Expensive lessons
Pricey parcel tax loss shows PUSD needs to be a little more truthful about its financial wants and needs
By Kevin Uhrich 05/13/2010
The hopes of area parents, teachers and public school supporters were dashed last week with the defeat of Measure CC, a proposed parcel tax designed to provide temporary funding for the financially ailing Pasadena Unified School District.
With hopes of raising $7 million a year over the next five years, the idea was to impose a $120-a-year tax on property owners in Pasadena, Altadena and Sierra Madre — the three communities that comprise the district. No exceptions. Not even seniors would get out of contributing, unless they could actually prove to the Board of Education that they were too poor to pay.
But, with the requirement to win set at a two-thirds majority, Measure CC fell far short, coming up with only 54 percent of the 26,525 ballots cast in a special mail-in only ballot — and that was with voting starting in early April and ending on May 4.
Even with an entire month to campaign while voting was taking place, and pro-Measure CC forces raising nearly $300,000 to conduct a phone and mail campaign, the district apparently could not overcome the image of an inherently wasteful institution seemingly hell-bent on frittering away money — even that belonging to struggling senior citizens.
From the beginning, we gave everyone their say, beginning with George Brumder, president of the Pasadena Education Foundation, the nonprofit organization that acts much like a de facto school board when it comes to district hiring and contracting practices, and even has former members serving on the Board of Education.
A few weeks later, we gave Superintendent Edwin Diaz column space to plead his case for more money. Diaz, like Brumder, argued that teachers would be laid off, class sizes would increase, school libraries would close, many music and art programs would be eliminated, advanced courses in math and science would be reduced, and summer school would be eliminated.
School board member Scott Phelps even got in a few digs at people against the parcel tax, as much as calling them elitist and racist for demanding more fiscal accountability from the board on which he serves and the district that taxpayers bankroll.
When it came to letters to the editor, we held up publishing those not related to the election, and those supporting Measure CC far outnumbered those opposed. Interesting enough, nowhere among all that verbiage did anyone mention the fact that the district knew as early as last year through its own well-paid consultant, Dale Scott & Co., that a parcel tax would not fly, not even one for $50, an amount that only gained 61 percent public support in polling. Based on that, what hope they thought $120 a year would have is anyone’s guess. Despite its many negatives, we also backed the measure, due mainly to the real fiscal emergency that’s facing public education.
What seemed to resonate more with people, however, were the arguments made by Ross Selvidge, managing director of a financial consulting company who headed up a parcel tax measure in the early 1990s to help bail out libraries and insisted that the district already had enough money.
“I compared PUSD with all 23 other unified school districts in Los Angeles County that are similar in size and student demographics such as minority enrollment, percent of English learners, students in special education programs and percent receiving subsidized lunches. For every one of the last 10 years, PUSD spent more per student (up to 25 percent more) than every one of those districts,” Selvidge wrote.
When it came to academic achievement, “Ten years ago PUSD’s performance was below average. Today, after all that spending, PUSD’s performance is still below average,” Selvidge continued.
Noting that over the past decade PUSD’s enrollment has declined, Selvidge also found that during that same time PUSD’s spending per student exceeded inflation by more than 60 percent. He also found that PUSD had spent more per student than 91 percent of the other 47 unified school districts in Los Angeles County. “Only the Beverly Hills, Santa Monica/Malibu and Los Angeles school districts ever spend more per student,” Selvidge found. “PUSD does not have a revenue problem. It has a problem delivering value for what it already spends.”
On Tuesday, the Board of Education approved the lay offs of 158 teachers and 74 support staff members. No administrators, as Board member Ramon Miramontes pointed out, according to a report in Wednesday’s Pasadena Star-News, were let go.
With state budgets being slashed, there are currently plans afoot to lower the requirement for parcel taxes like Measure CC to pass. The only problem is, no one has ever really refuted Selvidge’s contention that Pasadena public schools already get as much tax money as most other districts, more in many cases, with currently little to show in return in terms of academic achievement.
On May 4, PUSD officials learned some expensive lessons. One was elections aren’t cheap. This one cost the district $530,000.
Another is that unless the district does a better job of managing the resources it already has available to it, proposals like Measure CC may never pass muster, even in a simple majority election.
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Kevin writes:
"On Tuesday, the Board of Education approved the lay offs of 158 teachers and 74 support staff members. No administrators, as Board member Ramon Miramontes pointed out, according to a report in Wednesday’s Pasadena Star-News, were let go."
Tell me, does the administrator (or some, PUSD collective amalgam thereof) who was responible for supervising those 232 (sic) laid-off workers now get paid less money by the District for doing less supervisory work?
Certainly, he/she must be putting in less administrative man-hours. Or do (some) PUSD admistrators get the same salary (and benefits) regardless of the number of employees they (may or may not) supervise?
DanD
posted by DanD on 5/13/10 @ 06:39 a.m.
A new hallmark for PUSD: transparency. Consultant Dale Scott & Company whose labors created this mess, now is the time for an accounting of his services