Post in $60M School Referendum Proposal

May 16 00:05 UTC

I'm not sure what you are using to draw your conclusions about how the
referendum dollar amount was determined but perhaps as a member of the
citizen's Steering Committee involved with developing the campaign, I can
provide some insight for those interested.

Pricing, which is essentially what this exercise is, is a two-part process.
There is one side of determining how much something actually costs and there
is the other where how much people are willing to pay.

In this case, members of our Steering Committee including myself worked
closely with the district leadership team to define what it was we believed
we should support with the levy referendum. That leadership team included
the district's CFO, the Chief Academic Officer, the Chief of Operations, and
the Superintendent to name a few. As you may understand, the levy is only 7
percent of the total budget. So what we can do with this amount is rather
limited. The last levy was dedicated solely to managing class sizes. If we
wanted to get to the class sizes in 2000, it was determined that the levy
referendum would have to be more than $60 million. However, that was
coincidental in the process. We agreed that with the development of the
Strategic Plan, that expectations were raised and we needed to determine
what it would cost to fulfill these expectations.

If you recall from the survey, you were asked about different levels,
including $30 million which is the level we're at but would require
continued reductions in services, $45 million which would allow some of the
elements of the strategic plan to be implemented in some of the schools, $60
million, which would allow implementation of elements of the strategic plan
in about half of the schools, $75 million, which would allow full
implementation of elements of the strategic plan on schedule, and $90
million which would allow an accelerated implementation.

Through the polling process, we found high levels of support for all levy
amounts. Actually, the lowest level of public acceptability was for the $30
million level. The public recognizes that there is a need beyond the current
level and were least willing to accept the same-o same-o.

Then along the issue of class size. The more we had conversations with
parents and teachers, the more we acknowledged that class size is too
important an issue to not include. The fact is, about three-fourths of the
district's operating costs are in teachers salaries and benefits. Regardless
of what we do with the levy amount, a large portion of the dollars
inevitably get to the classroom in the form of teachers' wages and benefits.

But what we believed we needed to explicitly acknowledge was that we would
maintain the commitment to class size relative to where we are today. So we
made it clear, rather than implicit, that class sizes would receive half of
the referendum dollars.

The delicate balance of pricing came down to selecting an amount that fits
the appetite of the populace. And it needed to be done with a as much risk
as the district was willing to accept. With every dollar we go up in
pricing, the more of a challenge it would be to gain approval.

There's a follow up caveat to this pricing decision. We have been working to
place this investment in public education in context. Today, our levy of
about $30 million translates to about $535 per student resident in
Minneapolis. The state law permits districts to tax themselves at a rate of
$1,472. This is supposed to equalize local communities, with the recognition
that the state government through its constitution is supposed to pay for
the lions share of education. It is supposed to provide the basic needs and
provides districts with a limited ability to "put some frosting on the cake"
so to speak. The $535 per student resident (which are all the kids of school
age living in the district's geographic boundaries, regardless of where they
attend school) means that as a city, we are taxing ourselves 39% of what is
permissible. What's most relevant about that figure, however, is how it
compares to surround school districts.

I performed an analysis, with the district's support in sourcing the data,
of the surrounding districts, and was especially interested in those
districts where a lot of Minneapolis residents are leaving the district to
attend. Minneapolis looses at least 100 students to each of the following
districts. Here is what their level of support is per student resident, in
rank order of their support through local property tax referendums:

 ST. ANTHONY-NEW BRIGHTON $1,985
 WAYZATA  $1,609
 ST. LOUIS PARK $1,561
 HOPKINS  $1,552
 EDINA  $1,505
 RICHFIELD  $1,100
 BLOOMINGTON  $991
 COLUMBIA HTS  $879
 ROBBINSDALE  $848
 OSSEO  $842

What is interesting about these figures is twofold. One, There are five
districts that already exceed the state limit. So comparing Minneapolis' tax
support to the state limit understates the competitive disadvantage
Minneapolis Public Schools is operating at with regards local funding.The
second insight is that it's niot just simply "rich" communities" that
significantly out-invest Minneapolis in their support of public education.
Going from a $30 million to a $60 million levy would place Minneapolis just
above Richfield in this ranking. So we'd be just in the middle pack, and not
in the upper tier.

I hope this provides some perspective on the factors that were used to set
the $60 million mark. It is clearly less than the district needs to fully
implement the strategic plan, but it seems to be what is within the
realistic appetite of potential supporters. We recognize that the 73 percent
approval of the levy in 2000 was considered a success, but we felt we needed
to be more aggressive and even more realistic than pricing based on the
survey results, which is essentially what was done in the year 2000.

Sorry for such a long post, but this forum does not permit for repeated
posts like other forums so I wanted to be sure to get as much out there for
people to understand with the chance I had today.

For any more specific questions or concerns please feel free to contact me
off line. Otherwise, I'll track responses here. And I'm literally in the
process of writing the content of the web site, so please feel free to visit
www.StrongSchoolsStrongCity.org.