Wake County Schools 5/12 Raleigh forum

[CatherineE]

For those of you who may have missed WakeUP Wake County's public education forum last night in Raleigh, there was plenty of eye-opening information. Entitled "Achieving Educational Excellence in Times of Challenge and Change," the two-and-a-half hour forum featured several speakers to address the state's public education funding crisis.

Among the speakers, Johanna Rogers, Wake County Deputy Manager, and John Dornan, executive director of the non-profit thinktank Public School Forum of NC, presented cold hard facts showing Wake County public school students will have a very bleak future if tax revenues do not increase soon.

Rogers explained how school operations budget reductions will continue to worsen next year based on revenue projections despite population growth and other expenditure indicators. Most recently, WCPSS cut $5.7 million as part of the state education's $24 million reduction. Rogers anticipates the state education budget will be forced to cut deeper in 2010 by $35 million due to falling revenues.

According to Rogers' data, the majority of Wake County public schools funding is derived from property taxes (62.95%) followed by sales tax (14.81%) and state taxes (11.58%). Population growth and the recession are creating a double whammy in meeting school budgets. Rogers told the audience Wake County's population continues to grow at 95 people day and is expected to reach one million residents by 2012, with 15% of the new residents being school-age children. It was mentioned earlier in the evening that 40% of Wake County residents have been here less than 20 years.

The current recession has also seen consumer spending drop, further reducing the sales tax revenue available to fund schools. So, with more students arriving, revenue decreasing and budgets cuts deepening, the quality of a Wake County public education is in serious jeopardy.

Compounding these grim facts, John Dornan's detailed powerpoint presentation exposed NC as a low-spending state for public education. In 2006-07, NC ranked 38th in the nation allocating just $7,300 in per-pupil expenditures (US average $8,717). In 2007-08, NC dropped to 40th in the nation with NC allocating $8,615 per-pupil compared to the US average of $9,963. Former Wake County School board member Tom Oxholm spoke to the $1,348 per-pupil difference citing the revenue difference multiplied by the number of students in NC would greatly improve the quality of our public education and help reverse the state's ranking trend.

According to Dornan's presentation, Wake County ranks 11th in the state for per-pupil expenditures allocating $2,007 where as first-ranked Orange County allocates $3,817 per student. Dornan pointed out that Wake County taxpayers have a lower than average property tax rate of $0.531 compared to the state average property tax rate of $0.573.

Dornan told the audience Wake County homeowners have gotten a real tax break when the state funds the majority of its education revenues. National averages show public school educational funds come from three tax sources: state (47.9% ), local (43.3%) and federal (8.8%). Compared to states like New Jersey and Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and especially Wake County, homeowners have been underpaying their fair share. The message is clear, if Wake County residents expect their high school graduates to be competitive (much less adequate) and prepared to either enter the job market or qualify to pursue higher education, then raising property tax rates is the solution.

"The revenue picture is not encouraging," Dornan said, adding that Wake County is among the four counties receiving 50% of the state's population growth (Mecklenburg, Wake, Johnson, Union).

When asked about the NC Education Lottery's contribution to the education budget, Johanna Rogers said Wake County received approximately $12-13 million in revenues this past year. No word mentioned on the lottery's aggregate revenue contributions statewide.

[DarylB]

For those of you who may have missed WakeUP Wake County's public education forum last night in Raleigh, there was plenty of eye-opening information. Entitled "Achieving Educational Excellence in Times of Challenge and Change," the two-and-a-half hour forum featured several speakers to address the state's public education funding crisis.

Among the speakers, Johanna Rogers, Wake County Deputy Manager, and John Dornan, executive director of the non-profit thinktank Public School Forum of NC, presented cold hard facts showing Wake County public school students will have a very bleak future if tax revenues do not increase soon.

Rogers explained how school operations budget reductions will continue to worsen next year based on revenue projections despite population growth and other expenditure indicators. Most recently, WCPSS cut $5.7 million as part of the state education's $24 million reduction. Rogers anticipates the state education budget will be forced to cut deeper in 2010 by $35 million due to falling revenues.

According to Rogers' data, the majority of Wake County public schools funding is derived from property taxes (62.95%) followed by sales tax (14.81%) and state taxes (11.58%). Population growth and the recession are creating a double whammy in meeting school budgets. Rogers told the audience Wake County's population continues to grow at 95 people day and is expected to reach one million residents by 2012, with 15% of the new residents being school-age children. It was mentioned earlier in the evening that 40% of Wake County residents have been here less than 20 years.

The current recession has also seen consumer spending drop, further reducing the sales tax revenue available to fund schools. So, with more students arriving, revenue decreasing and budgets cuts deepening, the quality of a Wake County public education is in serious jeopardy.

Compounding these grim facts, John Dornan's detailed powerpoint presentation exposed NC as a low-spending state for public education. In 2006-07, NC ranked 38th in the nation allocating just $7,300 in per-pupil expenditures (US average $8,717). In 2007-08, NC dropped to 40th in the nation with NC allocating $8,615 per-pupil compared to the US average of $9,963. Former Wake County School board member Tom Oxholm spoke to the $1,348 per-pupil difference citing the revenue difference multiplied by the number of students in NC would greatly improve the quality of our public education and help reverse the state's ranking trend.

According to Dornan's presentation, Wake County ranks 11th in the state for per-pupil expenditures allocating $2,007 where as first-ranked Orange County allocates $3,817 per student. Dornan pointed out that Wake County taxpayers have a lower than average property tax rate of $0.531 compared to the state average property tax rate of $0.573.

Dornan told the audience Wake County homeowners have gotten a real tax break when the state funds the majority of its education revenues. National averages show public school educational funds come from three tax sources: state (47.9% ), local (43.3%) and federal (8.8%). Compared to states like New Jersey and Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and especially Wake County, homeowners have been underpaying their fair share. The message is clear, if Wake County residents expect their high school graduates to be competitive (much less adequate) and prepared to either enter the job market or qualify to pursue higher education, then raising property tax rates is the solution.

"The revenue picture is not encouraging," Dornan said, adding that Wake County is among the four counties receiving 50% of the state's population growth (Mecklenburg, Wake, Johnson, Union).

When asked about the NC Education Lottery's contribution to the education budget, Johanna Rogers said Wake County received approximately $12-13 million in revenues this past year. No word mentioned on the lottery's aggregate revenue contributions statewide.


So...the Grande prize goes to those who can waste the most? I remember how to waste money, from my days in the military, and I can't really say it surprises me that Education should shy away from the "He who spends the most wins" philosophy, but I'm really sorry that's the legacy and the lesson the public school system has inflicted on our kids. Fact of the matter is, the more waste there is, the less effective are the schools. More money will eventually be the artery blocking junk food blood sludge that kills its effectiveness, like in the case of the morbidly obese, having eaten a daily regimen of Double Quarter pounders/c cheese, with the biggie fries, two pies and a giant diet soda. Too bad the school system can't get bariatric financial surgery, and a routine physical!

In the recent past, I've offered numerous ideas that don't require huge outlays, such as distance learning, and increasing the percentages of time of usage of existing school buildings, utilizing public/private partnerships for the more costly outlays of such resources as science labs.... etc.

[CatherineE]

So...the Grande prize goes to those who can waste the most? I remember how to waste money, from my days in the military, and I can't really say it surprises me that Education should shy away from the "He who spends the most wins" philosophy, but I'm really sorry that's the legacy and the lesson the public school system has inflicted on our kids. Fact of the matter is, the more waste there is, the less effective are the schools. More money will eventually be the artery blocking junk food blood sludge that kills its effectiveness, like in the case of the morbidly obese, having eaten a daily regimen of Double Quarter pounders/c cheese, with the biggie fries, two pies and a giant diet soda. Too bad the school system can't get bariatric financial surgery, and a routine physical!


Two thoughts, Daryl. We're far from spending the most money on our students and we're further still from wasting the most money. The entire NC public education operating budget is half of what other states are spending when you recognize the range across the nation is between $7500 and $16,000 per student per year. I'm not saying wasteful spending does not exist but we have to be realistic about getting real value for our tax dollars and obviously if we're under-taxed (compared to the rest of the state and country) we'll continue to stagnate in the bottom quintile of student performance.

But to your point, Daryl, an interesting question was raised about the two salaries being paid simultaneously to the state schools superintendents - the elected superintendent (June Atkinson) and the appointed one (Bill Harrison) -- contesting the matter in the courts. Do we really want to pay both salaries for 4 years while this works its way through the courts? The money saved could save a few teachers positions or help avoid any furloughs.

[d4vendel]

I'll throw out the same question here that I asked Stan back in the day when this was his favorite subject to post here.

How much is enough?

The premise we are being asked to accept is that we are not spending enough on education. Let's say for argument's sake that we accept that premise. Isn't the next logical question, "How much more?" If we have determined that we are not spending enough, what is the magic dollar figure that makes all of our education troubles go away?

I feel this is a fair question as I have not read anything in this thread that says anything about education other than the money that needs to be spent. What is that figure?

[DarylB]

Education activists would have us re-enter the era of MAD (mutual assured destruction), those heady days when destroying the world 50 times over was insufficient, because we had reliable information that those darned Russians had just produced another warhead that guaranteed they could do the same feat at least 51 time. And so we are here, saying some other state/county/school board is spending more money than us, so we have to catch up and outspend them. THAT's NUTS!

I propose that some of the smartest and best educated could be trained under an oak tree, and be found lacking for every one of the WCPSS adjudged critical educational resources, and be better educated than many receiving diplomas from this money eating tree. Do we really get smarter people because we have the longest bus rides in the country? Does a smart kid impart by osmosis his work ethic on another kid with none, simply by sitting in the next seat? Does the number of ubersubpseudoSuperintendents in charge of mass mailings really make little Billy better able to do basic math? We can EASILY prove we can spend more money... a fools errand by any measure. What we need are some elective geniuses that want to do more with less. Where are there any suggestions of doing what I mentioned in my previous post? I don't want more, nor do our children need more. What we actually need is less. Just like the economic crisis that started because we borrowed for what we did not need, and end up in debt and despair, that is the current education crisis. I can sum up our curent education problem in one sentence.... We have so many, who wish to do so little, with so much.