Fuzzy Math

If the public hearings Methacton School District held on Feb. 23 and 25 regarding the proposed closure of Audubon Elementary illustrated anything, it was that district elementary parents have been busily completing lots of homework in response to the announcement.

 

IIn addition to math (working out their own calculations for enrollment and capacity projections, as well as reviewing the budget and the costs of expected impacts) and research homework (reviewing state legislation and regulations governing PSERS, sale of school properties and other topics), the parents also prepared a spelling lesson for the school board members: “WTR”, or Why The Rush?

 

In all, over the two evenings the hearing took place, more than 100 speakers offered their concerns regarding the potential impact on their kids and the district as a whole, should one or more schools close. Parents and educators offered a variety of comments under oath. Testimony included concerns regarding class size, disputes about the enrollment and capacity projections offered by PEL (with some parents providing their own projections which they deemed more accurate), potential property value impacts, what redistricting would look like, requests for the school board members to visit an elementary, whether Audubon Elementary is under agreement of sale, desire for more community involvement and input, and the rushed timeline for action. Parents also disputed the estimated costs, and/or need for, school facility repairs and upgrades. 

Given the current angst over the misrepresentations that led to the construction of Skyview, I was somewhat surprised to see at least three of the “Skyview” former school board members present in the audience at the Monday portion of the hearings – Marijane Barbone, Jim Van Horn, and Dan Sattler. All three served as president of the school board during their respective tenures.  

Ms. Barbone  offered testimony and owned her decision to build and fund Skyview – she was a school board member from 2002 to 2011.  She cited her past experience and lectured the current school board members to slow down, stating “With all the things that have to be done I don’t know how this could be done by the fall”.  

Despite parents’ demonstrated aptitude for mathematics, perhaps they are looking at the wrong set of numbers. The issue is more complex than just enrollment and capacity projections.  

As of the 2014-2015 school year, it costs us $19,900 to educate each child in the school district. A big part of that mix is teacher salaries and pensions, facilities/operating expenses, and other state or federally mandated spends.

 

As the administration explained to the Board in 2014, one of the largest drivers of increased budget costs is the state-mandated PSERs. With pension costs rising, the Board expects increases in mandatory contributions to be required by the Commonwealth. Assuming we can keep costs flat next year and accounting for the mandated increases in salaries, steps and PSERs, according to Methacton's five-year projections, if all stays the same (as if!) five years from now we will be looking at a $12 million deficit. To be able to tax enough to cover that it would have to go out for a referendum vote by District taxpayers.

By state law (Act 1, the Pennsylvania Taxpayer Relief Act of 2006), anything over the annual index set by the Commonwealth (currently set at  1.9%) must go to the voters for referendum unless exceptions are sought and approved for one-off, unusual expenses that are unforeseen or outside the District’s control. However, there is no exception for mandated PSERS payments. If the School board does nothing now to try to trim costs substantially, we will have to do something drastic. 

The last time a referendum vote occurred was in 2007, when voters rejected a mere half a percent increase to the Earned Income Tax requested by the school district. It's safe to say if a tax referendum vote is needed now, that percentage will be substantially higher than .5% and the Board members recognize the likelihood that it would be soundly defeated at the polls. 

I did some homework of my own and researched what each of those parents who offered testimony paid in school taxes. The low end of the scale was around $3000 a year and the high end of the scale was just under $10,000 a year. That’s per HOUSEHOLD per year, not per child. Are you beginning to see the problem? This $12M hole is so big, we can’t tax our way out of it. We’ve cut all the low-hanging fruit and now there are only big limbs to lop off. 

One Lower Providence mother testified that because she has four children enrolled at Methacton, she’s “done her fair share to contribute to the enrollment in this District”. So let’s do a word problem. For those four kids, it’s costing the District just under $80,000 to educate them, but they’re only taking in, at most, $10,000 a year from their household. In fact, according to county property tax records, from this woman’s specific household, it’s much less….$4,903.

There are roughly 33,000 residents (13,000 households) in Methacton School District. But of those 13,000 households, not all are occupied by people working in the prime earning years of their lives. A significant percentage (approximately 15%) are seniors on fixed incomes, and another 20% or so percent are single person or single-parent, one-income homes. Even minor tax increases are forcing these folks out of their homes. Some give up and move somewhere cheaper, if they can; but there are about 7 foreclosures a month in the District and not all of them are seniors.

The tax base is largely at the breaking point.  And proposed legislation in Harrisburg designed to potentially give taxpayers relief from paying property taxes in exchange for higher income and sales taxes could potentially remove local taxing authority for schools altogether which ultimately means less local control over your own school district, but also means wealthier school districts such as ours will find ourselves funding less affluent, poorer-performing school districts at the expense of our own.

After cutting the low-hanging fruit of T1 classes, after-school activities buses, closing the library one day a week, outsourcing cafeteria workers and bus drivers, all that’s left at this point is teacher salaries, benefits/pension or facilities. No one wants to close schools or lay off teachers, but it’s truly coming down to a case of ‘pick your poison’.

 

One gentleman, a Lower Providence resident, testified that “I don’t care what it costs, I’m happy to die destitute and alone if it means keeping the school open”, and that he sees “no reason other than money to close a school, but I don’t care about that”.  I might add that of all the parents who testified, I discovered that this individual’s household pays the lowest amount in property (school district) taxes.

This man evidently believes that the 70% of taxpayers in the district that DO NOT have kids in the school system don’t get a seat at the table when decisions like this need to be considered, even though that 70% is paying the lion’s share of the freight in keeping public schools open. For people like him, the taxpayer evidently isn’t viewed as a stakeholder on equal footing with parents, children, staff or faculty. The schoolboard members must, however, consider the perspectives of ALL taxpayers, not just those with kids currently attending school in the District.

 

Part of that 70% are parents with school aged kids in private school. These folks are essentially paying double at the same time they are reducing the burden on the public school system by educating their families elsewhere. 

As many, many District taxpayers have told me over the years, people with the “happy to die destitute’ mindset are welcome to go ahead and impoverish themselves if they want…by all means, go ahead, write bigger checks to Methacton voluntarily and leave the rest of the taxpayers alone. The 70% have college and retirement to pay for.

 

Some of those parents testified that if a school or schools close, it could negatively impact the quality of education, the reputation of the school district and ultimately affect property values. That may be, and keeping schools open may well help property values stay as high as possible, but what is the point if the BANK gets a good sale price for your home when our taxes become so high, many residents can’t pay them and wind up getting forced out in foreclosure?

Another key element of property value is affordability. In addition to evaluating whether a school district is a good one, potential buyers in Lower Providence and Worcester Townships also evaluate the affordability of local taxes. Getting a reputation for higher than average taxes drives off potential residents as much as a poorly performing school district.

And yes, while I agree that we also arguably may need a brand-new state-of-the-art turf field facility with stadium lights to be able to compete athletically, I have always questioned the wisdom of moving ahead with this at a time when the economy has not been great, wondering ‘can we afford it’ knowing that these issues were looming. While the school district maintains that much of the funding for this expense will be raised by private funds, in actuality, to date only a small amount of the money pledged has actually been collected

 

The District scheduled a special meeting for this evening, March 11 at 7:30 pm at Arcola Middle School. I anticipate that the school board will take the opportunity to respond to parent concerns, offer opportunities for parent and community stakeholder involvement in the process, and possibly back off the aggressive timeline. In the meantime, more than a dozen candidates for Methacton school board have filed paperwork with the Montgomery County Board of Elections seeking to be placed on the ballot for the May primary. Those candidates include incumbents Barone, Pellicano, Shackleford, and Woodring.

At the end of the day, class size, top-notch facilities and high dollar spend per student are not the most important determinants of educational success, it’s PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT. The several hundred parents who came out to speak on behalf of Arrowhead, Audubon and to a smaller degree, some of the other three elementary schools in our District, demonstrated that, at least in that regard, we are quite rich indeed.

School Daze

Parents in two elementary school communities within the Methacton School Dstrict are in an uproar following a school board announcement at their February 3, 2015 meeting that they have reviewed recent enrollment and capacity studies they commissioned from the Pennsylvania Economy League (PEL), an education consultant, and will hold public hearings to consider closing two schools.

The PEL reports, which cost $18,000 in consulting fees, provided key findings, including the observations about our dropping enrollment rate, along with the recommendation that Methacton evaluate the potential closing of Arrowhead and/or Audubon Elementary schools for the 2015-2016 school year (and, presumably, for the foreseeable future beyond that, since the enrollment trend is expected to continue downward over the next decade) in order to cut costs and best use its resources. According to the reports, Arrowhead and Audubon face the highest costs of recommended repairs and updating to ADA code.

No serious public outcry came about until the February 3 meeting, in which the capacity study piece was presented along with its findings and recommendations. It was at this meeting that the Board voted practically unanimously (one member was absent) to begin the process of considering the closure of the two schools.  No parents were at the meeting to protest that decision.

As word spread among the parents of children attending both Audubon and Arrowhead that the school board was taking this recommendation seriously and had scheduled public hearings about it, disbelief and anger quickly galvanized into action as parent and civic groups at each school organized to voice their displeasure and to attempt to convince the school board members to reverse one or both proposed closures at the February 23, 2015 (and potentially February 25) public hearing.

But for those looking to assign blame for why shutting these schools down may have to happen, we need to look back in time, before the current board was seated. Some parents are blaming the focus and funding being expended on turf fields and lights, and that may or may not be true, but there is more to it than that.

A handful of concerned citizens from both Lower Providence and Worcester Townships tried, since circa 2005-2006 when the concept and plans for the new 5-6 school began to solidify, to sound the alarm that enrollment trends were already trending down, contrary to the assertions of the Methacton School Board seated at the time the vote was taken to build it*.  And, further, that trend did not support the construction of the Grade 5-6 school eventually named “Skyview Upper Elementary School” nor the approximately $50+ million (across three bonds) in debt the District incurred to build it.  This is debt for which the District doesn’t even begin to start paying down principal until 2018. In fact, we can’t even attempt to refinance the first one until 2018.

The District based future enrollment projections back then on a previously projected population for the then-current year, even after the actual population for the current year was known to be less than that estimated value. Thus, the school district is left with growing consequences of long-term overspending across several different Methacton school boards that only continues to grow.

While belated vindication may be sweet for the residents who expressed concern back then, given that their assertions were borne out with the passage of time, their contention now is that the Skyview project and related soft costs are arguably the primary reason why the closure of two elementary schools is now up for consideration. They say residents were lied to in order to get Skyview built, and told enrollment was trending upward in order to justify the spend. Now, Skyview is at 75% of capacity and can absorb some of the elementary school students.

Meanwhile, as Facebook pages have sprung up (Save Arrowhead School, Save Audubon School), yard signs and unity tee shirts are being ordered, and parents at these schools are mobilizing their forces, I can’t help but wonder if people were paying more attention to those sounding the alarm back then, and perhaps doing some of their own homework on the issue, it’s possible this expenditure would never have happened and this conversation would not be necessary now.  Each elementary would have been spruced up and life would have gone on – and we’d be in much better position to be able to pay for things like turf fields and teacher’s contracts today without the specter of raising taxes.

Total District enrollment when Skyview was built was at 5338 students and expected to climb to 6500 students. That never panned out - we’re at approximately 4974 now and enrollment has dropped every year for the past seven years. The PEL reports give compelling justification for the downward trends that jives with what I know to be true about what’s going on in each of the member townships as far as development projects and demographic trends is concerned.

Perhaps we should try to get our money back from the consultant used to come up with those terribly flawed projections (EI Associates, in combination with enrollment projections the school board developed internally at the time). It’s also worth noting that Methacton’s superintendent at the time, Dr. Jeffrey Miller, listed EI Associates as one of his sources of income on ethics reports filed at the time.

Even if you buy that alleged crowding at the elementary schools at the time warranted a new school, we were already getting by with modular units at some of the schools and the need for that temporary flex space would have gone away. When enrollments dropped, we could have eliminated the lease cost of the modulars and be done with it, instead of paying long-term for a significantly empty "upper elementary" 5-6 school.

For example, Worcester resident Dr. James Mollick** put together a nearly 70 page document (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 ) with supporting facts and data for school board review as to why they should not approve the 5-6 school. He was ignored, laughed at, mocked, and called a ‘kook’. **

However, the PA Dept. of Education took Mollick’s concerns seriously and on the basis of a complaint filed by Mollick which included that same document, voided Methacton’s original submission based on problems with Attachment C of Methacton’s application (which included details such as enrollment and capacity projections). The school district was forced to reapply as a result.

John Andrews of Lower Providence, a former, actual rocket scientist for GE / Lockheed-Martin who worked on NASA projects (a graduate of Princeton and MIT) and a master at compiling and analyzing data, has appeared at practically every single school board meeting over the past ten years, many of which were spent attempting to get the Board to understand that Skyview was not needed and was an expense the school district could ill afford. He ran his own enrollment data (which he has updated frequently and provided to the school board regularly over the years) which was in direct contravention to those provided by the school board at the time. In March, 2008, Andrews was quoted by the Times Herald as calling Methacton’s enrollment projections “unreliable and fictitious”.

Mr. Andrews has also been treated with a degree of derision over the years by various board members (for this as well as other matters he has spoken out about). The PEL report has largely validated Mr. Andrews’ projections at the time and since.

Candy Allebach, another LP resident whose property is adjacent to Skyview/Arcola, has been very vocal over the years and quoted often in the press questioning the school district on various matters, but most particularly related to opposing the construction of Skyview – from the cost, to the validity of the enrollment numbers proffered by the Board at the time to justify it, and to the traffic impacts an additional facility would bring to Eagleview Road.

I’ve seen and heard a lot of angst about class sizes since this story broke. Personally, not only am I a Methacton alumni but I put two kids of my own through the District. As part of the ‘Baby Boom’ generation, it wasn’t unusual when I attended Woodland, Arcola or Methacton to have as many as 35 kids in a class. The vast majority of us turned out just fine and are upstanding, productive citizens contributing to society. Many of my teacher friends tell me that times have changed substantially in recent years such that a large number of kids are on IEPs – so they are hardly being lost in the shuffle regardless of class size.

Ideally, we’d love smaller classes and more individualized attention; turf fields and all kinds of bells and whistles. The reality is, just like with our household budgets, we can’t afford everything we think our kids deserve.  We elect people to help figure out what should be prioritized when it comes time to make tough decisions. We’re in a tough economy and education is heavily regulated with many mandatory spends. There’s not a lot of wiggle room, even in a budget that’s a tenth of a billion bucks.

Bottom line, our residents have been misled in the past. We had a board led by several people who stayed on for years, and considering that there has been a history of 30+ straight years of tax increases, they were spending boards. Several current board members, along with some of those prior board members – are still trying to silence the voices of those who were outraged at the unnecessary spending to build Skyview, saying ‘that’s in the past’. Well, perhaps, but it’s relevant because residents were misled in the past, significant money was spent that arguably didn’t need to be, and it’s an important part of understanding what we are dealing with in the present.

More troubling, several of the individuals who served on the ‘Skyview board’ are still active behind the scenes in selecting and mentoring future school board candidates and helping to shepherd them through the election process. A positive consequence of the proposed school closing announcement has been an increase in the number of folks looking to run for school board in the May 2015 primary. Fresh faces may well be in order.

In recent years, our school board has already trimmed any low-hanging fruit: T1 classes have been eliminated, after-school late buses have been eliminated…then ALL our buses were eliminated when transportation was turned over to First Student, along with our fleet. The cafeteria workers were furloughed and Aramark brought into replace them. And in that time, so far, teacher salaries and pensions have NOT been touched. If schools are not closed, serious cuts will need to be negotiated there.

While money certainly isn’t the only consideration when evaluating closing schools or redistricting, here’s what we save if we do this…the approximate $11M in school refurbishments to correct deficiencies at the neediest two facilities identified in the study, Audubon and Arrowhead. If you take the average cost per square foot to do so noted in the study ($200 per square foot, and multiply it by the 55,000 square feet total between the two schools) you arrive at the $11M number. On top of that, there are savings to be had in teacher salaries and pensions and in the costs of keeping two extra facilities open, heated, lit and operating each year.

We’re at critical mass – mandatory PSERs (Public School Employees’ Retirement System) debt/increases to the tune of $12M is on the horizon beginning in the next two years, which Methacton is obligated by law to fund, and that will only continue to grow going forward. A new teacher’s contract will need to be negotiated as well. Room in the budget needs to be made to accommodate these.

In the alternative, should the school board raise your taxes 15-20%, driving our tax base right out of the school district, or is there something else we can do about it so we don’t have to take that step? We all know that if put to a referendum vote, such a huge tax increase will never pass, which is why school districts generally avoid the kinds of tax hikes that by law have to go up for referendum.

What else should be cut to accommodate keeping these schools open?  Contrary to what some politicians would have you believe, there is no infinite supply of money. Even lobbying the Commonwealth for more money, like Philadelphia does, still results in more money coming out of each of our residents’ pockets to support this, at a time when cries for property tax reform are growing louder in Harrisburg. Any funds that come from the state are obtained from taxpayers first…the same taxpayer pool paying local taxes too. People are tapped out, especially our seniors on fixed incomes. 

We’ve redistricted several times over the past thirty years, as have many other school districts, and I don’t believe anyone has suffered dire, life-changing consequences or loss of quality of life as a result.

It is long past time for the adults in the room to stand up and come clean with parents.  The public has finally been told the truth:  enrollment is down, and there is too much capacity at Skyview. Anyone who wanted to expose what was going on before Skyview was constructed, and disagreed with the need for it, was shut down, disparaged and silenced.

I applaud the current board for having the courage to have the hard conversation now and for having the fortitude to consider making very difficult, unpopular choices NOW to avoid even more difficult, unpopular choices later

Notes:

*school board members at that time were: Jim Van Horn, Joyce Petrauskas, Marijane Barbone, Michael Simeone, Dan Sattler, Ted Chylack, William Kazimer, John Lynch and Wilson Bohanak.

The first five voted to build Skyview; the last three voted against. Chylack was absent for the vote.
Shortly after that vote was another election;  some of the individual members changed and voted on subsequent items such as putting it out for bid etc. It was during this time that disgraced and departed former superintendent Quinn was hired.

**I note with a bit of hilarity the schadenfreude  - and delicious irony - going on over at neighboring local community blog, www.worcesterpapolitics.org , which, while anonymous, is rumored to be authored by David Brooks, the spouse of Worcester supervisor Susan Caughlan, and/or Art Bustard, and/or John Harris, recently of child pornography arrest fame. Dr. Mollick is a frequent subject of attacks on the site, primarily for daring to question them about anything.

Worcester Township and Dr. Mollick have been at odds for several years over a number of issues, so there’s no love lost between them, but since Worcester Township is also locked in combat these days with Methacton over (primarily) the stadium lights issue, and thus happily taking shots at Methacton of late, they begrudgingly admit – without naming him, of course – that Dr. Mollick was one of those who was right to sound the alarm about enrollment and Skyview, noting “At the time, several residents complained at public meetings about these projections, but their complaints were ignored”. How it must kill them to realize that the one person who consistently calls them out on their shenanigans was right about Skyview.

 Links:

"Dozen Methacton School Board Hopefuls Slated to Appear at Candidates Forum" - April 2007
"Space Occupies [Methacton Candidate] Forum" - May 2007
"Slim OK to Seek Bids for 5-6 School" - March 2008
"Board OKs bids for 5-6 School" - May 2008
"Skyview Construction on Schedule" - June 2009
"Is Methacton Really Growing?" - August 2014
"Without Change, Methacton to See $12M Deficit by 2019" - September 2014
"Methacton's Enrollment Study Shows Continued Declines in Student Populations Over Coming Decade" - January 2015