She conveniently cites Portola Valley at a percentage of 77% which would conveniently seem to drive her overall average down. Or maybe she cites Portola Valley as one of the “Joneses” references where she wants us to be the “Smiths.” A civic leader aspiring to be average – I love it. Back to Portola Valley, had Caroline really looked at the numbers she would have seen that the reason Portola Valley has a lower than average salary/comp percentage is because they have had DECLINING enrollment (-11% from 2011-2014, ours was up by 185 kids over this time by the way) and DECLINING (laying off?, letting go?, I don’t know) teachers and staff over this time by -21%! All of this information is on EdData www.ed-data.org.
So they lost or had to let go -21% of their teachers so one would easily expect the cost of their salary and benefits to go down, right? I mean, less people = less salary, right? WRONG. Portola Valley is a great example of what school boards across the state have been screaming about the last five years and will for the next five and I am not sure she even knew this when using Portola Valley as an example. So even while Portola Valley’s teacher headcount was dropping -21%, and the district’s salary obligations did along with it, their state required benefit obligations went UP! From 17.9% of budget in 2010 to 19.7% in 2014 just like all the rest of ours have and I am willing to bet they are probably close to the 22% state required obligation our district has today. Again, all this info is on EdData.
Oh, but 77% of district obligations in Portola Valley are going to teachers, that’s still less than our 83% in 2014, so Portola Valley is a good example of a district managing their budget better than we are, right? Not exactly. 9% of their budget goes to administration and 5% goes to “other.” In MPCSD, only 7% of our budget goes to administration and only 1% to “other.” Portola Valley spends 6% more of their budget on administration and “other” than we do. I don’t know about you, but yeah I’d rather that 6% be going to the teachers our kids love than administration and other costs.
Even if you think Portola Valley has it on easy street because they have less students and less teachers, they have been passing parcel taxes since 1985. Their property tax revenue per student is one of the highest in the state at $16,440. Ours is $8,905 and this was in 2014 when we had about 100 less students.
In regards to Caroline’s reference to the Fremont Unified High School District, she says, “This is not a novel compensation plan. The Fremont Union High School District uses this plan. It has led to employee-board harmony there. The two no longer fight over pay increases when revenues inevitably rise and fall during the economic cycle. Negotiations are now much faster and more amicable with a focus on curriculum and other areas to better promote student learning.” I could not find an agreement like this anywhere including on the teacher’s association webpage, or the school district webpage, or in news articles, or the California Teacher’s Association webpage or in their most recent contract agreements. I even went to the Santa Clara County Office of Education’s latest teacher job fair postings because if such a harmonious agreement were put in place you would think that would be highlighted there as a benefit in recruiting teachers? Nope, nothing listed there either - Web Link Gosh, it would have saved me a lot of time if she just cited these references. Even if there was one, I cannot find anything that points to her 82% average. In fact, in 2014 Fremont’s salary and benefit expenditures were 86% of their budget and over the next three years according to their board’s latest financial planning assumptions this is projected to grow to 93%. You can see that here, page 37 Web Link
She further cites that this agreement we cannot find has somehow fostered a happy place between the teachers’ union and the district, but in fact what happened was in 2013 the teachers union and the district spent 14 months in negotiations, the teachers had not received a raise since 2007, since 2009 teachers were FORCED to take 12 UNPAID furlough days, and the teachers picketed and nearly went on strike. Negotiations were declared an impasse and it went to the state - Web Link Doesn’t sound too harmonious to me. Fremont’s current salary percentage rate of expenditures is 83%. One reason it is actually lower is in 2014 after this disaster of negotiations the average teacher experience went from 13 years down to 11 (again on EdData). Why? Because the good and experienced teachers left. Forced to replace some of them, the district had to go out and hire new, less experienced teachers, whom cost less, and which would naturally drive salary expenditures down.
Back to her plan of cutting teacher salaries and benefits from 89% of the budget to 82% (actually 81%), remember 22% of this is essentially out of the district’s control because it is required by the state for pensions and benefits and is not a part of a teacher’s take home pay. So the only thing this plan can control is salaries. For 2016, total salaries and benefits = $40,354,369 Web Link By cutting this -8%, Caroline is cutting -$3,228,349.00, -$2,518,112.00 of which will come out of teachers’ take home paychecks.
So where would those -8% cuts or -$3,228,349.00 in teacher salary cuts go? Well, under Caroline’s plan those are going to go back to “rebuilding our reserves.” We already have reserves. Why we do that? Board policy dictates the district keeping 20% of our annual budget in reserves for recessions, which the district already has or did she not know this? So I am not sure why she would want to take -$3,228,349+ of taxpayer dollars meant to go to teachers and add that to a reserve fund kept at the county earning about 0% interest, which is essentially what she is suggesting. Not sure that would go over too well with teachers, or taxpayers for that matter, when her plan calls for taking your property and parcel taxes and instead of it going to the schools goes to a county savings account earning about 0% interest. Did her supporters claiming we pay too much in parcel taxes miss this part? So, yes, your representative Caroline wants to take your tax dollars and put them in county government savings. The state has already looked at those districts being fiscally responsible and demanded that they spend those reserves down. Who’s to say the state doesn’t look at Caroline’s reserve plan and decide to cut state funding to MPCSD even further?
Her plan claims this is a way to balance the district’s long term budget; however, I fail to see where it is anything more than taking 8% of revenues over here and putting that 8% of revenues over there. So where is the savings there? Taking money away from teachers and putting it into reserves is not balancing the budget, it’s hoarding.
To review, she thinks that somehow she can accomplish this through a negotiating process with the teachers; after all, we did see how well this went in her Fremont example. So she is going to sit down and tell our teachers and community we are going to take the 8% we cut from teachers and put it in reserves. Huh? What teachers’ union would ever want to agree to that?
Let’s say your employer approaches you and tries to sell you on this and says, “Hey you are doing a great job but you know you already get a good salary and good benefits so I can’t give you a raise next year and in fact over the next five years I am going to have to cut your pay another -8% of our total budget and it’s going to be for life. But wait, I am going to help you out, I am going to take -1% of that and put it in my safety deposit box just in case there are “lean times” because I know you’re probably not good at managing that yourself so I will manage it for you. See how nice I am? Oh, and there is a shortage of you so don’t leave. See? Isn’t that good?” Not only who would stay, but who would come? If a teacher leaves, do they get that 1% back?
In the third part of our three part series, we’ll examine how Caroline’s position paper looks five years out, overestimates the benefits of property tax growth, failed to address enrollment growth, and her ideas on a parcel tax. Yes! She actually recommends a parcel tax! Stay tuned…
