Board Notes

There was an interesting story in today’s (June 9, 2010) Star Tribune on the Minneapolis School Board’s approval of a contract for its superintendent.

The board approved a three year contract with new Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson that will pay her a base salary of $190,000 per year starting July 1. The Minneapolis school district has a student enrollment of about 32,000.

Elsewhere, that story notes that the St. Paul School District superintendent (enrollment 38,000) right now gets $180,000 per year, with a one percent bump coming January 1.

Compare that to the annual salary paid to Farmington School District superintendent Brad Meeks who will get $176,000 per year starting September 1. He gets $172,000 per year right now. FYI, the Farmington district enrollment is a tad over 6,400 students.

Something seems a bit out of whack here.

Now, base salaries are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to superintendents’ pay envelopes. For instance, that Minneapolis super can also earn up to an additional $30,000 per year in bonuses. Then again, Farmington super Meeks can earn an extra $9,000 per year in bonuses.

The Minneapolis super will get a $400 monthly car allowance. But Meeks get a $600 monthly car allowance.

There are also lots of opportunities for the Farmington super to cash out unused sick, vacation and personal leave days worth up to several thousand dollars each year.

It you’re interested, take a look at the Farmington superintendent’s actual contract and see how many different ways you can count that he gets money and benefits from the school district (i.e., taxpayers).

Here’s the part I like best. If the superintendent quits his job here to take a job someplace else (for instance, the job in Iowa for which he was a finalist a few weeks ago), we have to pay him 25 percent of his base annual salary. We pay him to quit. A lovely parting gift as they say on those TV game shows. He’d get more to quit than many teachers in the school district earn annually.

If he retires, or the school board decides not to renew his contract, we have to pay him 50 percent of his base annual salary. Happy trails.

Who wouldn’t want to be a Farmington school superintendent?

Curiously, final passage of the Farmington school district’s 2010-2011 school year budget is on the agenda for the board meeting tomorrow (May 24) evening.

Curious because the budget doesn’t have to be passed until the end of June. Last year the budget was voted on at the final board meeting in June, the 22nd.

No explanation to board members on the timing of the budget vote was provided to board members with the information packet distributed to board members at 4:05 p.m. Thursday afternoon. The board chair and superintendent set the agenda, so I’m guessing this was the superintendent’s idea.

Whether this early vote on the budget is tied to the recent uprising among a growing number of parents concerned about class sizes is unclear. But I think that’s a reasonable guess.

Some of those parents have suggested that salaries of top district officials are too high and that the district’s administration is top heavy. Some of those parents have done some very good research to compare Farmington to other area school districts that support that contention.

District 192—Farmington
Enrollment: 6,400
6% goes towards administration
Superintendent salary: $176,000 (to $180,000 next year)

District 194—Lakeville
Enrollment: 11,084
4.2% goes toward administration
Superintendent salary: $183,000 (look at the difference in our enrollment)

District 719—Prior Lake
Enrollment: 7,100
4% goes toward administration
Superintendent salary: $153,000

District 199—Inver Grove Heights
Enrollment: 3,867
3.5% goes toward administration
Superintendent: $ ? (still waiting)

District 882—Monticello
Enrollment: 3,940
2.3% goes toward administration
Superintendent  $133,683

District 15—St Francis
Enrollment: 5,300
3% to administration
Superintendent: $144,929

District 200—Hastings
Enrollment: 5,000
3.15% to administration
Superintendent:  $160,750

District 720—Shakopee
Enrollment: 6,800
7.1% to administration
Superintendent: $143,000

District 191—Burnsville/Eagan/Savage
Enrollment: 10,000
7.6% to administration
Superintendent: $180,000 (big difference in enrollment here too)

Note: the comparison districts match those chosen by the Farmington district finance director’s choice of district in budget presentations this spring. Compiled by Farmington Elementary School parent Tera Lee.

Come the Monday board meeting, after the budget presentation by staff and board discussion, I will make a motion to table final budget action until the last board meeting of June. I’d be surprised if that motion succeeds—but it might get three votes, not enough to table but enough to block budget passage if those three votes hold on the final passage vote.

The budget material that has been provided to board members (and the public) in advance of the scheduled Monday night budget vote is linked here:

2010-2011 Preliminary Budget presentation (pdf)
2010-2011 Preliminary Budget Document (pdf)

UPDATE: Sunday afternoon Supt. Meeks responded to email from another board member questioning the timing of the budget vote.  Here is his response to that board member and copied to the rest of the board:

If the board requires more time to act on the 2010-11 budget on Monday that will be their decision. From the administration’s perspective, the budget parameters and assumptions we have been sharing with the board and public for several months have not changed in a significant manner either through legislative action or board direction. In addition, there was a special board budget session on April 26 to review the budget and receive public input.

Yes, the deadline for a budget to be approved is June 30. The administration has not intended to imply that this means the board won’t approve until the June 28th board meeting. I believe previous boards have approved the budget prior to the last meeting in June. For further consideration, it is good to have the budget approved prior to the teachers’ and support staff’s final work day.

The administration feels that the 2010-11 budget is ready for board action.  However, if the board needs more time, that is fine.

Thanks
Brad

About 20 parents turned out Monday night at the Farmington Elementary School (FES) PTP meeting.  Some were FES parents, but half or more were parents from other Farmington grade schools concerned about the current projected class sizes in their buildings next school year.

They were invited by the FES PTP to hear from school district administrators on the class size issue. The discussion went for more almost two hours. (Some of the parents at the FES PTP meeting were also at the last school board meeting expressing the same concerns. See the Powerpoint presentation by district finance director Jeff Priess here and watch the board meeting video here to see comments by parents [38 minutes into the recording], board members and staff [1:19:45 into the recording].)

The Farmington school district has a policy (Policy IOA – Management of Elementary Class Size) which sets target class sizes. For Kindergarten through Second Grade, the target class size is 20 – 25. Current projections are that all second grade classes in all five Farmington elementary schools will be higher than 25 students per classroom.

At North Trail Elementary School (NTES), the current projection is 31-32 student per classroom. At FES, that number is 28. The other three buildings project 26 or 27 students per classroom.

Parents are particularly concerned about those NTES and FES numbers. District Superintendent Brad Meeks says fluctuating students counts through the spring and summer will be taken into consideration and that the district needs time to finalize the number of teachers hired so as not to over staff as has happened in the past. He says that can happen late in the summer.

He explained that the staffing procedure the district is following now is no different than what has been done for the past several years in the district and is laid out in the district policy. He said that teacher allotments are made to each building based on a 1 teacher-to-25 students ratio for the entire building and that building principals have leeway to use those staffing positions as they see fit, with oversight from the district administration.

Parents are concerned though, that regardless of the overall staffing levels, individual class sizes in the high 20s and low 30s for the second grade are unacceptable.

Some parents have called for a reduction in administration staff, if needed, to provide funds to hire additional teachers. They note that contracts for the assistant superintendent and director of administration positions are up for renewal in the next month and the district budget needs to be finalized by the end of June.

They want assurances that the budget will accommodate additional teaching slots if current student projections hold. And they say that teaching positions should take priority over administrative positions. They say that projected class sizes of over 30 per classroom don’t need to wait for adjustments to be made in August.

The administration has promised a class size update in July, but I suspect the administration and the school board will be hearing more from the parent before then.

The Farmington Independent newspaper reports in today’s issue on the debate started at the last school board meeting, and scheduled to resume at the next (March 22) one, over whether it is “appropriate” for board members to discuss district business via social media.

Farmington School Board members want to know if tweeting is best left to the birds. Veronica Walter raised the issue of board members using social media services like Twitter and Facebook during a March 8 discussion of a board conduct policy. She said the topic of social media has come up a lot lately in conversations she’s had with school board members both in Farmington and in other districts. Walter and other board members are concerned about knowing just what the rules are with an increasingly popular method of communication.
(Read the full story at the Farmington Independent website – the story goes behind a pay wall in a few weeks.)

I’m not a big fan of censorship, and that’s what I would consider any board policy attempting to prohibit board members from using any method to communicate information that wasn’t privileged or private, as defined by state law.

Don’t know what will happen Monday night with this. Even if the board wants to implement a policy like this, I’m not sure what it would look like or how it could be enforced.

Would love to read your thoughts.

At the March 8, 2010 Farmington school board meeting, the board reviewed board policy #BBC-Code of Conduct for Board Members. A suggestion was made that board policy prohibit or limit board members’ use of social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, to communicate about board business. Watch the discussion.

Should school board members be allowed to use social media?

The task force charged by the Farmington City Council and the Farmington School Board to suggest possible ice hockey arena options will present its recommendations to a joint meeting of the board and council this evening at 5:30 in the city council chambers.

(As of noon today, it was not clear if the meeting would be carried on the city cable channel. Farmington Mayor Todd Larson said he would ask city staff to arrange for it to be carried on the cable channel.)

The findings of the task force were only provided to the board and council members via email late yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon, even though this board member asked the school district superintendent at the Monday, January 25 meeting to get this information to board members a couple days before tonight’s meeting so we could review it, share it with other interested parties and ask questions before the meeting if we desired.

The top recommendations of the task force are:

• build a new two-sheet ice arena at a new site.
• make repairs to the existing Schmitz-Maki Arena to keep it functioning while the new arena is built.
• convert the Schmitz-Maki Arena to a non-ice city use after the new arena is opened.

The task force report estimates the cost of a new two-sheet arena at about $9 million. No estimate was provided for the costing of making needed repairs to the Schmitz-Maki Arena to keep it functioning while the new arena is built.

Notes from the task force’s third meeting state the estimated costs of a new arena does not include land acquisition. The land is presumed to come from current school district (new high school) or city (park dedication land in the Fairhill Development) -owned property. If those locations proved unsuitable, the costs would go up, the meeting notes stated.

The task force recommendation does not comment on how the project might be financed, although notes from the second task force meeting include a discussion of possible financing options. The meeting notes report the opinion of unidentified task force members that any option that required a referendum would likely fail.

The following documents were provided to board and council members:

• The task force recommendation (MS Word document)
• Task force members (MS Word document)
• The options the task force considered (MS Word document)
• Notes from the task force Jan. 13, 2010 meeting (MS Word document)
• Notes from the task force Jan. 20, 2010 meeting (MS Word document)
• Notes from the task force Jan. 27, 2010 meeting (MS Word document)
• Schmitz Maki Arena Engineering Renovation Feasibility Study (Adobe Acrobat pdf document)

I’ll be interested to hear tonight what the task force has to say about their recommendations, but at first blush it seems they are recommending the most expensive possible solution to a problem that most people don’t think is that important.

I think what we’re looking at is a second bite at the SportsPlex apple.

Until convinced otherwise, I’m calling the task force recommendation “Son of Sportsplex.”

-Tim Burke