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Reprecussions of Proposal A; What do you think?
Topic Started: Nov 21 2006, 06:45 PM (371 Views)
cmic
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So, what do you think. I listened to Freeman rant about Proposal A and it made me think. Is there any merit in his claims? Did we, when we voted in Proposal A, tie the hands of local school districts? Exemplary schools have in the past voted on millages that were able to increase funding for the local schools. Now there isn't that kind of support. In a way, I think it made it so that public schools no longer value the parents/clients in the district because they don't have to "wine/dine them" in order to get the yes vote on millages. Rather now. the opposite seems to be true. No accountability any longer. What are your thoughts?
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fyi
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cmic
Nov 21 2006, 06:45 PM
So, what do you think.  I listened to Freeman rant about Proposal A and it made me think.  Is there any merit in his claims?  Did we, when we voted in Proposal A, tie the hands of local school districts?  Exemplary schools have in the past voted on millages that were able to increase funding for the local schools.  Now there isn't that kind of support.  In a way, I think it made it so that public schools no longer value the parents/clients in the district because they don't have to "wine/dine them" in order to get the yes vote on millages.  Rather now. the opposite seems to be true.  No accountability any longer. What are your thoughts?

I'm thinking the way the current system is set up they should want to please parents even more than before Proposal A. LPS is doing just the opposite---biting the hand that feeds them.

I think he said Proposal A is keeping young families from moving into Livonia. I'm not sure though......he was rambling a bit.....kind of hard to follow.

http://z14.invisionfree.com/Hull_Neighbors...?showtopic=2274
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NFarquharson
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I voted against Proposal A back in the early 90's long before I even thought about marriage and kids. From my perspective at that time, Proposal A put limits on property taxes and replaced those funds by increasing the sales tax and throwing in an increase in cigarette tax to make it look good. Sales taxes have a much bigger impact on the lowest income citizens...those that cannot even afford to buy property and who are unable to invest and save, but must spend all of their income to get by. I was a very new property owner at the time and had just succeeded in getting my SEV lowered by the state tax tribunal, ao nobody hated property taxes more than I did, but I also knew that it was wrong to shift to a higher sales tax and put more burden on lower income people.

At the time, I never really thought much about the impact on schools and I don't think many other people thought about that either.
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mikefromholland
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The Holland board and administration always made a big fuss about Proposal A.

There is some merit to the complaints. (I don't know exactly what your board member said, so I can't comment on his viewpoint. I mean the complaints raised here in Holland.)

Proposal A prevents districts from raising local funds by millages for operating expenses. Millages can only be used for capital improvements. Holland's budget was devastated -- before the district itself bungled things and made them even worse -- by a combination of factors that included the recession (which reduced and eventually stopped increases in per pupil revenues) and the high concentration of charter schools in the area. As I understand it, Livonia has only one charter school and it has around 400 enrollment, which is barely 2 percent of LPS enrollment. Holland has 3 charter schools, with total enrollment of about 1800 or 1900, which is nearly 40 percent of HPS enrollment.

The district in Holland also claims a 3rd factor, "we are an aging community," which I have seen repeated in posts on this forum about Livonia. In Holland this is quite untrue -- or at least it was until recently when 3 years of focus schools provided a huge disincentive for families with school-age and preschool-age children to move into Holland. The trend in Holland -- which was evident from about an hour's worth of digging into the 2000 U.S. Census database -- was for a major increase in the entering kindergarten population. Sadly we squandered much of this impact with the focus schools.

In the "old days" before Proposal A, our district could have gone to the voters and requested a millage to maintain programs and neighborhood schools. Maybe it would have passed, maybe not, but our community would have had the option of voting to make the decision. Proposal A prevents this. If we lose 100 kids, that's $700,000 in revenue, every year.

Well, Holland lost over 300 kids between 1995 and 2002. That's when the district panicked and started making abrupt decisions without a meaningful strategic plan and with no community input. The result of this was losing over 700 more kids in the last 4 years.

So yes, for districts with certain characteristics (landlocked, few new housing developments, older population, high concentration of charter schools) Proposal A is especially devastating. It hurts nearly all districts, though, by removing local control and replacing it with money siphoned through Lansing.

That's my opinion, and I'd like to hear some others. In the near future, I will post on this forum an alternative "tweaking" of Proposal A that will remove what I feel is currently an incentive to districts to close neighborhood schools and create megaschools and narrow grade level schools. I can pretty much guarantee that had my proposal been in place already, Holland would never have switched to focus schools, and Livonia would never have adopted the LI in its current form. (So hold your breath and wait in anticipation...)
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cmic
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I'd be interested in hearing the "tweaked" version. I'm surprised that more people don't have opinions on whether state control or city control is better for the school districts and our children.
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mikefromholland
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cmic
Nov 22 2006, 03:02 PM
I'd be interested in hearing the "tweaked" version.  I'm surprised that more people don't have opinions on whether state control or city control is better for the school districts and our children.

This is the $64,000 question. It is interesting to see how this issue cuts across "traditional" party lines and conservative vs liberal ideologies. Proposal A was a property and income tax cut (conservatives loved it) combined with a sales tax increase (so really a tax shift) which replaced local control of revenues with state control (a liberal "big government" idea -- send your money away to Lansing and let them decide how to best redistribute it).

Remember how it passed? The democratic controlled legislature and Engler basically dared each other to change the property tax school funding system -- and to each side's surprise, the other side actually did it! Compromises were struck so that wealthy districts with a high tax base got more per pupil than poor districts. Over time this was to equalize more and more, but I'll bet Grosse Pointe and Bloomfield Hills still get more than Livonia. Livonia still gets more than Holland -- we get about $7200 or $7400 per student.

Almost everyone loved it at the time because property taxes were viewed as out of control. It wasn't till the recession hit about 2000-2001 and sales tax revenues started to fall that the side effect of funding schools with sales taxes (much more variability) rather than property taxes (more stable) became apparent.

My personal opinion is that changing or tweaking Proposal A to give more local control back to districts is a non-starter, a political impossibility. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just that it would never pass the legislature or the voters. Opponents would run a successful negative campaign using the same strategy used to defeat Proposal 5 earlier this month -- "your taxes will go up," "the teachers' union will use its power to push weak school boards around," etc.

My "tweak" does not change the basic funding mechanism of state control through Lansing. It modifies the formula by which the amount is determined. Like I said, stay tuned, details will follow ...
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Livonia Voter
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mikefromholland
Nov 22 2006, 03:34 PM
cmic
Nov 22 2006, 03:02 PM
I'd be interested in hearing the "tweaked" version.  I'm surprised that more people don't have opinions on whether state control or city control is better for the school districts and our children.

This is the $64,000 question. It is interesting to see how this issue cuts across "traditional" party lines and conservative vs liberal ideologies. Proposal A was a property and income tax cut (conservatives loved it) combined with a sales tax increase (so really a tax shift) which replaced local control of revenues with state control (a liberal "big government" idea -- send your money away to Lansing and let them decide how to best redistribute it).

Remember how it passed? The democratic controlled legislature and Engler basically dared each other to change the property tax school funding system -- and to each side's surprise, the other side actually did it! Compromises were struck so that wealthy districts with a high tax base got more per pupil than poor districts. Over time this was to equalize more and more, but I'll bet Grosse Pointe and Bloomfield Hills still get more than Livonia. Livonia still gets more than Holland -- we get about $7200 or $7400 per student.

Almost everyone loved it at the time because property taxes were viewed as out of control. It wasn't till the recession hit about 2000-2001 and sales tax revenues started to fall that the side effect of funding schools with sales taxes (much more variability) rather than property taxes (more stable) became apparent.

My personal opinion is that changing or tweaking Proposal A to give more local control back to districts is a non-starter, a political impossibility. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just that it would never pass the legislature or the voters. Opponents would run a successful negative campaign using the same strategy used to defeat Proposal 5 earlier this month -- "your taxes will go up," "the teachers' union will use its power to push weak school boards around," etc.

My "tweak" does not change the basic funding mechanism of state control through Lansing. It modifies the formula by which the amount is determined. Like I said, stay tuned, details will follow ...


The big plus from Proposal A, is that it stopped the BOE's from using the property owners as thier own private money tree. Why bargin hard with the unions, or make hard cuts when you can just call up more money. Of course, anyone opposing the increase was labled as "not caring about the kids". It was also common to see the same increase brought back up over and over again until they got it to pass. Kids would come home asking if there parents were voting for the milage, or did they not care. Taylor was a prime example.

However, an easy way to fix Proposal A would simply allow an additional increase, but allow only 1 vote per year, and require a super majority for it to pass (say 60%).

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cmic
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At this point I wish it hadn't passed because they would not get another cent from us as taxpayers until things changed. The majority would have a say instead of the BOE not caring about us.
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mikefromholland
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Nov 22 2006, 06:04 PM

The big plus from Proposal A, is that it stopped the BOE's from using the property owners as thier own private money tree.  Why bargin hard with the unions, or make hard cuts when you can just call up more money.  Of course, anyone opposing the increase was labled as "not caring about the kids".  It was also common to see the same increase brought back up over and over again until they got it to pass.  Kids would come home asking if there parents were voting for the milage, or did they not care.  Taylor was a prime example.

However, an easy way to fix Proposal A would simply allow an additional increase, but allow only 1 vote per year, and require a super majority for it to pass (say 60%).

The fix you describe does restore a mechanism for some local control. I'm not sure that it would have enough political support to pass the legislature or to pass in a ballot referendum.

My impression of many Proposal A supporters is that they would be unwilling to allow any mechanism for a community to take back some power over its own district's budget.

My impression of many Proposal A opponents is that they would view the change as a meaningless gesture -- it's very difficult to get a 60% supermajority on any issue, certainly not on a millage or tax issue -- and see no benefit occurring as a result of this.

But that is, of course, my opinion...
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Grant1
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We have just begun to fight!
OK Mike...you got us hangin here waiting... ;)

What is the tweak that could work?
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mikefromholland
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Grant1
Nov 22 2006, 07:56 PM
OK Mike...you got us hangin here waiting...  ;)

What is the tweak that could work?

Don't expect too much from my proposal.

It doesn't restore local control. (Too many people in Lansing are unwilling to give this up.)

It doesn't provide more money for schools. (A politically dead option. All the opponents would need to do would be to rerun the anti-Proposal 5 advertising.)

It merely reshuffles the way money is allocated to districts (initially in a "revenue neutral" way just like the original Proposal A formula) to break the link between district BOEs acting in their apparent financial self-interest to the detriment of the communities and neighborhoods they serve. In other words, it removes the incentive for a BOE to say, "We did what we felt allowed us to provide the best education but we couldn't be concerned about the side effects on the community because that's not what we are responsible for..."

Here is a rough outline of the proposal. Many of the details and numbers are intentionally vague or subject to modification.

Each district's foundation grant, which is currently allocated on a per student basis, will be divided into 2 pieces.

One piece, the larger part, will continue to be allocated per student. However, it will be less than the dollar amount currently. I will explain how it will be figured shortly.

The other piece, the smaller part, will be a facility operating allocation. It will be allocated per grade level among district facilities. For example, Holland currently has four K-3 schools (16 grade levels), one 4-5 school (2 grade levels), one 6-8 school (3 grade levels), one K-8 school (9 grade levels), and one 9-12 school (4 grade levels). This is a total of 34 grade levels among district facilities. I'm going to suggest an amount of $50,000 per grade level (could be changed). In Holland, this would result in a $1.7 million allocation.

Now back to the first piece, the per pupil allocation. Holland currently gets about $7200 per pupil and has about 4700 enrollment, which is $33.84 million. To keep the new proposal revenue neutral, this will be reduced by the amount of the facility allocation ($1.7 million) to give a total of $32.14 million. Divide by the 4700 enrollment to get a per pupil allocation of $6,838.

One of the many clever people who contribute to this forum can run the numbers for Livonia. Count the grade levels, multiply by $50,000, subtract that total from the total foundation grant currently, and recalculate the district's per pupil foundation grant.

So these will be the base year foundation grant allocations for Holland:
34 grade levels times $50,000 = $1.7 million
4700 students times $6,838 = $32.14 million

Every year when the state legislature does the education budget, they can decide on the amount of change in either one of these allocations. Let's say they decide next year to give a 1 percent increase in the facility allocation and a 1.5 percent increase in the pupil allocation. Then next year, Holland would get $50,500 per grade level and $6,941 per student. Etc., etc.

It works very much like the current system from a budgeting standpoint, both at the state legislature level and at the district BOE level. But here is what is hugely different. The financial cost savings incentive in closing schools outright is eliminated or reduced, and the incentive in reorganizing into narrow grade level systems with multiple transitions like the LI or Holland's focus schools is similarly reduced.

To prove this to yourself, do the facility grade level count pre-LI and post-LI. Multiply the difference by $50,000. You should observe that the amount of LI "savings" claimed by the district will be greatly reduced or even vanished.

In Holland, pre-focus schools, we had eight K-5 schools (48 grade levels), two 6-8 schools (6 grade levels), and one 9-12 school (4 grade levels). This was a total of 58 grade levels.

The focus schools had two K-1 schools (4 grade levels), two 2-3 schools (4 grade levels), two 4-5 schools (4 grade levels), two 6-8 schools (6 grade levels), and one 9-12 school (4 grade levels). This was a total of 22 grade levels.

Under my proposal, Holland would have lost $1.8 million in facility allocation by making the switch to focus schools (36 grade level reduction times $50,000). There is no way our BOE would have ever made this decision, initially projected to save $1.2 million in operating costs per year, knowing that the immediate consequence would have been a $1.8 million reduction in state revenues.

From a logical standpoint, the grade level facility allocation does the following. It provides (in rough numbers) the overhead cost of running a school building facility. Therefore a district BOE no longer has an incentive to cut costs by closing neighborhood schools or constructing bizarre (IMO) grade level organizational systems. In fact, districts have an incentive to widen grade spans, since a K-8 school gets more money than a K-6 school than a K-4 school, etc.

OK, that's the proposal, at least a bare bones sketch of it. For this to be written as realistic legislation, obviously there would have to be lots of rules and guidelines and definitions, and other factors to come into play. Feel free to make comments and suggestions, keeping in mind that I may say, "oh, I thought of that and here's how a rule or guideline would define the situation to keep it from happening..."

This is the first public written posting of this idea. I verbally bounced it off one neighborhood friend, a few school board members, and the superintendent at Holland's BOE meeting last Monday. The super was interested enough to ask me to send him a copy of the proposal, which I haven't done yet. Livonianeighbors.com got it first!

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Administrator
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Thats a lot to chew on Mike! It will make a nice appetizer for the Thanksgiving weekend :lol: Thanks for the "food for thought! :lol: Happy Thanksgiving!!
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mikefromholland
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Happy Thanksgiving to you Jimid and to all the contributors to Livonianeighbors.com and all the residents of your community! :)
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Grant1
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We have just begun to fight!
Thanks Mike

We will try to put your insight to the best use for all the kids.

Have a good Holiday!
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