax break.

From the district's point of view, they were retaining around $2.46M (60% * 16,324 * 250) in the old deal and around $2.72M (75% * 14,500 * 250) in the new one.  Look at that -- another quarter million dollars of found money.  Time for free all day K.

[MM reports that Foster's made an error reporting "400g".  I've indented my original commentary which was based on taking Foster's at its word.] 

But Foster's reports that the taxpayers can realize $400K annually in the new tuition deal.  (If it was up to me, the headline would say "only $400g.") This is much less than the $900K I calculated.  There appears to be some slight-of-hand going on here.

Where it was previously reported that 40% of the gross tuition would be returned to the taxpayers, $400K seems to be 25% of the tuition profit of $1.6M, not of the total tuition revenue of $3.6M (14,500 * 250). The costs are expected to be $2M, mostly for staff.

What of the 75% of the profit not returned to taxpayers?  That's $1.2M more of found money.  That's plenty to get a football program going, along with a bunch of girls' sports to avoid Title IX troubles.

One important thing to note is that the tuition deal should help our cost per pupil.  (The renegotiation didn't affect the costs, just the revenue.)  Back of the envelope, assuming 250 additional tuition students at a $2M cost, our CPP of $16,502 would change to ((16,502*2,000+2,000,000) / (2,000+250)) = $15,557, a 6% reduction.  

Inflation

I didn't tell you the worst part of the proposed deal.  There is a 2% nominal increase in the tuition we charge over each of the first 8 years.  This is very likely a ridiculously low number.  It is below the broad inflation rate (CPI), and seriously below the observed inflation in school costs. 

From 2001 to 2012 (the latest year available), the NH Cost Per Pupil has increased at an annual rate of 6.27%.  (That's the nominal increase -- it's 3.81% after inflation.)  Over the same period, Oyster River CPP grew at 7.31% a year.  If that continued, the nominal 2% increase would mean Newmarket pays $16,656 in the 8th year, while our cost grows to $26,749.  Their 12% discount becomes a 38% discount, perilously close to not even covering the cost of the additional staff.

Since the financial crash, nominal cost per pupil has grown more slowly.  The state CPP grew at an annual rate of 3.86%, while Oyster River's grew at 1.95%, actually below the rate of inflation (which remained at 2.4% in the period) and below the proposed 2%.  As just mentioned, we should get a dip in CPP after we take additional tuition students.  But it's unlikely we will be able to maintain the austerity of nominally growing less than 2% a year for another eight years.

Balance

So the Oyster River taxpayers are expected to go along with a tuition deal that will reduce their taxes an anemic 1% 2%.  The students get to maintain and increase their programming.  The administration gets its slush funds. The Newmarket taxpayers start out paying 10% less per student for a better high school, and that discount grows over time.

The tuitioning deal needs to be a balance between the needs of the students and the desires of the taxpayers of both Oyster River and the other district, most likely Newmarket.   My feeling about the current proposal is it tilts too heavily in favor of the students and Newmarket taxpayers at the expense of district taxpayers.

I would be in favor of a tuition deal where the tuition rate would rise at a rate equal to the rise in NH cost per pupil.  Or, if we wanted to tie the rate to our own costs, we would need to be careful about the expected CPP reduction when we get a new influx of tuition students.   We could solve it with a minimum increase (say 2%, or the CPI) if our CPP happens to grow more slowly.   We might also want a formula that closes the discount over time.

The other concern I have with the tuition arrangement is not the deal per se, but the proposed staffing.  Tuitioning is perhaps our only opportunity to get our class sizes toward the high end of our policy (18-22) without morale-sapping layoffs.  To do this, we have to hire the minimum number of teachers.  We need to be similarly tightfisted on new non-teaching staff.  I haven't seen any evidence that this analysis was done by the administration.  Or if it has, they haven't shared it.

The third concern is the profit -- the difference between the tuition charged and the cost to provide the extra staff and programs.  The administration is essentially proposing to split the profit, now estimated at $1.6M annually, with the taxpayers.  The latest proposal seems to be 75% 45% to the administration, 25% 55% to the taxpayers [corrected $400K->$900K].  I'd like to see 100% to the taxpayers.

$500,000 to Reserve Fund  

There is an item in the 9/4/13 minutes that Sue Caswell reported that the total FY13 fund balance is $1,097,714 and that "they will retain $500,000."  I think what this is trying to say is that the new reserve fund, approved by the voters last March, will be initially funded with $500,000 that would normally be returned to the taxpayers.   Congratulations district property taxpayers -- your taxes just went up another 1.25% next year.

I personally don't think it's right that Sue gets to decide how much the Reserve Fund is funded. Nothing against Sue -- we'd probably all be better off if we always did what Sue suggests.  But Sue isn't one of the people we elected to make decisions like this.  I thought that a board vote would be required to approve this transfer, but I'm too lazy to try and decipher RSA 198(4)b to find out for sure.

Loophole in Budget Goals may cost $500,000

The budget goals were approved as modified.  My concern is the loophole in goal 1:

The ORCSD 2014-15 Budget will not exceed the cost of living as established
by U.S. Government for 2013. Health Insurance, negotiated contracts and
State cost shifts/mandate not subject to COLA.

Now, if I was a superintendent I would want to write the goals with as many loopholes as possible, so I could claim victory no matter where the budget ended up.  However as a taxpayer, I would prefer the goals be loophole free.   If we're unable to negotiate a good contract, or the state shifts more costs onto us we might not be able to achieve our goal.  But we'd have tried, and we'd have reasons, possibly good ones, for our failure.  Life happens and one doesn't always achieve one's goals. I guess I'd make a lousy superintendent.

I have no idea if the cost of this loophole will be a $500,000 -- it's just a guess keeping with the theme of this post.   A half a million here, a half a million there and pretty soon we're talking about real money.  But the real real money is in the tuition deal, where it currently looks like the taxpayers of Oyster River are being given the short straw, where their meager 1% savings over the first year may grow into a substantial tax increase by the eighth year.

Moharimet Kindergarten Stays

On Wednesday August 21st the Oyster River school board voted to direct the superintendent to prepare a plan that addresses the imbalance between enrollment in Moharimet and Mast Way Elementary schools beginning in the 2014-2015 school year. The plan is to be presented at the October 16th school board meeting.

Children registered to start kindergarten at Moharimet this year will indeed attend Moharimet. The first day of school for kindergarten students in the district is this Thursday, August 29th. Grades 1 through 12 start a day earlier, Wednesday August 28th (school calendar).

A plan proposed by the superintendent on July 17th to have all kindergarten students in the district attend Mast Way this school year was not acted upon by the board.  The hastily scheduled meeting was packed with kindergarten teachers and parents, almost all of whom were there to protest this proposed plan. Public comments were restricted to 90 seconds per person to accommodate the large crowd.  Many parents brought their children to the meeting.

The decision means that 410 students are expected to attend Moharimet this year.  The recent capacity study indicates Moharimet has a functional capacity of 388 students, so we appear to be over capacity.  However, the capacity study assumes 80 half-day K students, compared to the 57 currently registered, and does not include the two modular (temporary) classrooms that have been in use for the past two decades.  The capacity study further assumes classrooms will be on average filled at 90% of the maximum allowed by district policy, which allows 20 K students or 22 grade 1-4 students per room.

Here's my attempt to adjust the numbers to assess whether we are actually over capacity at Moharimet. I try to improve the method by looking at K and 1-4 separately.

There are 2 K classrooms, so they have a functional capacity of .9*2*2*20 = 72 half day students, which should easily accommodate the expected 57.  The remaining 15 classrooms, plus two modulars, have a functional capacity of .9*(15+2)*22 = 336 students, which is about one classroom short for the 353 1-4 graders expected.

The 90% factor takes into account that some classes will have fewer than 22 students, that some classrooms may be undersized and that 3-4 combination classrooms may not be filled to capacity.   It is still possible that the grades 1-4 can fit in the available space while staying within the district's class size policy.

At the meeting, Principal Harrington said he will handle any capacity problems, though he wasn't yet sure how.

The 306 students expected at Mast Way easily fit into its functional capacity of 369 students.  The superintendent expects that there will be two empty classrooms at Mast Way this year.

The parents were generally upset by the last minute nature of the proposed change to shift K students to Mast Way.  The superintendent put forth a credible defense, saying that he and the board have been working on the issue since March, that there have been several public meetings on the issue, and that it was the unexpected surge in enrollment over the summer which forced Moharimet over capacity and necessitated a prompt response.  He distributed copies of an impressive 26 page handout on the enrollment issue that he had quickly pulled together for the meeting.

Board member Newkirk voted against the motion directing the superintendent to produce a plan by October 16, saying he would prefer that multiple plans be presented so the board could choose among them.  Board member Turnbull, who had previously urged the superintendent to try to find a solution that could be implemented in time for the current school year, was not in attendance.

The board also voted to approve a one-year contract for a fifth grade teacher needed to accommodate an unexpected surge in enrollment there.  The superintendent assured us the money for the new teachers can be found in the budget approved by voters last March.

The board further voted to place a letter from the school's attorney in the public minutes.  Member Rotner voted no, saying he had not had sufficient time to consider the disclosure. As of this writing, the minutes have not year been posted, so the content of the letter is unknown.  It likely has to do with the recent Right-To-Know kerfuffle (scroll down).

You may view the YouTube video of the August 21 school board meeting here and the August 14 school board meeting here.

Mast Way K Fait Accompli?

It looks like the board is going to be asked to approve the Mast Way K plan at the recently added school board meeting tomorrow, August 21, 7pm.   You may recall the plan is to send all Kindergarten students to Mast Way, in order to equalize the enrollments at Mast Way and Mohariment.  According to a comment on Oyster River Community's Facebook page, staff has been informed that this is a reality for the upcoming school year, commencing next week.

The idea was first floated by the superintendent at the July 17 school board meeting.  I vaguely recall Principal Harrington being asked to call all K families.

The agenda for tomorrow's meeting has basically one item:

Consideration of Elementary/Middle School Enrollment and Options. 
Since the close of school in June 2013 the elementary schools have had forty-one (41) new student’s register. Mast Way Elementary is up twenty-two (22) students, Moharimet Elementary is up nineteen (19) students, and Oyster River Middle School is up forty-nine (49) students.

There's no mention that there is also expected to be a huge 9th grade class this year, around two hundred compared to usual 160 or so.  If our enrollment projections are wrong, we need to fix them before making decisions on tuitioning.

I have written about the elementary reconfiguration on a number of occasions (April 18, April 25, May 2, May 16, July 26.)  I found one reference to Board Member Turnbull asking the date for implementation be moved up from FY15 (school year starting August 2014) to FY14 (school starts next week).  I apologize to my readers for not realizing and emphasizing that this was coming so soon.

If you want to comment about the change before it's approved, show up at the school board meeting tomorrow (Wednesday) by 7pm.  Be on time -- public comments are at the beginning of the meeting.  (There are also comments at the end, but by then it will be too late.)

If you can't go (or even if you can), you may sent the board a note at orcsdsb@orcsd.org.  Please note that anything you send to that address will be a public document, and a paper copy will be placed in the public folder at the SAU office.



There's lots more to say about tuition based on the August 14 meeting, but I'm going to save that for another post.  Teaser: It looks like the Newmarket superintendent is trying to torpedo the deal. The meeting and fallout have been covered pretty well in the mainstream media (1 2 3).

Mast Way K

I thought I might report on recent events, especially the July 17 board meeting.

Mast Way K

The superintendent is exploring a plan to send all Kindergarten students in the district to Mast Way.  He will report at the next board meeting. The goal is to even out the enrollment numbers at the two elementary schools in the interest of equity.  Dr. Morse seems determined to find a solution that does not involve simply redrawing the dividing line.

Tuition Update

In tuition news, Deerfield extended its deadline to renegotiate with Concord to September 30th, presumably so they can consider their other options, including Oyster River, a while longer (Concord Monitor).  Deerfield appears to be shopping for the best deal, unlike Newmarket, which has an impending building closure to deal with.   The tuition for Deerfield students at Concord was $13,926 for the school year that just ended and will be $14,163 next school year.

Prospective enrollment numbers are somewhat different than previously thought. Barrington will send 83 next year, up from 63 this past year, and eventually up to 125. (Due to the large influx of Barrington freshman, we expect almost 200 ninth graders in the fall, up from 150 this past year.) Upon agreement, Deerfield expects to send 169 students, 90% of their 188 total.  Newmarket expects to send 250.

60 Newmarket students (24%) would be half-day vocational technical students.  ORHS currently has 26 votech students (4%).

Barrington offers their families a choice of high school, so under the current deal there is no guarantee they'll get up to 125.  We're working on a new deal, so this could change.  The 83 isn't really all Barrington -- there are four or five non-Barrington tuition students currently attending that I and others tend to lump in with the Barrington students.

The superintendent talked a bit about offers ranging from a low of $13,200 to our actual cost, "16+".  I find this confusing as the actual cost number includes special education while the low number is probably just for regular education. The deal I would prefer has tuition towns paying our general education cost per student plus 100% of the costs of the special education of the students from that town.  Currently Barrington pays the special education costs for their own students.  An "actual cost" deal that includes special education costs has the taxpayers of Oyster River taking the risk on special education costs, which I think is less desirable.

The most surprising thing to me was the superintendent implied that we wouldn't be seeing our big influx of tuition students (if any) until the fall of 2015 (aka FY16).  I was under the impression the students would be coming in a year, fall of 2014.  Apparently I am just wrong.  Here's an article indicating the Newmarket Fire Chief has ordered the high school be abandoned unless $2 million in repairs are completed by September, 2015.  The Deerfield/Concord tuition agreement started in the 2004-2005 school year and goes for 10 years, so they may be looking for a new deal to commence in fall of 2014.  But there's an automatic renewal clause and a request to terminate has to be made three years in advance, which I don't think happened, so I'm not sure where all that ends up.

Barrington slide showing FY15 tuition negotiations as of last
December.  In Barrington the district pays the cost of the
least expensive option and families make up the difference.

Someone mentioned that Barrington had announced tuition rates on their website.  I didn't find anything except this slide show from last December which was pretty interesting. Here's one slide.  You can find the complete show at the bottom of this page.

Mike M. NECAP report

Mike McClurken has written a report on the recent NECAP results, including from all the potential tuition towns.  It's Mike's usual extensive, detailed work and it had some surprising results.

These are the most recent NECAP scores by grade.  Mike thoughtfully renorms each grade's score as relative to the NH average for that grade, making it possible to fairly compare across grades.

You can't rely too much on just one year's results.  It would be nice to see if this pattern held up over the last five or so years.   As is, the story this chart tells is of Newmarket's teachers being very effective, taking poorly scoring children in third grade and producing students that score about the same as Oyster River in eleventh grade.  Interestingly, both Barrington and Deerfield third grades start out better than Oyster River, but we're beating them handily by grades 7 and 8.  

What you can conclude is that Newmarket had great high school (grade 11) NECAP results this year.  They were highest in New Hampshire in the percentage of Reading+Math "Proficient with Distinction" students, the cream of the crop.

The Newmarket results may not be a fluke, if you believe (as Dr. McClurken does) in the predictive power of the percentage of adults (age 25+) with Bachelor's degrees or higher on academic performance. Newmarket had a remarkable 33% increase in this percentage, going from 33% in 2000 to 44% in 2010.

Oddly, AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) data has yet to appear on the NH DOE site.  Last year by May we had seen preliminary results, appealed them and had our win was reflected in the final results. Nobody seems to have even noticed that AYP is late this year, with not even preliminary results released yet.  I'm personally interested in whether Mast Way will lose its SINI (School In Need of Improvement) status, which it should if the educational disability cohort made AYP in Reading. 

Right To Know Redux

There's yet another Right-to-Know issue being raised by David Taylor.  The issue, according to Mr. Taylor, is an alleged unlawful deliberation by email.  This might at first seem like an obscure and mild violation, but last year a New Hampshire judge explicitly ordered the board not to do it.   The 18 page court ruling had exactly two sentences detailing the punishment to the board for repeatedly violating the RTK law.  One of those sentences mentions email.  Here's the excerpt with the email portion highlighted:

RSA 91-A is the Right-to-Know Law.  Normally there is no real penalty associated with violating RSA 91-A.  The one serious penalty that a judge can impose is an injunction that requires the violator to obey the Right-to-Know Law.  It seems redundant -- of course everyone has to obey every law -- but it's what gives the law teeth. Once so enjoined, violating the RTK law means violating the injunction, which opens up the violator to a contempt of court judgement with a potentially serious punishment, possibly including jail.

I find it hard to believe that anyone's going to be locked up for sending an email in the normal course of school board business.  On the other hand, courts can get pretty indignant when their authority is disrespected (twice!), so I suppose anything's possible. The only reason the judge ordered the injunction in the first place was that this was the second successful Taylor lawsuit. In 2011, a different judge found the board violated the RTK law as Mr. Taylor initially alleged.  There were no real consequences, as that judge explicitly declined to order an injunction.  She did however make the board promise her they'd never ever ever violate the RTK law again. When they did, the second judge was impelled to impose the harshest penalty available to him.

I should point out that no board member serving when the lawsuits were litigated has been reelected in either of the two subsequent elections.  If you're keeping score: one resigned, two declined to seek reelection, two lost reelection and two remain, their 3 year terms up in March, 2014.

Coincidentally, I apparently had something to do with the alleged unlawful email.  At the March 6 board meeting, I misplaced the jacket I was wearing.  On March 13, I had to leave the board meeting early and I stopped in the control room on my way out to ask Ms. Young if she'd seen the jacket.  This was a violation of policy, and for this I apologize to the board. Apparently there was some email generated as a result of my breach, and it is this email that is the potential illegal deliberation.

Sign that appeared March 20. 2013

The school board has plenty of serious decisions to make, and doesn't really need this distraction.  At the start of the meeting the chairman graciously apologized for the matter, and promised more RTK training for the board. At the time I had no idea what she was talking about. Now that I know more, I'm still hoping the matter can be settled quickly and amicably.

But I can see Mr. Taylor's point. He worked really hard, spending his own time and money, going to court twice to get the board to take the RTK law seriously. He won both times. Yet, here they are possibly violating it again, allegedly doing one of the two things they have been specifically enjoined from doing. It's exasperating.

Now I'm sure you're all wondering who wrote the alleged errant email. The board member's name didn't come out at the public meeting, so I'm not going to say who it is here either.

Update 7/30:   I had another chance to watch parts of the school board meeting again and I thought I should make my own position on this matter very clear: I would very much like this RTK issue to go away as soon as possible.  The board has serious business to attend to and this is a distraction.

I read the email in question and it is really only a reminder of existing policy.  I'm kindly referred to as "the individual."  I'm not a lawyer, but it doesn't look like deliberation to me.  (You're not allowed to deliberate over email because it's not public enough.) Apparently there are two lawyers' opinions that agree the email is not a violation.

I don't know why David wants to press ahead.  Certainly wandering into the video booth against policy is on a different level than a select subset scheming to surreptitiously swap superintendents. There's no reason to believe anyone was trying evade disclosure here. I don't like involving the courts unless there's something really egregious going on.  Especially now, when it's so serious because of the injunction.  Who's ever going to want to serve if they're worried about going to jail for sending email?  I have found that election day offers sufficient opportunity for redress.

I knew it was against policy when I went into the booth. I wanted my jacket and I was willing to face the consequences, which I imagined would be a gentle scolding from Chairman Barth.  I enjoy her company so much that this would hardly be any punishment at all.  But I never dreamed it would be another court case.  I am so sorry.

I want to apologize to Chairman Barth for precipitating this mess.  I feel partially responsible for getting Maria to serve, and I never want to hurt her or even cause her any extra work.  Because of the blog it happens sometimes, and I always feel terrible about it.  I would deeply regret it if there were any actual legal consequences to the chairman or any board member as a result of my action.

David, I hope we can disagree about this matter and remain friends. I think everyone involved should sit down together and "make nice" as my grandma would say.  I'm hopeful there's a way to resolve this amicably and unite the community in the process.  Then maybe we can start thinking about how to get this injunction lifted.

Tuition Demographics from Mike M.

School's out.  Happy summer, everybody!


School Board Meeting, June 19

Before I get into demographics, I should mention the recent school board meeting.  FORE did a nice roundup.

As expected, the board voted 5-2 to accept the football recommendation, meaning no football for now.  Members Lane and Turnbull voted against the recommendation.  As a consolation prize, the board voted to continue the football committee, so this will come up again.  It appears reality has set in, with most people realizing that full or near-full outside funding is not a real possibility for the long term, so the district would be on the hook for a large part of the bill.   We still have the problem of insufficient field space, with no room for football or any additional sports needed to address Title IX concerns.

The surprising discussion was about Title IX.  I learned the district was currently involved in a Title IX lawsuit and that the main issue was less participation in girls' sports.  Adding football would exacerbate the problem, increasing sports participation by perhaps 60 boys.   Nonetheless, member Lane seemed to be advocating a course that would open up the district to more legal trouble.  She said,

"While Title IX is gravely important, if it is fixed by either eliminating a sport that has 5 or 6 kids playing versus 60 according to what [the student representative] presented to us [...] that to me is the issue. [...] We can have all these discussions about Title IX but I think it's just a way of dodging the question."

A "fix" that adds 54 boys is no fix at all, as we all learned at the meeting.  Board members need to take issues of legality seriously, as they found out the hard way a couple of years ago.


The superintendent reported on two meetings with parents about All Day Kindergarten.  While there is strong support for the concept, there was broad agreement that the tuition was too high, especially because as proposed K won't go until 5:30pm.  A strong contingent thought the district should not be charging at all.

I made the point that it wasn't right to take money from district taxpayers to fund a program that takes business away from local daycares offering K.  The superintendent assured me the local daycare businesses are in favor of free district full day K, which apparently frees up their slots for preschoolers who pay more.  I should also mention that at the previous meeting the wording of the All Day K motion was retroactively changed so as only to authorize the superintendent to "explore" full day K.

Member Lane offered her own analysis of the economics of full day K:

"... and if we're trying to align ourselves so we can offer full day Kindergarden at no cost then we have to look at the nuts and bolts of why we have to charge for it: because we have a much more expensive staff than other districts do."

I haven't crunched the numbers, but it seems likely to me that if providing full day K costs more in Oyster River it's mostly due to our class sizes.   I think our policy says up to 19 for K, but lately I don't think we've been exceeding 16.  The state allows 25.


Tuition Demographics

Mike McClurken thought my tuition-related demographics tables were so terrible that he was moved to make his own, which he kindly sent me.  Dr. McClurken has done his usual incredibly detailed and thorough job, which I am honored to present here.   If you haven't already, please check out Mike's website, including the latest edition of The ORCSD By The Numbers, which is essential reading for all those interested in our district's performance and finances.  I want to thank to Mike McClurken for another great contribution to the district.

Here's the link to the Google spreadsheet, which actually works much better than the embedded spreadsheet here:



Again, I don't think the embedded spreadsheet above works very well, so if you're going to spend any time looking at the numbers you're probably better off clicking here and then exploring the tabs at the top.

I largely left alone what Mike sent me except for some mangling I had to perform to convert to Google.  To point out what stood out me when I went through it, I'll include a few charts here in addition to all the ones Mike supplied.  What follows here is my own opinion, and not necessarily Mike McClurken's or anyone else's.

I was struck by the special education numbers:

The current tuition agreement has Barrington paying the full costs of special education services for Barrington students at Oyster River. When I look at these numbers I have to think that this was certainly the right way to go.  I would want something similar with Deerfield.

With Newmarket, the talk is more about a deal where they pay Oyster River's cost per student as tuition.  That price would include special education.   In other words, the taxpayers of Oyster River would be taking the risk, essentially making a bet on the cost of special education for Newmarket kids. We make money if the special education cost per Newmarket student comes in less than that per local student.  We lose money if they cost more per.  

I would prefer a tuition deal where Newmarket pays our full cost for general education and pays for the special education of their own students.  But if us taking on the risk is what it takes to get them to pay the full cost per student, I'd be hesitant but probably OK with it.  From the chart it looks like that bet, which would almost certainly be a big loser for us with Barrington and Deerfield, is 50/50 with Newmarket.  The possibility exists that Newmarket has a higher bar for special education than we do, which might lead to our taxpayers having to pay for the special education of tuition students given IEPs upon beginning ORHS.

I combined the population numbers into a single chart, then I zoomed in to ages 0-20 to see if I could get some insights into enrollment trends.

Nothing too deep to say here.  You can see the kids leaving for college from Barrington and Deerfield and moving in to ORCSD and Newmarket.  They seem to hang around Newmarket longer.  Perhaps some of these are young families, who even now are rearing future tuition students.

The baby boom peak seems to be getting relatively younger, around 50 here, which is pretty much the tail end of the actual boom (born 1960).  This is probably the effect of the younger folks dying less often.

Zoomed in, we can focus on enrollment.  An increasing line, like ORCSD here, is predictive of a decline in enrollment, as there are fewer younger kids to replace older kids.   Newmarket has more younger kids than older, so they should see a rising enrollment.  Combining with them should somewhat alleviate the total decline.  The Barrington and Deerfield lines look pretty flat to me so combining with them wouldn't have the same effect.  I hope someone is looking hard at the actual enrollment forecasts of the towns rather than just guessing from the census.

I've shown charts I'd consider favorable to the Newmarket option, so here are some favoring Deerfield:

Deerfield looks like it fits into the cooperative more comfortably than Barrington or Newmarket.  From this perspective Deerfield looks a lot like Lee, falling between Madbury and Durham in incomes as I've tried to indicate with the thin lines.

Why is mean (average) family income so much larger than median (middle) family income in most of the towns?  That's the telltale sign of high-income folks among us.  For example, if a family that makes $5 million a year moved into Madbury it would raise the town's mean income over $10,000 ($5,000,000/476 families) while raising the median income hardly at all.

The median is a robust statistic because it doesn't change much when an outlier is added to the data.   I feel better just thinking about the rich as outliers.


The poverty data I posted last time was especially misleading, due to the presence of UNH students.  Dr. McClurken uses a better data set which counts the fraction of families living below the poverty line.   Using families eliminates most but not all UNH students.

Dr. McClurken notes almost all of the Durham families in poverty are families of graduate students living in Forest Park.  If you could remove those families from the data, it's likely the Durham rate would be the same as or less than that of Lee and Madbury, and thus so would the rate for the district.

Of course the children of grad students need to be educated too.   As a former grad student, I'm glad I never had to support a family on my stipend of $1,000 per month.   But these children are presumably less likely to suffer the negative educational correlates of a low-income family, so it makes some sense to ask what the data would look like without the poor graduate student families.


The Free and Reduced-price Meals data should be largely unaffected by UNH students, and paint a similar picture:

That's plenty to think about for now.   Your reward for reading this far is this moment of nostalgia from the election of March 2011, a few months before I started paying attention of the goings-on in the district.

Football is "Premature"

The agenda for Wednesday's meeting is up and it includes the football committee report.   The committee is chaired by Principal Allen and Athletic Director Corey and includes Glen Miller, the ORYA representative who made the original proposal.

The recommendation from the committee chairs says "to start a high school football program is premature at this time."   It's likely that the board will go along with this recommendation and not vote to adopt football at Oyster River High School.

As you can see from the one slide I reproduced here, the issues remain the funding, the awful memorandum of understanding, the lack of available facilities and Title IX.  There was also a discrepancy in the number of students likely to participate, with the three surveys yielding 33, 16 and 60 respectively.

I don't want to write too much on this before the board meeting this Wednesday.  See you there.

Fear and Loathing at the Tuition Forum

Last Thursday, Superintendent Morse held a forum on the tuition issue.  No one was injured.

Due to the importance of the issue to the entire community, ORCSD spent around $600 mailing invitations to every homeowner in the district. That's on top of the $3,500 we spent on the tuition survey.  Only about 100 people attended the forum, including 6 board members.

The survey, again presented by Dr. Andy Smith, showed 2/3 of the district in favor of tuitioning, but I'd estimate the audience was more like 2/3 against.  The meeting was recorded, so catch it on DCAT (cable channel 22) or just click on the play button above, at ORCSDVideo or Vimeo.

I've already gone on and on about tuitioning (see 1 2 3 4 ...) and I'm not going to repeat any of that here.  Instead, let's start with things I learned at the forum:

• We vote.  As a tuition deal is expected to be a multi-year contract, it must be approved by the voters.  Dr. Morse didn't say, but I'll guess that it will be a warrant article on the ballot in March 2014.  The board seems to be trying to make their choice by this November.
• The choice may be easy.  Newmarket has reportedly expressed a willingness to pay the full Oyster River cost per pupil for tuition.  That's probably a couple thousand more per student in tuition than we'd get from the other towns.  I want those kids. This is great news for the taxpayers of Oyster River. 
• Deerfield deal isn't exclusive.   If we accept the bulk of Deerfield students, there would still be 5-10% of Deerfield public high school students who would not attend Oyster River.
• Barrington would be grandfathered.  In the event the district went with a non-Barrington option, current Barrington students would be allowed to finish.  81 Barrington kids are expected next year, up from 63 currently.  How we would all fit was left unspecified.
• 30% for taxpayers.  The economic details of tuitioning were left pretty vague, though "15-20 staff" are needed for the 290 students.  The superintendent dangled new programs (like free all day K) as possible uses for tuition revenue, but said he'd return at least 30% of tuition to the taxpayers.  (Special education tuition appears to be included in the calculation.)
• The false "we're subsidizing" lives on.  One of the more common complaints from the audience is ORCSD taxpayers are subsidizing the other town when we charge them tuition lower than our cost per pupil.  I'll say it again: the tuition we get from a new student is lots more than it costs to add that student.  The difference lowers district taxes and enhances programming.  It's obviously not a subsidy if it saves the taxpayers money.  The most you can say is it's unfair, and even that goes away if another town actually pays our cost per pupil (see above).
• Rumors are flying.  Apparently Barrington's building a high school and the Newmarket deal will never close, according to people willing to pass on rumors from the podium.

To me the ugliest parts of the meeting were the various insinuations from people at the podium that those people in those other towns aren't like us and their kids will wreck our school. Most of the speakers were not really presenting facts, but simply expressing their fears.  They're right to question the demographics and experience of the students in the other towns.  I try to get them some answers below.

Teacher Lou Mroz is fiercely protective
of ORHS and is vehemently against
tuitioning more students.
Click to watch

Mike McClurken had some.  He reported Newmarket ranked 12th and Oyster River 10th in the recent high school math NECAPs.  (Barrington and Deerfield don't have high schools so their high school NECAPs are not reported separately.)   

Lou Mroz, a long time ORHS teacher and district resident, made the most well-informed, passionate and credible case against tuitioning.  "Oyster River is special," he said and he counted the ways: safe, no fights, rare bullying, very accepting.  Mr. Mroz respectfully disagreed with the superintendent, saying in his and his colleagues' experience "a higher percentage" of Barrington students at ORHS "experience social and academic issues."   He claims "90% plus" of his students are against tuitioning students in.  He foresees a decline in property values if we do.  He actually said, "Raise my taxes."   You have to give him credit for putting his money where his mouth is.

I don't know if there is anything to these fears.   It's not like our neighboring towns are Chicago.  I want to believe those kids in the other towns are mostly good and that our staff is competent to handle the few bad apples in a way that preserves the great ORHS culture.

I put together some facts from city-data.com.  I'm not sure how helpful they are.  It seems the presence of UNH students in the data makes it hard to interpret.

I'm guessing most of the 41.5% of people in Durham living under the poverty line are UNH students.  A good chunk of the 11.4% in poverty in Newmarket are probably UNH students as well (note the low median age).  I didn't find 2012 NECAP rankings posted yet on the DOE site so I used School Digger rankings for middle schools (and I put Oyster River's rank under "Durham").

The second sheet (MSnecap8yrs) shows the full 8 year history for the middle school NECAP ranks in the towns.  What I call Middle School NECAPs is what School Digger computes from the 7th and 8th grade NECAP scores.  The 8 year averages turn out to be pretty close to the most recent year's outcomes, perhaps excepting Deerfield, whose recent rank is 50 but whose average rank is 60.

Here's all the demographic and test score info you can pull out of School Digger.  It includes free/reduced lunch percentages, which someone at the podium asked about.  The chart is slightly confusing because Deerfield doesn't really have a middle school -- it has a PK-8 school.  In the comparison, green is good, orange bad.

Click to enlarge

Here's a recent Concord Monitor article on high schools, declining enrollments and tuitioning.

My Doubts

At this point I'm still in favor of tuitioning and leaning toward Newmarket, especially if they are indeed willing to pay our cost per pupil.  However, thinking about the forum did raise some doubts in my mind:

LRPC Dec 2012 Enrollment Projections.
Anyone else notice some rows don't add up?
(Probably due to fractional kids, rounded for the table.)

First of all, while district enrollment is projected to decline pretty steadily, high school enrollment is forecasted to stay pretty constant.  In the status quo scenario (Barrington students only) high school enrollment is not projected to dip below its current level for eight years.  If things are fine now and there's no problem for a decade, why change?


I graphed the enrollment projections in a way that makes it easier to see that high school enrollment stays pretty steady for eight years (and actually grows for a while).  You can see the currently declining elementary enrollment work its way into the middle school starting FY17 and finally get to the high school at FY21.  I included the total enrollment on the same graph by using the axis on the right.  I added two lines not in the table above -- the red is the high school local district projection (no tuition students included) and the yellow is the implied projection of Barrington tuition student enrollment.  The yellow line wiggles a fair amount, which leads me to believe the LRPC must have done some Barrington modelling as well.


I wondered why this effect wasn't more apparent in the LRPC's report.  Their graph used a stacked area chart with high school on top, obscuring it's flatness.  I made one with high school on the bottom that's clearer.

My second doubt comes from the demographic and test score charts above.  There appears to be some validity to concerns about the Newmarket option being worse than the Deerfield option.   Newmarket's low middle school rank puts it on par with Barrington.  But the way choice works in Barrington means we tend to get better than average Barrington students.  We'd be taking all the Newmarket students.  [There's an option that's not been discussed publicly to my knowledge where we try to persuade Barrington to send us most their high school kids (the devil you know) but there's no particular reason to believe that that will go any better than taking all the Newmarket kids.]

Third, I'm not that happy with the budget as presented, vague as it is.  On the surface it seems pretty close to what I've been talking about: 15-20 staff for 290 tuition students.  The problem is that this staffing up is not really for 290 students, but only for about 210 students.  We shouldn't count the 81 or so Barrington kids that will already be here next year for which we weren't planning on hiring much in the way of staff (one or two .4 positions if I recall).   The two big plans end up with around 290 tuition students year after next, an increase of 209 from next year.  20 staff for 209 students seems like a lot. I will try to clarify this point and get back to you all.

Fourth, it's a bit more complicated if we go with Newmarket because of the plan to grandfather Barrington students.  We currently have 63 Barrington kids, and expect to have 81 next year.  I don't know the details, so I'll just guess.  11 Barrington kids will graduate next week, leaving 66, 22 per grade. That means we're getting 35 new Barrington kids next year [81-(63-15)] and most of them are probably freshman, say 26, with say 3 more in each of the older grades. So when the 290 Newmarket students show up and we stop accepting Barrington kids, we'll still have from Barrington 26 sophomores, 25 juniors and 25 seniors, 76 in total.  Add in the 600 district kids, that's 600+290+76=966, 51 more students than the 915 we can comfortably fit.  Bye bye, Barrington sophomores and juniors?



That about wraps it up for now.   The latest ORTV News has a great report on tuition students.  I saw on "The Places We'll Go" that two ORHS seniors are starting MIT next fall -- pretty great for a class of 160.  There's a school board meeting this Wednesday, June 5 that doesn't seem that exciting.  Football isn't mentioned so it will probably be presented on June 19.