There have been several articles (like this one) about the efforts of the new Loudoun County School Board’s willingness to ask questions about the budget and streamline how the LCPS spends their money. In fact this one:
http://www.leesburg2day.com/news/article_f99d1166-45eb-11e1-904d-001871e3ce6c.html
…goes through a sample of the more than 200 questions that the School Board has asked of the LCPS administration about its budget (a sampling of the sampling):
Q: Can we charge Thomas Jefferson students for their additional costs over attending LCPS schools? (e.g. charge for transportation)
A: If transportation is provided to and from school, there can be no charge to the student or the student’s family for such transportation. This opinion was rendered on “August 29, 2007, by the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia (based on Code of Virginia 22.1-176 Transportation of pupils authorized; when fee may be charged; contribution; regulation of Board of Education).
Q: What would be the anticipated revenue generated from Summer School by increasing fees by $25 at the elementary level, $50 at the middle school level and $75 at the high school level?
A: $6,200 for elementary, $17,500 for middle school and $29,842 for high school.
Q: Would it be legal to offer cash incentives to our top 50 or 100 senior employees to retire?
A: A local retirement incentive has been proposed by a few Virginia jurisdictions over the past few years and is allowable as long as adherence to VRS guidelines and IRS regulations is maintained. Staff has reviewed the potential at LCPS during budget season every year for the past three years. Staff developed a survey two years ago seeking information from those eligible for retirement about their thoughts on a retirement incentive. Although interest was expressed, the expected financial incentive was cost-prohibitive.
Q: When do benefits become available to employees? How many receive benefits at the 17.5-hour work week? Provide totals by scale.
A: Employees who are classified full-time receive benefits upon employment per School Board policy. Employees who work 3.5 hours a day or greater are eligible for benefits. Currently, 94 employees are working 17.5-hour work weeks. Of the 94, only 53 employees have elected to receive health benefits. All 94 receive VRS and GLI benefits. The breakout of the 53 employees by scale is as follows: Classified Scale – 18 employees Teacher Scale – 35 employees.
Q: What are the prices for cookies and ice cream? How much is made off of those?
A: In 2010-2011, both cookies and ice cream cost 60 cents each. Total yearly sales: $614,321.40 for cookies and $513,317.40 for ice cream.
(Ice cream? Really?) Now first of all…super kudos. About time. Despite assertions by the new School Board sulker-in-chief, Mr. Tom Reed, a lot of these questions probably have NOT been asked before, even though I’m sure a lot of them have. And despite Ms. Jennifer “Caution” Bergel’s paranoia about someone somewhere in the nearly 10,000 employee behemoth not getting paid vacation days for accidentally showing up at a Loudoun County Public School site one day, line by line scrutiny is healthy and it shows a willingness to get involved in details which we need.
However, as much as I would like to applaud our new School Board (and I do), this is not even scratching the surface of what needs to be accomplished in Loudoun County Public Schools. (I’d like to point out as well that there ARE some rather heavy ones in there that the Leesburg Today is studiously NOT calling attention to, such as: “How many of the 9614 employees are teachers?” and minor little things like that).
There are five fundamental things that have to be done to bring the LCPS budget back to an area of fiscal sanity, and they are ACROSS THE BOARD, fundamental changes:
1) Consumer-Driven Healthcare–The LCPS needs to IMMEDIATELY renegotiate its Health Benefits and move the workforce more towards a “Consumer-Driven Approach” where the employees are more responsible for their own disbursement of Healthcare dollars. Along with a laser-like focus on disease management to keep those who are unhealthy out of the hospital, giving employees control over their own resources for Healthcare is the ONLY way to control costs. This has been proven. The private sector has been moving toward it…even the County Government has high deductible options. For the LCPS to continue down the ZERO deductible managed care path is an affront to fiscal sanity and an assault to the private sector, who must take the steps to run its health programs more efficiently, while paying the bills of a school system which won’t.
2) Defined Contribution Plans–Defined benefits in the public sector is the most illustrative example of how States, municipalities, and school systems all over the country simply do not understand fiscal reality. Not only is it a ticking time bomb, but it is insulting to the employees of the LCPS to tell them that they can’t handle their own retirement. Yes, Virginia mandates a lot of it, but they lessened one of those mandates a year or two ago, and the previous LCPS added it back in. The increasingly ridiculously named “employee contribution,” which has never been actually contributed by the employees, was moved from the State coffers (paid for by the taxpayers) to the County AND State coffers (paid for by the taxpayers). This is wrong, and whatever action needs to be taken in Richmond to remedy it should be taken. Employees need to contribute to their own retirement, and ideally, their retirement should be based on their own investment choices and not the State’s so that the monstrous balance sheets that are looming for us can be lifted.
3) Performance-based compensation–Another insult to LCPS employees is the insistence on continuing to compensate employees almost completely by how many years they’ve worked for the school system. To make the statement that it’s just too hard, that it’s not complicated, or “that’s just the way it works”…is just old and tired and we’re sick of it. Every day in Loudoun County, citizens have to go to work and they know in order to get that raise or bonus they’ve been wanting they have to perform well…not just enough to get by…but well. I know of very few employees working at the many thousands of businesses in Loudoun who feel like after 5 years, they really don’t have to worry about being the “best they can be” anymore, because their job is secure, and as long as they coast along and do their work they’ll continue to get good pay increases.
The truth is…there are probably few teachers who want to teach that way either. Having conversations about incentivizing early retirement for longer-serving teachers would never happen if they were receiving compensation based on how effective they were and not just how long they’ve been around. No, it can’t be done EXCLUSIVELY on test scores, but I believe the first step is to hire individual school principals and administrators who can help determine performance-based incentives for keeping good teachers and employees.
4) School Choice–Parents and taxpayers need a maximum number of options for helping determine how money is spent on educating our children. This includes 1) enrollment options if they’re in a crowded school, 2) tax incentives for private education, 3) distance-learning options for homeschoolers, 4) business apprenticeship and technical training for those who choose NOT to go to college. Many of Loudoun County’s kids, who for the most part have highly educated parents who are involved in emphasizing education with their kids, would do well in virtually any environment, and if they want to will go to college, graduate, and achieve great things. But the constant emphasis on STEM (Science Technology, Engineering, and Math) education
5) School Buildings–Lastly, school construction needs to be looked at in a huge way. The fact that it took as long as it did to finally figure out a way to create a two-story middle school is beyond comprehension in a county with real estate that apparently goes for $833,000 per developable acre is astounding.
In the meantime, even sane, modest cuts are being lampooned and harangued by the “public”…mostly represented by those employees who are going to be the subject of the cuts. Fair enough, but remember that there are over 300,000 taxpayers in Loudoun County, and hundreds of public servants who protect us from harm. The rest of the County system and the private sector cannot continue to be held hostage by the almost 10,000 employees in the LCPS.
My advice to the School Board is to keep in mind that your job is to EDUCATE CHILDREN, not to employ and provide benefits for people. The LCPS is not a public jobs program, it is a mechanism for educating our children. Nothing more; nothing less.
Stand on the principle of fiscal sanity. It’s going to be a long four years, but if you stand on principle and don’t forget who you’re serving, you’ll emerge victorious and proud.
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Excellent post! I was getting worried about you – you need to post more often!
Holidays…flu…catchup…you know. But I’m back…
@Loudonconserv. Very nice article. Did you know that the Loudoun County Government Reform Committee (LCGRC) will be holding 2 Public Input Sessions?
Thurs., Feb 23 6:30 PM, BOS Board Room; and
Sat., Feb 25 1:00 PM LCPS Board Room.
Also, You do not have to attend in person, you can send written comments anytime to Reform.Commission@Loudoun.gov.
You are 100% correct! Fantastic article. LCPS needs to make signifianct and immediate cost reductions.
“My advice to the School Board is to keep in mind that your job is to EDUCATE CHILDREN, not to employ and provide benefits for people.”
How the hell do you think you can educate children without employing teachers??? You think people will work for free or low wages with no benefits? This shows how much you value those who are responsible for teaching our future leaders. Shame on you!
Shame on me? I never said they would work for free, LS8.
Your indignation is only matched by your studied and willful ability to ignore my central point.
First:
1) Teachers are not “responsible” for teaching our future leaders. They are hired to do so. Otherwise, they would work for free. Like parents. Parents don’t get paid to do it, but they are ultimately responsible for educating their kids. They defer responsibility, through tax dollars to the public school system, which must be accountable to them…the parents…the ultimate responsible party.
2) Our teachers do not have “low wages and low benefits”…they never have. I would never advocate for such a thing. I think good teachers should be paid MORE, based on their ability to teach our children. Higher pay and reasonable benefits would result in sound financial planning, saner budgets, and more opportunities to focus on teaching kids more effectively.
To make the leap that wanting our School System to spend our tax dollars wisely based on the highest priority of educating our kids is somehow wanting to pay teachers “low wages and low benefits” is…well as I said…a willful misread of what a lot of very thoughtful taxpayers are advocating.
You want to live in a world where ANY QUESTION about the compensation and benefits of teachers is an ASSAULT on the teaching profession, and illustrative of an uncaring and hard-hearted bogeyman. You can try that all that you want, but it’s not going to fly here.
So let me put this to you another way:
The NUMBER ONE priority of the Loudoun County Public Schools is to educate our children. If you believe that performance-based compensation with a benefits package that requires teachers to participate in their own health and retirement somehow damages their ability to educate our children, then you and I will just have to disagree.
First of all, you are the one that made the comment that I directly quoted and was referring to. I did not ignore your central point.
Secondly, let me ask you how you propose to evaluate these teachers for this performance-based compensation? You alluded to principals and admins to determine the effectiveness of the teacher. Can I ask you, when was the last time you spent any length of time in a school in this county? Have you talked to any teachers about this? Are we going to use parents or students comments about the teacher? How many complaints or compliments a teacher may get? Or how many A’s a teacher gives out? Or scores on standardized testing? The problem with all of these is there is no “constant” in the equation. Each teacher, heck even with the same teacher, each class is different because there are so many variables that play into the equation. How many IEP’s in that class, any discipline problems, is this a school in an area that most students are English is not their first language, and not to mention the fact there are parents who are more interested in getting their kid to their travel sport practice where they will spend 3 hours a night at in hopes of getting that scholarship rather than having them do homework.
The list could go on and on. And add that to the fact that teachers today have their hands tied. They are micromanaged and God forbid if they discipline or have high expectations from these kids. Remember, this is the generation of “everyone gets a trophy” and all parents want their kids to get all A’s. Did you know that many LCPS schools have instituted a policy that you can not require the student to do homework? What is a teacher to do? If there is no consequence for not doing homework? Again, just give them A’s…makes the county look good, makes the school look good, makes the parent’s happy, but the kids will be the ones suffering.
Maybe, instead of generalizing that teachers don’t care about performing after the five year mark, you should take some time to find out what is going on in the school system. The majority of teachers are extremely hard working and care about the students.
By the way, I am not a teacher…….just a hard core conservative that is getting tired of teachers getting treated like second class citizens.
I would be more than supportive of performance based pay if there was a way to do it fairly and unbiased. Remember, no other profession in this world has as their client or commodity, someone’s child. And we all see how objective people are when it comes to their child…..me included.
OK…show me where in my post I’ve treated Teachers like “second-class citizens”? Not even remotely fair or reflective of ANY of my comments. Besides, I’m of the opinion that teachers should be paid MORE (didn’t catch that did you?) and have MORE control over their own healthcare dollars and retirement. How does that make them second class citizens? The status quo would seem a sort of servitude that anyone that respects teachers should find distasteful. And if you believe that they’re mostly hard-working, then they should be PAID more…correct?
But from your comments, I’m gathering you are of the opinion that it is NOT POSSIBLE for a school system to evaluate teachers and compensate them based on their ability to teach effectively…is that right?
How does one compensate anyone “fairly and unbiased”? You’re not a teacher, so I’ll assume you’ve been paid a salary of some kind in the private sector. Have you ever gotten a raise or a promotion that was “unbiased”? There is always going to be biases, LS8…life is like that.
And no…public school teachers are not the only people on the planet compensated based on how well they serve a child client. Let’s see private school teachers, taekwondo instructors, swim coaches, tutors, pediatricians, dentists…can you think of a few more? But that’s not the point. The DIFFERENCE is that they’re NOT paid by the parents. The parents have ZERO say in their pay. They’re paid by taxes. That creates another stakeholder that has been crapped on every bit as much as you would contend that teachers have been.
Plus my quote was about “EMPLOYEES” not “TEACHERS”…do you think there are some employees in the LCPS who are unnecessary or are all school employees sacred, along with their retirement?
But we can agree to disagree on performance pay. Fair enough. I’m not in the business of converting everyone to my way of thinking on every point. (Wouldn’t THAT be boring?)
So what about the rest? Teachers involved in managing their own healthcare dollars? Contributing and having a say so in how their own retirement dollars are invested? More sane school sites? School choice?
Please comment all you want, but to take a very long article, take one quote, twist it into something that doesn’t even remotely reflect the context of the statement and then tell me I should be ashamed because you’re apparently mad at someone ELSE for treating teachers (not “employees”) like “second class citizens”…well…just seems petty and you seem more sincere than that otherwise.
Please point us in the direction of anyone who is treating teachers in Loudoun County like second-class citizens, and we’ll go punch them in the nose! In my opinion, the biggest culprit is the LCPS itself and a compensation system that rewards:
a) administrative largesse
b) inefficiency
c) a decided lack of ownership
d) posturing and pandering
That’s an insult to the teachers, the parents, the children, AND yes, the taxpayers.
Enjoy your day!
My only disagreement with you was, and still is, on point #3. All other points you have my agreement.
I apologize if I misread your statement, but with quotes like this
“Every day in Loudoun County, citizens have to go to work and they know in order to get that raise or bonus they’ve been wanting they have to perform well…not just enough to get by…but well. I know of very few employees working at the many thousands of businesses in Loudoun who feel like after 5 years, they really don’t have to worry about being the “best they can be” anymore, because their job is secure, and as long as they coast along and do their work they’ll continue to get good pay increases.”
It is hard to read anything else into this other than you are generalizing that teachers don’t worry about “being the best they can be” and “coast along” and still get pay increases.
My mistake if you didn’t mean to compare them to all other HARD WORKERS at the thousands of businesses in Loudoun who ALWAYS strive to be the best (unlike teachers).
Yes, there probably many positions in LCPS that are wasteful. Let’s figure out what they are and go after them. I just wish people would leave the teachers out of it.
As far as your examples of professions working with children, you obviously didn’t get my point. A dentist is NEVER paid according to how many of his child patients have cavities….nor is a doctor paid according to how many of his patients do or don’t get the flu. They get paid to perform a service. They treat their patients with the best of their abilities. Whether a patient listens to them is out of the doctors control. And if you told them they would be compensated based on these criteria, I am afraid we wouldn’t have many doctors or dentist.
And all the other examples of occupations….a no go too…..a swim coach doesn’t get paid only if his kids win a medal, etc……
And yes, bias can occur, and does, everywhere. But when I get evaluated, at least it is based on things I have control over. I might not always agree, but I have the power to change to make my employer happy. Not so with teachers (or doctors, or dentist)
I hope you can understand my point and maybe I have given you something to think about.
thanks for providing the forum for this discussion.
Yep…again: “employees”…”teachers”…but I see your point.
I’m not sure I understand this:
As far as your examples of professions working with children, you obviously didn’t get my point. A dentist is NEVER paid according to how many of his child patients have cavities….nor is a doctor paid according to how many of his patients do or don’t get the flu. They get paid to perform a service. They treat their patients with the best of their abilities. Whether a patient listens to them is out of the doctors control. And if you told them they would be compensated based on these criteria, I am afraid we wouldn’t have many doctors or dentist.
And all the other examples of occupations….a no go too…..a swim coach doesn’t get paid only if his kids win a medal, etc……
Of course all of these professions are paid based on how well they perform…a dentist who doesn’t fix a dental problem will eventually find that their clients don’t want to go to them anymore because…they’re not fixing the dental problems. A swim coach is VERY MUCH paid on how effectively they teach a kid to swim, and yes…if they are the kind of swim coach that teaches kids competitively, you bet your bottom dollar that they will be paid more if their kids are getting medals…
So I’m not sure if I’m missing your point, but you’re making mine:
Parents and taxpayers of Loudoun County do not have much of a choice on where their education dollars are spent, which is why (in my opinion) there is a lot of waste (and not just “fat” but structural financial mismanagement) in three main areas: administrative overhead, capital expenditures, and BENEFITS.
On the benefits side, I think it would be MORE respectful of teachers and their value to the community if they were encouraged to contribute and make decisions about their own healthcare dollars and retirement.
MY point on SALARY was that people should be compensated based on their performance. If you know more about how LCPS operates on the inside, then you tell me. I just know how it works in the private sector: people are compensated based on how well they perform.
In my ideal world, almost all of the teachers in Loudoun County are paid considerably more than those in Fairfax, PW, Clarke, etc…and we gain the reputation as a county that is INNOVATIVE on benefits, respectful of bureaucratic waste, and we allow teachers to manage their own financial lives so we can pay them MORE if they’re really good. That’s not treating them like second-class citizens; that’s treating them like adults!
We should be the TOP NOTCH place for teachers to teach, not “competitive with surrounding systems”, but we will always be behind the eight ball if we continue going down the wasteful path we’re on. If something doesn’t change and there’s another significant economic downturn (and there will be) we have NO ability to adjust to it. Our hands are tied tight. It is unsustainable and dangerous for the kids who are coming ahead to pretend that this is not a problem that has to be addressed.
Not all of this can be addressed by our School Board or BOS, but a lot of it can…and the rest has to be advocated for at the State level. Status quo is no longer an option!
Sincerest thanks for your comments! Come back anytime!
Great read, great ideas. I like where your head is at, Porter.
EXCELLENT article! THANK YOU! My only suggestion is to increase communication with families in order to make your message known. Our county papers are terribly biased with Hatrick and the LEA leading the charge to spin the public. Time to bring that spin to a halt with more widely communicated truth!