Solving Educational Budgets for State

[Mormon Red Death]

Here you go... my solution

First thing

All schools start the tuesday after Labor day and end the friday before Memorial day. That cuts out at least 3 weeks of time where schools have to cool the building, Pay bus drivers, have school lunch, gas for the buses etc.. If you have to add an extra 30 minutes a day so be it.

All school employees eligible for healthcare benefits are on the exact same plan. High deductible Health savings account where the district pay 80% of the premium and gives 40% of deductible in 12 payments. Any retirees will have to use Medicare and the districts can pay up to 70% of their deductibles and premiums.

Phase out pension program in favor of matching 403bs. If you have less than 15 years in the system there will be no pension but your 403b account will be matched up to 7%. 15-25 years pension is scaled back at 10% a year to 50% with 403b matched at 10% of salary.

If someone has a PHD the dont have to be a liscenced teacher. They simply have to have had experience teaching a class.
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[I.J. Reilly]

This actually a pretty critical problem that is getting some play in Utah right now. The secession of the Canyons School District from the Jordan School District has caused all sorts of problems. The biggest per capita contributors to the school district were all the sudden gone. The Jordan School District was left with a much larger population of its students in lower income brackets (thus producing lower tax revenue, per capita) than before. It has wrecked havoc on the district's budget, leaving a huge shortfall, all the while Canyons has a substantial amount more per student and is not experiencing any of the budget woes.

I'm an equality of opportunity guy, and I think that the whole setup for school district revenue is messed up. It ends up being a rich get richer scenario. The ultimate cost is taken from kids who bear no responsibility for their station but all of the burden, at least in this sense.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the Canyons School District cannibalized some of the best administrators from the Jordan School District in the split.

[beelzebabette]

Here you go... my solution

First thing

All schools start the tuesday after Labor day and end the friday before Memorial day. That cuts out at least 3 weeks of time where schools have to cool the building, Pay bus drivers, have school lunch, gas for the buses etc.. If you have to add an extra 30 minutes a day so be it.

Saves the A/C costs. Most districts have non-essential, non-admin employees on a 182-day contract. This includes lunch ladies & bus drivers. If there's no school, lunch ladies aren't there. You wouldn't need to add 30 minutes a day to be out by Memorial Day, just no week-long spring break or recovery day for teachers after parent-teacher conferences.

All school employees eligible for healthcare benefits are on the exact same plan. High deductible Health savings account where the district pay 80% of the premium and gives 40% of deductible in 12 payments. Any retirees will have to use Medicare and the districts can pay up to 70% of their deductibles and premiums.

For starters, at least in the state of UT, you lose your post-employment insurance the day you are eligible for Medicare. I don't know a single district that still covers employees after that day. Most quit covering you for however long that period may be until Medicare-eligible and opted for a definite period for those meeting minimum years-of-service requirements. Jordan School District, a few years ago, told all their teachers they were losing most of even that pre-defined periood if they weren't retiring immediately under a ruse that new accounting rules wouldn't allow them to continue their current program. (I laughed when a teacher friend showed me their newsletter explaining why it was thus and called and congratulated one of their accountants.)

I have no opinion on high-deductible vs traditional health plans. I do know that there are annual negotiations with unionized teachers, so a strong-arm, it-will-be-thus approach is easier said than done.

Phase out pension program in favor of matching 403bs. If you have less than 15 years in the system there will be no pension but your 403b account will be matched up to 7%. 15-25 years pension is scaled back at 10% a year to 50% with 403b matched at 10% of salary.

Back in my auditing days, pension contributions ran between 14-16% of salary. Good luck cutting back on pension without a corresponding salary increase. A dollar here or a dollar there still costs a dollar.

If someone has a PHD the dont have to be a liscenced teacher. They simply have to have had experience teaching a class.

How many PhDs do you think there are in K-12, non-admin positions? Also, they are at the top of salary schedules so I fail to see how this is a budget solution.

IMO, if you want to cut education costs, the union negotiations would have to swing away from favoring teachers with longer tenure towards a more fair system. In the present economy, a teacher's lucky to get COLA increases so it's not much of an issue so let's discuss three years ago. Property taxes are up and state legislature has enough $ to allocate more to education. A district enters teacher negotiations with X dollars available. Benefit costs are usually discussed first, so a portion of X goes to increased health insurance costs so the benefits to the employee stay relatively the same. Cost-of-living is usually next and is distributed evenly across the salary schedule. With what is leftover, your union representatives are typically senior teachers who feel they deserve a larger piece of that pie. Rather than an across-the-board increase with what's leftover, you have them asking for it to be allocated with more weight going to the higher end of the salary schedule. The result is that you not only have a teaching labeled as a shitty profession to get into and have to pay signing bonuses in a good economy, but a District is offering early-retirement incentives to senior teachers so they can hire a new teacher at the bottom of the salary schedule to cut costs. Of course, working your way to the top of the schedule leaves teachers less willing to leave without increased incentive because they finally feel like they're being paid what they're worth.

The court of public opinion needs to be swayed toward pressuring teacher unions to be more fair to incoming teachers--I think veteran teachers deserve more, but at this point this approach has become an exponential increase to veteran teachers at the expense of the incoming group. Some politician would be wise to stem the tide.

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As a completely random aside, I'm pretty sure Oklahoma is the worst state to retire from as a teacher.

[DU Ute]

Copied and pasted from utefans! Busted!!!

[Mormon Red Death]

Copied and pasted from utefans! Busted!!!

the original author was still myself.

[CardiacCoug]

Health insurance expenses are killing school district budgets.

In many districts, the total school district budget keeps increasing but all of the increases are swallowed up by increasing health insurance prices for school district employees -- so none of the extra money goes to students. Instead the money goes to health insurers, hospitals, and doctors.

[Mormon Red Death]

Saves the A/C costs. Most districts have non-essential, non-admin employees on a 182-day contract. This includes lunch ladies & bus drivers. If there's no school, lunch ladies aren't there. You wouldn't need to add 30 minutes a day to be out by Memorial Day, just no week-long spring break or recovery day for teachers after parent-teacher conferences.

Don't have 182 contracts pay them by the hour. Additionally, cutting the number of days to go school guts gasoline expenses for the buses.

For starters, at least in the state of UT, you lose your post-employment insurance the day you are eligible for Medicare. I don't know a single district that still covers employees after that day. Most quit covering you for however long that period may be until Medicare-eligible and opted for a definite period for those meeting minimum years-of-service requirements. Jordan School District, a few years ago, told all their teachers they were losing most of even that pre-defined periood if they weren't retiring immediately under a ruse that new accounting rules wouldn't allow them to continue their current program. (I laughed when a teacher friend showed me their newsletter explaining why it was thus and called and congratulated one of their accountants.)

I have no opinion on high-deductible vs traditional health plans. I do know that there are annual negotiations with unionized teachers, so a strong-arm, it-will-be-thus approach is easier said than done.

Back in my auditing days, pension contributions ran between 14-16% of salary. Good luck cutting back on pension without a corresponding salary increase. A dollar here or a dollar there still costs a dollar.

How many PhDs do you think there are in K-12, non-admin positions? Also, they are at the top of salary schedules so I fail to see how this is a budget solution.

I threw that in there for my friend Solon... Dude has a PHD and cant teach in a public utah school unless he goes to Uvu for a year to learn how to teach.

IMO, if you want to cut education costs, the union negotiations would have to swing away from favoring teachers with longer tenure towards a more fair system. In the present economy, a teacher's lucky to get COLA increases so it's not much of an issue so let's discuss three years ago. Property taxes are up and state legislature has enough $ to allocate more to education. A district enters teacher negotiations with X dollars available. Benefit costs are usually discussed first, so a portion of X goes to increased health insurance costs so the benefits to the employee stay relatively the same. Cost-of-living is usually next and is distributed evenly across the salary schedule. With what is leftover, your union representatives are typically senior teachers who feel they deserve a larger piece of that pie. Rather than an across-the-board increase with what's leftover, you have them asking for it to be allocated with more weight going to the higher end of the salary schedule. The result is that you not only have a teaching labeled as a shitty profession to get into and have to pay signing bonuses in a good economy, but a District is offering early-retirement incentives to senior teachers so they can hire a new teacher at the bottom of the salary schedule to cut costs. Of course, working your way to the top of the schedule leaves teachers less willing to leave without increased incentive because they finally feel like they're being paid what they're worth.

The court of public opinion needs to be swayed toward pressuring teacher unions to be more fair to incoming teachers--I think veteran teachers deserve more, but at this point this approach has become an exponential increase to veteran teachers at the expense of the incoming group. Some politician would be wise to stem the tide.

As a completely random aside, I'm pretty sure Oklahoma is the worst state to retire from as a teacher.

the teachers union like all unions generally is very unfair to the newbies

[Hallelujah]

Health insurance expenses are killing school district budgets.

In many districts, the total school district budget keeps increasing but all of the increases are swallowed up by increasing health insurance prices for school district employees -- so none of the extra money goes to students. Instead the money goes to health insurers, hospitals, and doctors.

So let's pass universal healthcare. It will reduce premiums, improve quality, reduce costs, guaranteed to only cost $1T.

[Tim]

Here you go... my solution

First thing

All schools start the tuesday after Labor day and end the friday before Memorial day. That cuts out at least 3 weeks of time where schools have to cool the building, Pay bus drivers, have school lunch, gas for the buses etc.. If you have to add an extra 30 minutes a day so be it.

All school employees eligible for healthcare benefits are on the exact same plan. High deductible Health savings account where the district pay 80% of the premium and gives 40% of deductible in 12 payments. Any retirees will have to use Medicare and the districts can pay up to 70% of their deductibles and premiums.

Phase out pension program in favor of matching 403bs. If you have less than 15 years in the system there will be no pension but your 403b account will be matched up to 7%. 15-25 years pension is scaled back at 10% a year to 50% with 403b matched at 10% of salary.

If someone has a PHD the dont have to be a liscenced teacher. They simply have to have had experience teaching a class.
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This is totally unacademic, and I know it's just a pop science book, but I'm about done reading Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers," and in it he advocates for year-round schooling or a SHORTER summer vacation, using statistics that show that the summer break is most detrimental in an academic sense to lower-income students. What effect do you imagine an even longer summer vacation would have on academics?

[Mormon Red Death]

This is totally unacademic, and I know it's just a pop science book, but I'm about done reading Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers," and in it he advocates for year-round schooling or a SHORTER summer vacation, using statistics that show that the summer break is most detrimental in an academic sense to lower-income students. What effect do you imagine an even longer summer vacation would have on academics?

My goal was to solve the budget program.

[I.J. Reilly]

My goal was to solve the budget program.

You could do that by doing away with the public school system altogether. No school system, no budget problems! Poof!

[Mormon Red Death]

You could do that by doing away with the public school system altogether. No school system, no budget problems! Poof!

hardy har har

[Tim]

You could do that by doing away with the public school system altogether. No school system, no budget problems! Poof!

Hahahahaha!

[wuapinmon]

The solution to improving education is to pay teachers more money so that people who don't do it because of the shitty pay will actually stay.

If you start cutting the 'golden handcuffs' the way you've proposed, even the good teachers will leave.

I say no to your proposal about healthcare and benefits.

As far as the scheduling goes, I think the pedagogical benefits of year-round schooling for low-income students far outweighs the savings associated with a shortened school year.

Really, we don't pay enough in taxes to fund our schools. That's the real issue. I pay $1,000 a year in property taxes on my house. I'll put three kids through the school system. There's no way that $333 per year per kid is enough to support their education. I realize that all the taxes go into the pot, even people with no kids, but property taxes are very low in these parts.

I wonder why more school systems don't try and set up endowments and get alumni to donate. It seems odd to me.

[Mormon Red Death]

The solution to improving education is to pay teachers more money so that people who don't do it because of the shitty pay will actually stay.

If you start cutting the 'golden handcuffs' the way you've proposed, even the good teachers will leave.

I say no to your proposal about healthcare and benefits.

As far as the scheduling goes, I think the pedagogical benefits of year-round schooling for low-income students far outweighs the savings associated with a shortened school year.

Really, we don't pay enough in taxes to fund our schools. That's the real issue. I pay $1,000 a year in property taxes on my house. I'll put three kids through the school system. There's no way that $333 per year per kid is enough to support their education. I realize that all the taxes go into the pot, even people with no kids, but property taxes are very low in these parts.

I wonder why more school systems don't try and set up endowments and get alumni to donate. It seems odd to me.

First of all the year wouldnt be shortened. You would go the same amount of hours as you do now. You would just do it with more time during the day and 3 weeks less days.

BTW I agree with most of your suggestions. The problem is that most people don't want to pay for what you are suggesting.

The problem with the teachers union is that each district negotiates its own health care rates. If they combined all the teachers in a state and pooled all their risk their rates would be a lot lower.