The school district’s bold copyright policy

The Lebo Citizens blog is reporting about the copyright policy advertised on the school district’s web site. In case you’re wondering what the fuss is about, here’s the policy, in full:

Copyright Notice

© 2012 Mt. Lebanon School District. You are welcome and encouraged to access and print material from the Mt. Lebanon School District website (“Website”) at http://www.mtlsd.org for personal use only. Any other copying, posting to another website, distribution, modification, transmission, or dissemination of any of the Website content is strictly prohibited without the prior written permission from the School District. Please see Terms of Use.

Careful readers will note that I have “violated” the policy by printing it here without the school district’s permission. Am I worried?

Nope.

As law professor and Blog-Lebo alum Mike Madison helpfully pointed out to Lebo Citizens’ editor, Ms. Gillen, this policy is impotent when it comes to preventing the public from discussing the school district and the things it publishes on its web site. He writes:

This is clearly overbroad and unenforceable. You’d think that the School District would have consulted an actual copyright or trademark lawyer before putting out something so obviously and legally obtuse. Nothing that the School District puts on its website or in its so-called “Terms of Use” can change your rights – or the rights of any other citizen – under the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Nothing that the School District puts on its website or in its so-called “Terms of Use” can change the way that copyright law actually works (remember things like the public domain and fair use) or the way that trademark law actually works (things like non-commercial use, nominative use, and fair use – and I’m sorry to lay some legal jargon on you here!).

(That’s only part of Mr. Madison’s response, by the way. You’ll want to read the whole thing; it’s informative and entertaining.)

So how did this policy come to be? My guesses:

• Somebody tasked with keeping the school’s web site up to date just borrowed a policy from somewhere else without thinking too much about it.
• The school district is about to offer some e-learning courses of its own and wanted to “protect its IP” with tough-sounding new language.
• The policy has been this way for a long time, but nobody noticed until something on the page changed recently (perhaps the copyright date?) and Google flagged the page for review.

Any other hypotheses?

Other coverage:

• Monkey See, Monkey Do (Lebo Citizens blog; originally broke story)
• Times like these (James Fraasch’s blog “Politics, Policies, Government, and Economics”)

School board approves first steps of reorganization

At its meeting on April 18, 2011, the Mt. Lebanon school board approved the first steps of superintendent Dr. Timothy Steinhauer’s proposed reorganization of top staff positions. The board made five appointments.

Dr. Deborah Allen’s appointment was extended for an additional two years. Under the new plan, she will become the Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Education.

Dr. Ronald Davis, currently the high-school principal, will become the Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education.

Brian McFeeley, the principal of Mellon Middle School, will replace Davis as the high-school principal.

Peter Berg, currently the Supervisor of School Counseling, will become the High School Dean of Students, another new position.

Greg Wensell, currently the Supervisor of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Business and Information Technology, will become the principal of Jefferson Elementary School. Wensell will replace Mike Schnirel, who is retiring.

Sources in the school district say the reorganization is expected to make the district run more effectively. Lines of communication will become clearer, and the resources to solve problems will be placed closer to the people working on those problems.

School board approves parking agreement with Mt. Lebanon United Lutheran Church

At its regular meeting on April 18, 2011, the Mt. Lebanon school board voted to approve a 48-month parking agreement with the Mt. Lebanon United Lutheran Church at 975 Washington Road. The agreement will make 127 additional parking spaces available to the school district during the high-school renovation.

In exchange for the parking spaces, the school district will pay the church $1500 per year and provide for the general maintenance of the parking lot, including salting and snow removal. The school district also agreed to reseal and re-stripe the parking lot when the agreement ends, an estimated cost of about $19 thousand.

School-board director Dan Remely said during the meeting that, compared to what others were paying for parking, the school district’s agreement was a bargain.

Two details of the agreement remain to be worked out: (1) the exact start and end dates and (2) how to handle the Lion’s Club Farmers’ Market, usually held on Wednesday evenings in the parking lot.

Superintendent announces school-district reorganization (Updated 2)

Updated 2011-04-05 23:55 with additional links.
Update 2011-04-06 14:52: Referred to Jo Posti answering some questions about the reorganization.

In an interesting change (shake-up?) at the school district, superintendent Dr. Timothy Steinhauer announced a reorganization of some top spots.

“These changes are designed to improve student learning, communication, coordination, and consistency throughout the District,” Dr. Steinhauer wrote.

Under what is being called the “first step” of the reorganization, there will be two changes:

One: “The reappointment of Dr. Deborah Allen in a new role as the Assistant Superintendent for Elementary Education and the appointment of Dr. Ronald Davis as the Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Education.”

Two: “By the start of the 2013–14 school year, all curriculum supervisor positions will be eliminated. Individuals currently holding these positions will be able to move into other positions within the District over the next two years.”

It’s not clear what the next steps of reorganization will be. For now, the superintendent is “asking for patience” and promises to have more information after the April 18, 2011, school-board meeting, at which the school board is expected to vote on the announced changes.

I wonder what’s coming up.

Update: On her blog, Center Court, school-board president Jo Posti has answered some questions about the reorganization. They are:

• When will other positions impacted by the reorganization be announced?
• Is this announcement a reaction to the District's current or future budget situation?
• Will there be staffing changes within the teaching staff?
• Why now?

The answers are not particularly direct or informative. Still, one thing did catch my eye:

Once the plan is fully implemented, there will be a significant savings to the District, ...

Interesting.

Also reporting on the reorganization:

• Letter from Dr. Steinhauer (Lebo Citizens Blog)
• Reorganization Announced (Center Court, the blog of Jo Posti, president of the school board)
  
• Questions About The Reorganization (Center Court, the blog of Jo Posti, president of the school board)
  

Letter: School District Lax on Safety and Honesty

Reader Pam Scott, who has been a member of both the Educational Specifications Committee and Design Advisory Committee for the high-school renovation, writes with the following letter:

Dear Blog-Lebo Editors:

Saturday afternoon I wrote a letter to the Municipal Commissioners urging them to vote “No” on the Shared Parking Agreement with the School District. The reason I asked them to vote “No” is because the District has too often shown itself to be dishonest and/or inept when it comes to managing its facilities.

The School District should change its way of thinking and just come clean with the community about the true state of the high school buildings.

Why should the Commission, parents, students, staff, or residents trust a District to properly manage such a large project when the District does the following?

1. Goes out of their way to discredit and misrepresent their relationship with Dirk Taylor. Anyone reading the papers or watching the Board meetings will be familiar with this incident.

2. Misrepresents the amount of asbestos in their buildings. For example, much talk has been made of the sprayed-on asbestos in Building C, but no mention of the same sprayed-on asbestos in Building F (see results for Sample F-07-01: “Tan, Fireproofing, Homogeneous: 4% Chrysotile [asbestos]” on page 34 of the RTK-requested document “Report of Bulk Sample Analysis for Asbestos”).

3. Cuts corners with asbestos regulations. For example, after a bucket overflowed, causing ceiling tiles to collapse into the student activities director’s office in September, the District substituted their own hodge-podge air clearance testing instead of the required-by-law air clearance testing for this asbestos-release episode. (See see SE Technologies’ log on page 4 of MTLSD RTK Request #2010-84.) This is dishonest and/or inept. (Under the asbestos-in-schools regulations (AHERA) that have been in place since the 1980s, a major fiber-release episode consists of the falling or dislodging of more than three square or linear feet of friable asbestos-containing material. If these episodes are less than 160 square feet or 260 linear feet or less, air clearance for these episodes may be done using the PCM method instead of TEM, but five samples are required to be properly collected and analyzed; the District merely collected and analyzed two.)

4. Makes up their own standards. The District claims to have followed the appropriate protocol with respect to radon in the high school while substituting their own hodge-podge testing instead of standard accepted protocol. The lab report they received for their “long-term test” is clearly marked “Delay between end of testing period & return to the lab may increase reported radon concentration. Consider retesting. Your Alpha Track results are valid but do not meet the EPA protocol for long term testing of 91 to 365 days.” For the District to then go out and tell staff, students. and the community that they have “followed the appropriate protocol” is dishonest and/or inept. (See the AccuStar Labs report on page 3 of MTLSD RTK Request #2010-79.) Similarly, the District regularly substituted “Modified AHERA” for genuine AHERA air clearance testing during the elementary school renovations. (See the asbestos reports which AHERA requires to be available for viewing during regular office hours at each school as well as the District’s administrative offices.)

Sincerely,
Pam Scott,
Member, High School Educational Specifications Design Committee
Member, High School Design Advisory Committee

Mt. Lebanon Mom Holds School District Accountable by Blogging (Update)

Updated 2010-10-27 11:00 with follow-up from Mrs. Stang.

Last week when Sadie Stang received her son Niko’s evaluation report from the Mt. Lebanon school district, she couldn’t believe how many mistakes it contained. In one paragraph alone, her family found no fewer than six spelling errors. More troubling, portions of the report were hard to understand, in places almost incomprehensible.

“These evaluations are done every three years by the school district. They should be of the utmost importance. If this report was put together so carelessly, how can I trust that it is an accurate assessment of my child?” she said.

Mrs. Stang said that her family has received other reports from the school district that also contained obvious errors. But this report was riddled with them.

“I have never seen anything quite like this one,” she said.

Rather than address her concerns to the school district, Mrs. Stang decided to do something else. She went public.

On Thursday, 21 October, 2010, she wrote about the report on her blog, “PJ’s and clay and autism... oh my.” In a post called Say it ain’t so, she presented her readers with a single page of Niko’s re-evaluation report. Her 18-year-old daughter, Alexandra, a recent graduate of the Mt. Lebanon school district, had proofread the page, circling the errors. The page was littered with circles.

Shortly after the post appeared on Mrs. Stang’s blog, word began to spread, soon reaching the school district. Within hours, the school superintendent himself, Dr. Timothy Steinhauer, emailed Mrs. Stang about the report, echoing her dissatisfaction and promising a corrected version shortly.

The email, however, did not have the intended effect. Its opening words were “Dear Ms. Stand.” Mrs. Stang’s name had been misspelled. It was an innocent mistake, but hard to ignore, given the circumstances.

“It put salt in the wound, to say the least,” she said.

Dr. Steinhauer quickly followed up with an apology, but the first impression had taken hold, with Mrs. Stang forwarding his email to the entire school board and posting a copy on her blog.

The school district, citing confidentially requirements for personnel and student matters, declined to comment on the specifics of this story. A spokesperson, explaining the evaluations in general, said that evaluation reports are presented to parents in draft form and then finalized during meetings that include parents, teachers, and relevant administrators.

Mrs. Stang said that the report she received was not marked as a draft.

And that’s where things stand at present: one family, angry and frustrated; one school district, not looking its best; and one community, watching to see what will happen.

If there’s a lesson to be drawn from all this, it’s that email and blogging have altered the balance between schools and parents. In the past, aggrieved parents had little choice but to follow the arcane policies of schools and governments to have their complaints heard. Now parents have a new option: go straight to the public.

In this case, exercising that option drew a speedy response from the school district’s superintendent – effectively the CEO of a $100-million company. That’s more than most parents with similar problems could have hoped for ten years ago.

Will that response be enough? As of this writing, Mrs. Stang is still waiting for that corrected report from the school district to arrive. When she gets it, what will it say?

My guess is Mrs. Stang won’t hesitate to let us know. Just watch her blog.

Update (Wednesday, 27 October, 2010)

In the comments for this story, Mrs. Stang has written to Blog-Lebo with an update about the whereabouts of the revised report she was promised. She says that she learned this morning that the report was emailed on Friday – but not to her.

“You’re never going to believe this one. This important document was emailed to the wrong email address,” she writes.

She’s now concerned that her son’s evaluation report, supposedly confidential, may have been sent to a complete stranger.

Free H1N1 Clinic This Saturday At Jefferson

Just a reminder from Cissy Bowman, Director of Communications for the MTLSD:

The Mt. Lebanon School District is holding a FREE H1N1 Clinic for all members of the Mt. Lebanon community ages 5 and above on Saturday, February 6, 2010, from 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. in the Jefferson Middle School cafeteria at 21 Moffet Street.

Read more: www.mtlsd.org/district/HeadlineArticle.asp?HLP_ID=1342&HL_ID=570#570

Fiddling While Rome Burns?

While the members of the Mt. Lebanon School Board bicker in public about who has been nice to whom (see this post and the comments), a sharp-eyer BL reader sent me a link to the recent USNews survey of the Best Public High Schools in the United States. These surveys are always flawed and biased in some respects (even many respects), but given Mt. Lebanon's proud history and commitment to the schools, it's fair to expect that our schools would show up among the top schools in the region.

Two years ago, USNews included Mt. Lebanon among its "silver" scorers in Allegheny County.

This year, Mt. Lebanon is nowhere to be found. The top scorers in Allegheny County are Mt. Lebanon's perennial public school competition: Upper St. Clair, Fox Chapel, and North Allegheny.

Perhaps someone else can wrangle the data to figure out where Mt. Lebanon has gone off the rails. Or where USNews has gone off the rails, which is entirely possible.

Is the Lebo School Board Out of Control?

The Mt. Lebanon School Board is a runaway train wreck of fiscal irresponsibility. That's the conclusion drawn by School Director James Fraasch, who updated his blog last night with a passionate post about the most recent failures among his Board colleagues.

You should read the whole thing for itself, but the key points seem to be these:

As a member of the Republican Party, James hoped that he could join with his fellow Republicans, who hold a majority of Board seats, to bring fiscal sanity to the District. (James doesn't say that the Democrats on the Board were not interested in fiscal responsibility, but that's implicit in his argument. It's clear that the leading Dems on the Board have been big cheerleaders for a high cost high school renovation project.) Unfortunately, on the whole his fellow Republicans have not listened to reason. They are borrowing and taxing and spending in Mt. Lebanon like there is no tomorrow, and like residents won't notice.

He characterizes the District's reaction to President Obama's speech -- an outright ban in the elementary schools, a strong "don't show it message" delivered to teachers in middle and high schools -- as partisan (Republican) politics at its absolute worst. [Update and clarification: James has edited his post to point out that his objection is specifically directed at the Republican Party's nationwide campaign to discourage broadcasting the speech in schools.]

James is staying in his Board position, but he is walking away from his party. He's an Independent now.

Will this draw any reaction or response? Stay tuned.

Lebo High School Renovation: A Status Update

Regarding the proposed renovation/reconstruction of Mt. Lebanon High School, the following synthesizes what I've heard privately and what I've seen reported in signed comments on other posts on the blog:

The plan to rebuild the high school at a price tag of $115 million, plus additions, extras, overruns, and the usual costs to be determined later, is a done deal as far as the School Board is concerned. There is no plan to have further public input or further public discussion, whether that has to do with the Taylor Report, Republican Party-sponsored surveys, any other surveys, a referendum, blog posts and comments, or anything else. Fasten your seat belts and hang on to your checkbooks, everyone; here we go. I might be wrong about all this; if so, certainly the School District should speak up. Right now, however, plan for the worst but hope for the best.

It likely could not have been and would not have been otherwise, despite some handwringing on this blog and elsewhere. From the beginning, a clear majority of the Board has been unwavering in its commitment to building a big and fancy new building.

My invitation for the District and/or the Board to speak -- here or anywhere else -- is just that: an open invitation. What is weird now -- and what really stands out -- is the fact that the Board today is just silent, absolutely silent, on the question of the future of the high school and of the Mt. Lebanon School District. I'm synthesizing what I've heard; I am not reporting anything that the School Board or District has announced. (The only public decision by the Board was the vote back in June to proceed with planning for a $115 million-level project.) The only School Director who communicates regularly with the public on those questions is James Fraasch, who is well-known to everyone who pays attention to the high school issue as a leading critic of the $115 million plan and who is, I suspect, now widely ignored by his School Board colleagues.

Some current School Boards are running for re-election. Some are not. Both major political parties have submitted challengers for Board seats. I wonder whether the result of the school renovation process will play a role in the outcome of the election. Will people be surprised and angry that they've been handed a $115 million-plus bill? Or surprised and pleased that the board has decided to proceed wth a gleaming new building?

And how is that bill going to be paid, exactly? We still don't know. Where will this money come from? Remarkably, on this point the High School Renovation website is quite explicit: We'll build now and plan to figure out the financing later -- "in a few years" is the precise estimate.

A second weird facet of this outcome is the fact that the teachers themselves have been essentially silent about it. Dave Franklin's comments suggest that no one asked the teachers what they thought about the plans. I don't know anything myself about that. But I do think that if the renovation were going to really make teaching easier and better, we would have heard from teachers themselves that this is a good thing. They would be standing on their desks, cheering. But they're not. I'm inclined to think that the teachers would rather have the construction money, or a big chunk of the construction money, go into education (salaries, new staff, teaching materials). The current teachers' (MLEA) contract expires in June 2010. My guess is that the teachers are keeping their heads down over the high school and hope to be rewarded for loyalty next year.

There are lots of people in Mt. Lebanon -- not just a handful of School Directors -- who are perfectly happy to spend $115 million on a high school. There are other people in Mt. Lebanon who are perfectly happy to defer to the judgment of the elected School Board, even if they would have reached a different outcome on the merits. Obviously, I'm not in the first group. The high school needs a lot of work, but the town doesn't need to start over, and right now, I don't think that it can afford to. And in one of the few times that Dave Franklin and I may disagree somewhat, I'm not comfortably in the second group, either. The process by which the Board came to this conclusion has been so flawed, so opaque, and in many respects so hidden from the citizens of the town [we still don't know what the Board and the architects thought of the Taylor Report, for example] that I really wonder: Is the local, small-town democracy that we want? Or is this the local, small-town democracy that we're stuck with?

The Price of Education

Update: The Pittsburgh Public Schools are on track to invest $85 million in improving the quality of their teaching. Who could have predicted 10 years ago that the city of Pittsburgh would be the talk of the region when it comes to setting the standard for improving public education in Western Pennsylvania? And that Mt. Lebanon would not be?

The original post:

Here's some timely pith from the current New Yorker magazine:

By now, most serious studies on education reform have concluded that the critical variable when it comes to kids succeeding in school isn’t money spent on buildings or books but, rather, the quality of their teachers.

That's neither new nor news. I studied secondary education when I was in college, almost 30 years ago, and even then research showed that the critical variable in educational success was classroom teaching. The School Board? More often part of the problem than part of the solution. The superintendent? Rarely a factor. Changing the superintendent in an underperforming district was (and often is) like hiring a new manager of the Pirates. It's the team that you put on the field that wins ballgames, not the guy calling the signals. In education and in teaching, what counts is who's on the team.

$115 million that we know about and uncounted millions yet to be disclosed will be spent on a new high school facility in Mt. Lebanon.

How much will be spent on hiring and retaining high quality teachers?

All Systems Go for Lebo HS Renovation

From this morning's Post-Gazette roundup of "back to school" news for South Hills districts:

Timothy Steinhauer is new superintendent, replacing John Allison, who left to become superintendent of the Wichita Public Schools in Kansas.

Dr. Steinhauer said his primary focus will be to keep the high school renovation project on track.

In June, the board approved the schematic design and directed architects to move into design and development.

Initial plans have been submitted to the state Department of Education.

The district could see groundbreaking on the project, which is currently projected to cost $114 million, in about a year.

A new safety initiative at the high school this year will have more uniformed officers from the Mt. Lebanon Police Department spending time at the school through an arrangement between the district and police department.

This is an expansion of an already existing relationship between the district and police through which crime prevention officers ran programs and spent time in the school.

Now, crime prevention and other uniformed officers will use an office in the high school during their shifts and in between other duties to be available for questions from students and faculty.

The officers' presence in the high school "will add a level of visibility and added security," high school Principal Ron Davis said in a letter to parents.

Also at the high school, an "Athletes Deck" mentoring program will pair each ninth-grade athlete with an upperclass athlete from the same sport to help with the transition to high school.

At the elementary level, the district will for the first time offer brown bag lunches for sale at each of the seven elementaries. The program was piloted at Lincoln and Washington elementaries last year. It will not impact elementary students who still want to go home for lunch.

Link

Some in the community are under the impression that major decisions remain to be made regarding the type and scope of renovation/reconstruction/new building to be done at the high school.

Based on the above, the superintendent, the School District, and the School Board appear to have made it clear to the news media that this is not the case, that the time for community input has ended, that debate and controversy has ended, and that the ship is being fitted for its maiden voyage. That would be the high-school-as-Queen-Mary-2 to its fans ("the grandest, most magnificent ocean liner ever built"), or the high-school-as-Titanic to its critics ("unsinkable").

The news media, overworked, understaffed and not particularly interested, appear to be happy to accept that story.

Here at the blog, we'll continue to do more.

An Interesting Chart on School District Expenses

Dean Spahr prepared and shared with me an interesting chart that forecasts School District expenditures vs. student population for the next five years or so -- or, in other words, a cost per student" illustration that points out that Mt. Lebanon's "cost per student" is likely to go up, up, and up.

The whole thing can be accessed online here.

A smaller version appears below:



I don't know what his sources and assumptions are. In the comments, I'm sure that he can answer questions.

Real Wonkiness About Financing a HS Renovation

My Pittsblog and University of Pittsburgh colleague Chris Briem has a post up at his Null Space blog today on real but hidden costs of municipal finance:

1. Interest rates in the municipal bond market may be strikingly low, which makes the prospect of the Mt. Lebanon School District borrowing $110 million or $150 million or something other massive sound relatively appealing. Money seems cheap. But bond insurance, which may be a mandatory part of any offering, is expensive and difficult to get, and the bond insurance market is, as Chris has written before, on the brink of collapse. I'm not suggesting that the Mt. Lebanon School District would not be able to float a bond issue, if one were approved by the Board and/or by the voters. But this is a sometimes hidden cost that has to be reckoned with.

2. Super-low Treasury rates mean that public authorities will be seeing less revenue than expected as proceeds of invested tax money decrease to near-zero. Again, I don't know where the School District stands in this regard, but this may be a budget shortfall waiting to happen.

Lebo School District Pension Liabilities

At his blog, School Director James Fraasch recently pointed to the coming dramatic increase in the expected employer contribution rates for PSERS, the state Public School Employees' Retirement System. According to his post:

[A] chart of the expected contribution rates that was put out by PSERS . . . outlines the projected rates of contribution all the way out to the year 2038. According to this chart, the employer contribution rate is scheduled to increase from 4.78 percent for 2009 to 16.40 percent beginning in 2013. That would be a 244% increase.Last year the District spent roughly $2.8 million on these contributions, half of which were reimbursed by the state. In the District budget available online on page 68 you can see how much revenue Mt Lebanon received in reimbursement. Forecasting from today's numbers, a 244% increase would mean our contribution for the 2013 year would be close to $6.8 million of which about $3.4 would be reimbursed by the state.

Though you may have missed it in the crush of year-end stories in the Post-Gazette, the P-G ran a good feature on this problem on December 30. If there is no change in the expected employer contribution rate, school districts that are not in good financial shape already may be crushed by the new rates. There are suggestions in the air for what to do about the problem, but all of the suggestions involve serious sacrifices. The state could require school boards to allocate a certain percentage of their budgets to funding the liabilities; bargaining unit contracts might be negotiated so that new hires are put into defined contribution plans rather than defined benefit plans. Someone, either taxpayers or teachers or both, will be paying for this.

Long excerpts from the P-G:

The burden of coming up with the money will fall on taxpayers, both local and state, making the problem a critical one for school boards and state officials who already are struggling with tight budgets.

This month, PSERS approved an employer contribution rate of 4.78 percent of salaries for 2009-10, only slightly above the current rate of 4.76 percent. Of the employer contribution, about half is paid by school districts, charter schools and other public school entities. The state pays the other half.

Employees' contributions are expected to average 7.32 percent of their salaries in 2009-10. The state and PSERS cannot change the employee contribution rate without granting new benefits, so the shortfall ultimately must be made up by schools and the state.

Current estimates call for the employer rate to increase to 16.4 percent of salaries in 2012-13. But by this time next year, based on stock market trends, the estimate for the employer's 2012-13 rate may exceed 20 percent, Jeffrey Clay, PSERS executive director, cautioned the agency's board.

"We are not funding the benefits earned each year, much less paying the unfunded accrued liability of the system," Mr. Clay told the board this month.

"This is the equivalent of having the mortgage and not paying the principal. The principal gets added to the debt and, of course, interest is charged on top of that," he said.

For school officials in the North Hills, which has an annual budget of about $65 million, the increased share translates into millions of dollars. Currently, the district contributes half of its share of $1.5 million for the PSERS cost, or about $750,000. If the contribution increases to 16 percent of employee salary, Mr. Hall figures the district and state combined share will rise to about $5.8 million, meaning the district's share would be about $2.9 million.
. . .

Some districts -- including Butler Area, North Hills and Quaker Valley -- have nest eggs or forward-looking budgeting that may soften the blow.

But even if districts have set money aside, the high rate is not expected to be a one-year event. The current PSERS forecast put it above 14 percent for at least five years after the spike hits. Some are calling for the Legislature to make changes to avoid or minimize any rate spike in 2012-13.

"I think the Legislature needs to take a look at the fundamental nature of the retirement system. We really can't afford this system going forward as structured," said Tom Gentzel, executive director of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.

Richard Rose, a member of both the PSERS and Bethel Park School District boards, said, "I think something has to be done, but it's out of PSERS' hands to do it."

He suggested the Legislature require schools to follow a state Department of Education recommendation that schools budget more than 7 percent each year for retirement contributions so they can build a reserve to be ready for the rate spike.
. . .

The Association of School Retirees has asked the Internal Revenue Service to review the state's management of PSERS and SERS.

"The escalation of our systems' unfunded accrued liabilities poses a very real danger to the taxpayers of Pennsylvania, who will ultimately be required to contribute much more to our systems in later years to make up for the funds that the systems did not receive from the state and school districts and all that the systems were not able to generate from investment of those contributions," Ureneus V. Kirkwood, president of the retiree association, said in a Dec. 2 letter to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman.

Tom Gentzel expects that PSBA will make a proposal early next year to create a plan that would apply to employees hired after a certain date in the future.

"One of the ideas that we've been drawn to is the idea of some kind of a hybrid plan, a combination of a defined benefit and defined contribution," he said.

It may be time to think about such a plan, he said, because a high number of teachers who are from the baby boom era will be retiring in the coming years, resulting in new hires that could enter a new kind of retirement plan.

The Future of Mt. Lebanon Schools

It is unfortunate that important education issues facing Mt. Lebanon and the Mt. Lebanon School District are bubbling to the public surface at precisely the moment when the attention of most citizens is turning to holiday celebrations.

So, it is all the more important that those of you who read this blog regularly forward this post to your friends and neighbors. The time has come to make some noise. Your School Board has made it clear that it is not interested in critical thinking about the wisest use of your tax dollars or the wisest path towards restoring the educational excellence that all residents of this Municipality should expect.

Here is a brief recap of the events so far:

Well over a year ago, the School Board began investigating options in connection with substantial renovation and/or replacement of the high school campus. As anyone with even a passing familiarity with the high school facility knows, it is in dire need of significant attention, if not necessarily outright replacement.

As the School Board review proceeded, it became clear quickly that even the cheapest comprehensive repair would cost in excess of $100 million, all costs included. That is not money that the School District has in the bank; that is money that would have to be borrowed.

Over the last three months, the international financial system has collapsed. Even before that series of events, it was far from clear that Mt. Lebanon could or should afford to borrow more than $100 million in the near future. The School District already has one of the highest debt levels in the state, and the taxpaying citizens of the Municipality already look at their annual school tax bills with absolute dread. The collapse of international financial markets has made some construction materials cheaper, and it has made borrowing money cheaper -- in some respects. In many other respects, borrowing is more expensive and more harrowing than it was before.

Enter School Director James Fraasch. Back in mid-November, he presented to his Board colleagues the results of his own independent research into the costs of the proposed high school renovation project, along with a proposal to delay the full-scale replacement of the building while simultaneously affordably addressing the most pressing repair issues -- the roof, and the heating system. The purpose of the proposal, which he later made public on his own weblog, was to stimulate Board and public discussion regarding the wisest use of public money in connection with the schools.

For his efforts, James Fraasch was publicly ridiculed by his Board colleagues. That's strike one.

One of those colleagues specifically noted that the financial figures that he used should have been vetted by District accountants and advisors before being released to the public.

At the recent School Board meeting, James Fraasch sought Board support to pursue precisely the action that his colleague criticized him for failing to undertake in the first place. As Bill Matthews notes in a comment to this post, James Fraasch's suggestion that professionals scrutinize his plan was ruled out of order, on procedural grounds. That's strike two.

What is strike three?

Over the last month, I have had conversation after conversation with friends and Mt. Lebanon neighbors about the high school renovation project and the School Board's attitude regarding James Fraasch's proposal. To a soul -- to a soul! -- every single person I have spoken to agrees that the time is right to reconsider the obviously substantial expense associated with the high school renovation project. To a soul, they are outraged that the School Board has reacted with narrow, closed minds to the proposal. The only people to have spoken up publicly in support of the Board are individuals who are personally affiliated with School Directors who have criticized James Fraasch.

Meanwhile, in other but related conversations, twice yesterday I heard from people who reported the tenor of recent conversations involving families who considered moving to Mt. Lebanon but who have chosen not to move here. The once-vaunted reputation of Mt. Lebanon's school system is called into doubt by Upper St. Clair, which already built a new high school, and by reports of drug abuse among Mt. Lebanon high school students.

I don't care much about Upper St. Clair envy, but it bothers me to hear that people are choosing not to move to Mt. Lebanon because they think that the schools aren't worth it. Even among people who don't know about drug problems at the high school (they exist; what wealthy suburban high school doesn't have them?), the consensus among those I talk to is that Mt. Lebanon schools are doing a pretty good job of educating the pretty smart kids. Not the brilliant kids, and not the less than pretty smart kids. For the citizens of Lake Wobegon, where all the kids are above average, the Mt. Lebanon School District is doing just fine.

Houston, we have a problem.

Mt. Lebanon's schools were once the jewel of this town, the reason that families moved here, the reason that they stayed, the reason that property values went up and stayed up, the reason that neighbors and neighborhoods took root and flourished.

Mt. Lebanon's schools still should be all those things. The reality today is that our schools are struggling to do that. The battle over a new high school is an emblem of the problem.

Note that I write that the battle over the high school is an emblem of the problem. The high school facility is not the problem itself. The School District might, in time, find the public support that I believe is now lacking, and build a brand new building over the next couple of years. Problems with the School District and the schools would remain.

Try this exercise.

Suppose that the School District could really borrow $150 million over the next three years. What should it spend that money on? In my hypothetical -- and this is a complete hypothetical, intended only to provoke comment and discussion -- which of these two options is more likely to restore Mt. Lebanon's lustre as a destination for families, as a superior educational alternative to Upper St. Clair, as a vessel of rising real estate values, and as the suburban jewel in Southwestern PA's crown?

One possibility: Spend all of it on a brand new high school campus, with fantastic facilities for educational programs, extracurricular activities, and community functions.

A second possibility: Spend half of it on a modernized and safe high school campus, with facilities that are state of the art for decades worth of educational programming and adequate -- adequate, only -- for a meaningful but focused range of extracurricular activities. Spend the other half on a substantive commitment to excellence in teaching and learning, serving the full range of needs of Mt. Lebanon families. Spend the money on more and better teachers (and better pay for the junior faculty) in core academic areas -- languages, including English; history and the arts; natural science; and social sciences. Spend the money in all of the schools, not just the high school. Ensure fully adequate support for children across the range of ability and achievement, from services for special needs kids to support for kids who are not college-bound to real support for exceptionally talented kids.

Strike three, to me, would be choosing the first option.

Does the high school need a tremendous amount of work? Yes. Does it need to be replaced? In an ideal world, yes. Even in our actual non-ideal world, probably yes again. Does it need to be comprehensively and renovated right now, without recognizing that the real purpose of the School District should be to recover the educational mission that Mt. Lebanon once pursued? I'd like to hear the Board's views and the community's views on that question, without anyone's opinion -- presented civilly -- being ruled "out of order."

"Both" is not an option in my hypothetical universe. Choose one and only one option. What do you think?

A Bad Time to Build?

With the collapse of American financial markets, my friends in New York and DC are telling me that even banks offering good deals -- securities backed by real assets -- are having a difficult time placing them. Investors, and especially foreign investors, are so skeptical of this country that they just aren't buying anything.

The Mt. Lebanon School District is looking at borrowing a massive amount of money in connection with a new or reconstructed high school. Is this the time to borrow? Even if Mt. Lebanon wants to borrow, will it be able to? At a reasonable price? There's no sense in committing to construction if a bond issue is likely to fail. Is there?

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.

Kids in Lebo Schools?

Based on occasional conversations with neighbors and friends, my informal and anecdotal sense these days is that the number of Mt. Lebanon adolescents now attending private schools rather than Mt. Lebanon High School -- not parochial schools, but private schools -- is slowly increasing.

Do others share this sense? Is there data available that might confirm it or discredit it?

And if these numbers are on the rise, the obvious questions are: Why? And why now?

James Fraasch Takes the School Board Online

Mt. Lebanon School Board member James Fraasch has opened a blog -- Lebo School Board Updates -- with the goal of communicating more effectively with members of the community:

Many decisions I make as a School Board member are not easily explainable during a meeting, and besides, most residents and other Board members don't always know what thinking has gone into making a decision or casting a vote a particular way. This blog will attempt to shed light on some of the processes involved in my decision making as well as present information to the public that I have researched in order to come to my decisions.

James is clear that he is speaking entirely for himself and not on behalf of his colleagues on the Board, and not on behalf of the Board as a whole. Still, this is a great step forward! His first long post is about the status of the budget. I'm looking forward to reading more. Welcome to the blogosphere!