Financial Responsibility

Without financial responsibility, the district can not be educationally responsible. Over the years, critics of public education have often said that "throwing money at public schools does not make them better." Strictly speaking, of course, this statement is true. Just increasing a budget willy-nilly year after year is foolish. The district can never and has never simply increased the budget simply to increase it; we get what we get from the state and make up the rest in local revenue -- but we are limited in the amount that we can collect from that source by state caps. The total never seems to equal expenses, which continue to rise.

However, there are two facts can not be ignored: class size has been shown time after time to be a major factor in improving student performance, and the only way to decrease class size is to hire more staff. Second, costs, such as energy and transportation, never seem to decrease. So saving money is mostly a moot point. What really makes sense is using tax dollars wisely to support our community in the best way possible.

Is the restructuring plan an opportunity to save money? Yes. Certainly, closing buildings saves money; however, the plan is to use that money so that we can keep current programs in place and work toward new programs, at the very least. So is that an actual "savings," as such? In addition, costs WILL rise in the future. Costs almost never go down. Every now and then there is an opportunity to lower costs, as there was a few years ago when we switched bus companies after competitive bidding. It makes sense to spend money on those activities and people which impact our students -- and of course, our staff. At this point, we have pretty much reached the end of what can be cut. If we do not make changes now, our educational quality will suffer over both the long and short term.

In the end, what matters is educational quality. All the fiscal responsibility in the world is meaningless unless it supports what's best for our students which is, in the end, what's best for our community.