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WPCNR’s The Sunday Bailey. News Comment By John F. Bailey. July 8, 2007: Now the new Board of Education is going to be installed Monday evening. Now that we know Superintendent of Schools Timothy Connors has informed the school district he intends to depart his position in two years, it is not too early to be thinking about what kind of School Superintendent the district will need. And the debacle he will inherit.
Few can argue that Connors has been a decisive, politically astute leader, persuading the district parents (because that is who votes in school board elections and bond referendums) to take on the mammoth $69 Million Capital Improvements Project which begins in earnest this week. He has kept the wolves at bay on the achievement gap in White Plains by at least getting the tedious bureaucracy of the district to focus seriously on the district’s Hispanic and African-American population of which about little more than half can read proficiently, write and do basic math when they enter high school. That may sound harsh, but that is what the statistics show.
On the other hand, how much more improvement can the district make if they do not address the language problem facing the Hispanic community by not hiring and installing bilingual education in the lower grades? The African-American academic achievement gap is another problem. When parents are involved children learn regardless of their race or creed or background. The district makes valiant attempts to do that, but need to do more. Mount Vernon improved their dismal performances by literally dragging parents into the education process.
However the overriding issue facing the next Superintendent of Schools is the budget. As reported here by WPCNR yesterday, the city blithely continues to rollover for certiorari suits by businesses that are the premier properties in town, continuing to erode the tax base on which the school district taxes for the balance of its budget. The city continues to bet the taxpayer’s wellbeing on development, while agreeing to tax givebacks and assessment reductions based on owner numbers which when you think about have to be contrived via accounting creativity. How can buildings sold in a thriving downtown be assessed for less? But try and prove it. The city continues the certiorari givebacks and the school district continues to go along with them.
School taxes that traditionally have made White Plains attractive in the real estate market are going to have to rise about 10% a year to sustain the current level of district spending – which was brought to its lowest increase level in a decade this year but still 7% — double inflation. Actually 8% if you look at your tax bill.
The new Superintendent will face a budget that is out of control in a district that shows little heart for reining in spending.
The present Superintendent made very token inroads on the teacher salary structure limiting the year to year contract salary increase to 3%, and negotiating token increase in what teachers pay for their health insurance. And he has to negotiate that again this year since it is a one-year contract. The portion teachers pay of their health benefits has to go up to trim the 10% increase in health benefits costs that continue to afflict the district. The negotiations have to begin with overhauling the structure. You have to lower starting salaries, and revamp the step levels (for degrees) for new teachers being hired into the system to assure the long term health of the district. It is easy to say this, hard to negotiate, but for too long the district has paid such generous salaries compared to other districts that when shown the White Plains schedules, teachers drop their jaws in disbelief. I know, I’ve showed the salary and step schedule around.
The relationships in the district between White Plains administration and teachers have always been so cordial and mutually symbiotic. Two thirds of the budget goes to salaries for teaching and administrating. One could argue that a spirit of mutual cooperation where administration and teaching professionals work together is great for the district. But, the district, thanks to the city fiscal mismanagement of the tax roll, especially the last eight years, can no longer afford business as usual.
The new Superintendent taking over 24 months from now will also have to deal with the very secret process of the District Strategic Plan – in which action plans are being devised for presentation to the Board of Education this fall without any public airing to date. But who knows what those action plans are? The goals are generic. Not lower budget to inflation levels. Not attrit staff by 10%. Things like that Are they even discussed?
Specifics have not been divulged, and oddly enough there has been no public recognition by the Strategic Planners (most of whom are school district employees) of the financial plight of the district and how to address it.
Creating a strategic plan with goals of a lofty variety that do not engage the issues threatening effective efficient, economic education of our youth in the face of a plummeting tax base is wishful thinking. It’s living in wonderland.
Creating a strategic plan for a decade without coming to grips with the deteriorating buildings at Highlands and Eastview and George Washington School – in the face of cross-your-fingers population estimates based only on birth rate every year – is ignoring reality. The district is at the limits of what it can handle now.
Creating a strategic plan for a decade without coming to grips with the question of why we need to do $17 Million of infrastructure improvements the next two years when we supposedly have been spending $3 Million a year for building upkeep begs the question – how good is the fiscal plant maintenance year to year that is in place now? You have to ask those questions in any strategic plan. If you’re maintaining yearly, you should not have to upgrade $17 million-dollars worth in one crippling debt blow.
These are old schools, too. How long will they last? Where will the new school buildings come from to handle our gradually increasing population?
The fact that the Strategic Plan is going to be laid on the Board of Education who will tweak it – with their usual rubber stamp – worries any thinking person.
The public needs to see those specifics. If they care. The City School District is essentially where they were five years ago when they dismissed the previous Superintendent, but the financial pressure has increased substantially. It is running out of money sources. If the district leaders do not recognize that they are creating a taxing disaster which will cripple the district for years and the quality of our education more than they will ever realize, the fate is sealed. The taxpayer will be bailing out for years to come.
That is the situation the new Superintendent faces in two years. Should the architects and construction firms executing the Capital Improvements Project execute their projects well and on time, the new Superintendent will have a little time to come in and make some fixes. If, the architects and construction firms screw up the projects, which occurred royally on the White Plains High School seven years ago by the same architects – the new Superintendent will be facing a real mess and an angry public.
It is imperative that in his final two years Superintendent Connors not let the Capital Improvements Project flounder on construction snafus. He cannot tolerate fumbles by the contractors and the architects on these jobs at Mamaroneck Avenue School, and Post Road School that delay and drive up costs.
On the academic side, one wonders, short of bringing in a bilingual education effort which the district is experimenting with next year – an English Spanish class where students are instructed half in English and half in Spanish – how serious they are at addressing the bilingual need. Port Chester has for years been able to handle their Spanish speaking population with a bilingual program. The White Plains Board of Education was told that by this reporter five years ago, and now thanks to Mr. Connors leadership they are beginning to see the light. Whether the administration will expand on this initiative to teach children of Hispanic descent bilingually is a fundamental part of Strategic Planning and what the new Superintendent will have to address. Are they evening doing that? We don’t know because the district planners are not talking.
The new Superintendent will have to be chosen not on the basis of can he or she get along and schmooze, but can he or she lead. Mr. Connors, though we have not always felt he has moved hard and fast enough has taken decades of laissez-faire management in this district and has started to turn this very large bloated supertanker around out of the shoals, even though it is leaking red ink and billing the taxpayer for it.
Above all – just like the City of White Plains – the School district needs a manager type like Mr. Connors, who will be given the charge to trim this district’s operating costs; negotiate a teaching salary structure which over time will keep labor costs at the inflationary rate instead of built in raises that bloat the payroll automatically every year. I am not saying you have to eliminate step increases. I am saying you have to stretch them out, negotiate them down – for new teachers being hired. Otherwise things are not going to change. And attack those benefit payments. They are way out of line with the private sector.
The new Superintendent is going to have to trim administration personnel. We have far too many administrators. Attrition after persons leave the district has to be looked at more seriously than it is. The district currently employs one person for every teacher. That needs to be looked at very closely, and attrition strongly considered.
If the Board of Education simply sends out for the usual suspects in searching for the new Superintendent, White Plains will get more of the same. But look for double digit tax increases every year from city and schools.
But, of course, it is contingent on any strategic planning that the school board recognize they have a problem and that they will hire a person with the intelligence, creativity and toughness to fix it.
Connors will be with the district two more years. He can continue to lay the groundwork for a strong district position by going hard on keeping school district budgets down the next two years. He can craft a new teacher payment schedule for new teachers, whether that is possible legally, I am not sure, but it is the easiest solution. White Plains is the district every teacher wants to teach in because it is so good. To protect it and keep it that way, the district needs to look hard at their costs, salaries, personnel management and what they are doing with present operating income.
Fred Seiler, Assistant Superintendent for Business, could be a good man to consider for the job. He may not have Connors’ charisma to sell a project or a position, but he knows the numbers. But whoever is selected to be the new White Plains Superintendent of Schools, he or she has to know the numbers to save the White Plains City School District as we know it.
And, please, could we know what the strategic plan is going to attempt to do before the Board of Education rubber stamps it?
