At the last Robbinsdale Area Schools (RAS) Board meeting (6/20), its Financial Advisory Council (FAC) made its Annual Presentation. The last "Maintain Independence" point on the final "Suggested Next Steps" slide caught the eye of my fellow education traveler Give2Attain. "RAS FAC Maintains Independence? he asks. So do I.
[The] Board seems to only pick members that are unlikely to rock their boat... By this, I mean that I know some qualified boat rockers who are repeatedly turned down. And I really don't see any communication from the FAC to to the Citizens, so they don't seem to be helping us understand how or what the District spends on. This is probably important considering the school closures, school renovations, potential sales, potential Magnets, Funding challenges, etc. And almost half the attendees are Board Members and Administrators, so how can they be in [any way] "independent"?
Having been part of the Strategic Planning process and the subsequent development of the FAC charter, it was a struggle to create any independence at all. In his first proposal, the former Superintendent had overloaded it with District personnel including himself, designating one the unelected ex officio chair. The citizen appointees would have had no power to elect the chair or set the agenda. They could have been outvoted on any resolution by the Administration, which is to say, the Superindendent. We were successful in changing all that in the final charter adopted.
I note in this presentation that the current Superintendent is now listed as an FAC member, in violation of the published FAC By Laws. We were especially careful to preclude this to avoid unneeded political direction and yes, maintain independence.
I was not at the meeting but have reviewed the presentation while listening to the audio podcast. Personally, I think there was a bit of revisionist history and a bit too much self-congratulation. Yes, they worked hard, meeting 11 times this past academic year, not the minimum 4. Yes, they no doubt delivered valuable input to the Administration and Board. But while they generally met the letter of their charge, I think they were less successful fulfilling the spirit that flowed from the original Stratetic Planning process. In particular, to Give2Attain's point, the "consumer-oriented financial presentations" have yet to appear, their new fact sheet notwithstanding. Cutting the annual budget to 44 pages is laudable, but it's still inside baseball, what the District needs. We "consumers" on the outside are still trying to understand where the hundreds of thousands of dollars in each classroom are going. FAC Chair Mark Noordsy underscored this when he defined "transparency" in the presentation.
"When I say 'transparency' what does that really mean? It means that there really isn't anybody between us and the information. If we couldn't find it on the web site, we would ask a staff person, we'd ask the Superintendent, or we'd ask the Board Treasurer. We would get the information we wanted. Nobody was hiding anything. Nobody was trying to send us down a bad path. It was clearly let's find the best decision and let's get the best information available." [Edited for clarity.]
This is fine as far as it goes. But again, we are spending over $ 10,000 (General Fund) per student. In a class of 25, that's at least $ 250,000. Salaries and benefits are about 80 percent of the General Fund, so that means payroll of $ 200,000. If as one source says that a typical teacher costs $ 75,000 including benefits, that leaves $ 125,000, which seems incredible from a face time point of view, and from a private sector point of view. Who and where are all these people my child seldom or never sees? What do they do in support of my child or the teacher? "Consumer-oriented" transparency would address this.
Another aspect of transparency is the ever increasing co-mingling of welfare into the education budget as required by law. This takes many forms, appearing as special revenue and grants, resulting in the delivery of non-education related services, from breakfast to early childhood programs. If this could be more transparent to us, we could talk to our Legislators more effectively about stopping the continuing erosion of actual education funding.
Answering these questions may be uncomfortable for some, which is why the FAC must maintain, dare I say, regain its independence to truly serve the District 281 community.
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