James Fraasch on the School Board Budget

School Board member James Fraasch has posted a lengthy explanation of his vote against the budget for the Mt. Lebanon School District. It's long and detailed, and a lot of it hinges on what we make of (i) declining enrollment; (ii) increased staffing; and (iii) increases in per-student expenditures. But there's much more. An excerpt:

I voted no for the following reasons:

1) I wanted to at least keep our pupil/teacher ratio the same and not let it go down any further. Despite that fact that we are allowing four positions to go unfilled, our ratio is still going down due to a projected drop in student enrollment of 63 students. If the Board would have let two additional positions (bringing the total to 6) go unfilled then our ratio would have remained essentially unchanged. Our ratio will be 12.75 next year, down from 12.82 this year. Two additional positions going unfilled would have left us at 12.81. That being said, perhaps the hardest thing to do on the Board is to make efficiencies in staff. There are a lot of machinations that have to be done on the part of the administration to carry out those type of changes and it is never easy to target a certain school or certain grade level with those changes.

2) I wanted a better future forecast for the budget than the one we had. I think this would have allowed for the community to see the point of view from which I speak. I blame myself for this since I should have asked for this in public. For instance, the forecast given to the public included a very small millage increase in future years even with a $100,000,000 high school project. I felt this was misleading since that document increased assessed valuation by $150,000,000 which is a pretty unlikely event unless the County and State come to some sort of legal assessed valuation agreement. Again, let me be clear, this is not to point a finger at anyone at all, I simply did not ask for the right data.

3) I would have liked to have nailed down a more precise amount that we would put towards future retiree health care benefits. Right now I am uncomfortable that the number is dependent on a few variables and I would have liked to have seen an amount over and above our fund balance that would go to that fund and have it better defined. As mentioned before, this sort of planning is very productive for both the short and long term.

Read the whole post.

You or I may agree or disagree with the reasoning, but there's no doubt that this is fabulous transparency in local government. Thanks, James! Every Board member should follow his example.