Sycamore Taxpayer

Schools ‘deficit spending’ explodes in the future
Solution: “… shift more of the burden to community members”

                                                        C H A R T

The long term financial condition of the Sycamore School District mimics the national economic and financial crisis.

Total spending exceeds revenue in each of the five forecasted years creating growing deficit spending. See chart. The cash reserve will decline from $40M in FY2010 to $24M by the end of FY2015. Ref. May, 2011 Five Year Forecast. (Note: The October, 2011 five year forecast reduced the previously predicted cash reserve (line 15.010) from $24M to $22 million in FY2015 and forecasts a $14 million cash reserve in FY2016.)

Efficiency improvement (cost reduction) is not the focus of this public school system. It is ignoring declining home values, increasing property taxes, loss of retiree investment income and security, high unemployment, etc.

The recent State of the District message by the board president Diane Adamec, superintendent A. James, and treasurer did not address the long term financial crisis facing the district. It was “a look back at the past year and celebrate some of the many accomplishments.”

Apparently they don’t view growing deficit spending as a problem and just assume that taxpayers will continue to pay higher taxes without a serious attempt by the school to become more efficient and fiscally conservative.

‘There’s still some denial out there’ Rob Portman said. ‘Some people aren’t willing to accept the severity of our problems.’

Our current board president Diane Adamec ignored then denied a resident’s request for an independent performance audit, but they brag about delaying a tax levy for another year. Ref. Sycamore schools: We’re keeping our ‘no levy’ promise. 9/28/11 NSL

They did not mention the financial prospects beyond 2013.

Saying, “The Board continued its commitment to control costs by meeting its financial parameters,” is misleading. Nevertheless given the state of the long term economic and financial crisis, those parameters are irresponsible in today’s environment and must be changed.

There was no mention of the steady decline in student enrollment of 1000 students from 6200 over a decade ago to about 5200 today.

This downward trend in enrollment does not call for new construction.
New and rebuilt buildings are very questionable when enrollment has declined by 15 percent.

Confusion about long term staffing levels still exists in my mind. The actual impact of the force reduction on total staffing is also unclear. Whether staffing levels declined in proportion to the enrollment decline is yet to be answered.

Our superintendent mentioned many achievements, while omitting the fact that 86 other Ohio districts also received the same Excellent with Distinction label. Having 353 districts rated excellent and excellent with distinction out of 613 districts raises questions about the validity of the rating system.  

No reference was made to the record breaking teacher salaries and benefits. The top paid teacher this year will make $91,857 for just nine months work while last year’s median income in this area was $47,867. And they claim it’s all for the kids.

The board’s and administration’s attitude seems to be one of giving lip service to becoming an efficient school system. After all, this is a wealthy, low tax rate community. They seem to be proud of spending $14,733 per student in FY2010 which is at the 97^th percentile of all Ohio districts.