[I apologize for putting this long blog post in unedited but I’ve got a lot of work to do. I’m not paid $155,000 to superintend the Duluth Schools and I don’t have a half dozen subordinates, including a PR person, to air brush my every pronouncement. I’ll probably blanch when I finally read the following stream of conscious and see how many putzy things I’ve written but if you read this later I’ll will have come back and dressed it up a bit.]
I missed this letter to the editor this morning until a friend emailed it to me:
While I applaud the education and the challenges being experienced by the 25 to 30 students in the Duluth East Daredevils robotics team, I was appalled to read the school district would allow a club to be $15,000 in the hole with plans for the public to bail them out with donations (“Robotics team needs sponsors,” Jan. 9).
If the public doesnÂ’t, will each of the studentsÂ’ parents pay up to $500 each for their children to participate? Or will the school districtÂ’s general fund be on the hook for the shortage?
This seems another fine example of fiscal irresponsibility. Great lesson to teach our students. But then, this is the Duluth school district, isnÂ’t it?
Bobbi Hoyt
Duluth
$15,000 isn’t that big a deal in the District’s $99 million general fund but reading this hit a couple nerves.
Simply writing that introductory sentence hit another one. A $99 million general fund? Ever since I was on the Board we’ve had a $100 million general fund or more. I think a couple years ago it was up to $120 million which was a bit of a nuisance for my limited powers of calculation. Its so much easier to make simple mental calculations with any number that is based on a factor of 10 like $100 million. So as the general fund kept increasing despite modest enrollment declines I kept having to alter my calculations for various costs when I wrote blog posts. When I read a couple weeks ago that the fund was under a hundred million it was a bit of a shock. I don’t think the news story I got this figure from drew the obvious conclusion that the shrinkage was due to lost enrollment. I don’t think it even mentioned that the was down. So what other nerves did the letter touch?
Well, there has been a lot of online commentary about what the District can and can not do with the general fund. I once often made the point of telling people that you could not mix the general fund (operating money) with capital funds (building and maintenance money) I no longer think there is much of a blood brain barrier between these funds.
In the last few years the District has had tons of Red Plan money flow through its fingers. When Let Duluth Vote folks suggested that with state permission we might be able to limit our building and funnel some of its funding back to the classroom Red Plan fans tut tutted and said “no can do.” And yet a year ago the Board “borrowed” five million from operating expenses (the classrooms) to help pay for the Red Plan. That was just the opposite of the Let Duluth Vote alternative.
If there is such a limitation on how money is transferred it could only be enforced by the state. I learned twenty years ago that the state has so few auditors that much mischief can take place in local government if hanky panky takes place. The last audit by the state of the Duluth School District took place the year after I was first seated. That was fifteen years ago. Besides the limited audit capability of the state there would be the natural reluctance of the Pawlenty Administration to learn that after approving a Red Plan of such magnitude it turned out to be used as a slush fund for God knows what. It wouldn’t look good for the Governor’s Presidential run.
If state funded audits were scarce two decades ago they will be all the more rare with the state having to find $7 billion to plug its current budget shortfall.
Another nerve raw nerve ending this story rubs has to do with the Red Plan’s morphing of the plan through additions. I’ve complained in the past that the original Red Plan didn’t have the pricey stadium for the new East High. This is just one of the additions being made to the Plan. A recent writer to the DNT wrote that the plans for a new swimming pool was expanded (most likely to make it a top notch athletic competition facility). Time and time again I’ve heard of the School Board OKing more and more goodies. The Board was painting itself into a corner.
Long before I was on the Board I learned about “change orders.” These are simple changes in architectural plans after construction has begun. Because they were not part of the original bidding the contractors are not obligated to build them under the original budget cost constraints. They are infamous for being a way for contractors to ratchet up their returns on a project. As the school board allows more and more goodies to be added to the cost of the Red Plan contractors have new ways of charging the District more. And yet savings could have been used to lower the Red Plan’s costs. Much has been made by Red Plan supporters of savings from lower than expected bond rates or speedy construction. But every time we “saved” money the Dixon School Board added more goodies to the Red Plan.
I recall one Board meeting a couple years ago where speakers (before the Era of shutting off the microphone) complained about the extravagance of the Red Plan.To their complaints Dr. Dixon solemnly said that the Red Plan was far from a “Cadillac” plan. It was closer to the bare necessities. Maybe the constant additions to the Red Plan have been a determined effort to turn a plain into that Cadillac in a desperate bid to lure lost students back to an Emerald City.
Finally, I’ve also read many complaints that the Trib can’t seem to make the connection between our enrollment losses and the Red Plan. That connection is hard to miss. The district has strained to outflank critics time and time again by speeding up various projects shifting whole student bodies to different schools. Our staff has been like the little dutch boy with ten fingers and a very big leaky dike. The resulting disorder has even made it to the pages of the Trib although I think the most recent racial scuffle at East High failed to make the paper.
After agreeing to pay JCI 18% of the Red Plan’s cost (while publicly denying this) you might have expected that these sort of logistics to have been anticipated and prepared for. Sadly, this expectation was beyond the ability of the School District to address.
