I will disagree on two points.
First, I don't know if $4 million is required to provide level services. We do not have access to the detail budget and are left with little more than blind hope that the budget is appropriate. It may be, but since the full budget isn't provided, who can tell.
Second, I don't think a 5 year operating plan is much good. That long a window typically assumes an economic environment similar to the environment that exists when the plan is made. Over a 5 year cycle, that is rarely the case. The capital plan is a prime example - it was created when the newspapers were talking about Dow Jones Averages of 39,000, NASDAQ was above 5,000 and there were more paper millionaires than actual ones. Following an economic plan that was built in that environment doesn't make much sense today, as the climate has changed so much.
If you are correct in that the $1.5 million in new salaries and benefits is in one line, then the school budget increase is more than 13% originally requested, because the majority of those salaries under contract go to the teachers and school staff.
The comment on another one of your posts, you said you didn't follow the logic of how to arrive at the 6% budget increase. Assuming level services, the cost of providing those services should increase roughly by the increase in the student population multiplied by a factor for inflation. This assumes level service, not an increase in service requirement as implied by your comment. So in Franklin's case, a reasonable proxy for the budget increase would be:
Student population factor: 101.4% (assumes student population grows by 1.4%)
Multiplied by an inflation factor of 1.04 (assuming 4% inflation).
This would imply that a reasonable proxy for the increase in the budget should be 5.5%. The school, factoring in the separate line for wage increases under contract, is asking for something on the order of 3x this amount. That seems way out of line.
My response:
To your first point, the details of the budget can be found here --> FY08 school budget (PDF). My review of this, including observation of the detailed discussions during the School Committee meetings, the Finance Committee meetings, and ultimately the Town Council discussions on the school budget has left me with a comfort level that yes, the $6 million requested. $6 more than the FY 07 budget, is justifiable. The Town Council decision was to fund $2 million of this request due to the Special Education mandates that are out of the School Dept (and hence Franklin's control) and to fund another $2.1 million via the override (600,000 of the override would go to the town side of the budget to restore Library and other department cuts from the $2.7 million override total).
If after review of these details, you still have questions, then I would suggest that phone calls or emails to the Superintendent or members of the School Committee would provide some answers.
On your second point, the 5 year plan I refer to is a rolling plan updated every year based upon what is known and provides additional insights to the future. The 5 year plan for the capital budget I referred to was presented during the Finance Committee meeting on April 30th. It was just updated by each department this year with in most cases an outlook longer than 5 years for the individual departments.
I believe such a plan should be prepared and would indeed provide some value with regular updates. As a parent with two daughters in college, the family did some planning to prepare for this event. It was not going to be a surprise to us to be paying double tuitions. We could calculate several years in advance to know what what coming. No, the crystal ball couldn't tell us where each would end up but we knew that there was going to be an overlap of two years where both were going to be faced with tuition bills.
I believe similar fiscal prudence should be exhibited by our elected Town Council. They have been telling us this override is not a surprise. That they have known for several years this override was coming. Okay, I'll accept that. I'll also look for an estimate of what it will take to get Franklin into a self-sustaining budget. What will it take to get us to a level of income to support our continued growth? How much will next years override be? How many years will there need to be an override? Or are there other options to consider as sources of revenue?
Let's pass this one. And then focus the discussion on the future.
Note: on our tuition bills, my wife and I have worked out the arrangement with our daughters to split the tuition. We pay half, they pay half. Any scholarship or grant money comes off their portion. This helps to reinforce the need to maintain good grades which in turn maintains their eligability for the scholarships, grants, etc. They both were Franklin High School honor students and are doing very well in their respective colleges.
No comments:
Post a Comment