A huge “thank you” goes to my fellow cyber-colleagues Dr. Fred Baldwin (Carlisle Area School District) and Mr. Jim Butt (Cheltenham Township School District). I greatly appreciate your constant support and encouragement — and eagerly look forward to November!

Reprinted by permission of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, Copyright © 2010, All Rights Reserved.

Noteworthy highlights:

Item D – Facilities
1. Discussion and action on proposal for custodial services for Weisenberg Elementary School for the 2010-2011 school year.

Item E – District Finances
1. Approval of final 2010-2011 General Fund budget and supporting tax levies for Northwestern Lehigh School District as follows:

a. Budget Expenditures – $36,932,065.00

b. Local Tax Levies:

• Real Estate Tax – 50.66 mills (1.25 mill increase)
• Earned Income Tax – 1% (net .5%)
• Real Estate Transfer Tax, Act 511 – 1/2% for each of 4 townships
• Local Services Tax – $10
• Amusement Tax – 10%/not to exceed 40%

NEW — Agendas now include clickable links to discussion items.

This document reflects updated information received on Tuesday, June 15, 2010

As it appears the Governor and Pennsylvania lawmakers are heading toward another showdown and missed deadline on the annual state budget – for a staggering 8th year in a row – maybe they could spare a few minutes of political posturing and try to learn something from “down under.”

Pennsylvania’s fiscal picture continues to grow grimmer. State Rep. Samuel Rohrer (R-Berks), minority chairman of the House Finance Committee, summed up matters thusly: “If Pennsylvania were a private company, it would be staring bankruptcy in the face.  The truth is that we now have debts that exceed our ability to pay – the definition of insolvency.”

To cover last year’s budget deficit, among other shell games, the Governor and General Assembly exhausted the MCare Fund. The Commonwealth Court, however, ruled this year that financial move was illicit, and that the state must pay back $800 million. Add this to a $1.2 budget shortfall, and PA faces a $2 billion hole. To make matters worse, if Congress does not extend the Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (FMAP), which Gov. Rendell counted in his proposed budget, Harrisburg will be short another $850 million.

Stunningly, Gov. Rendell and many legislators want to increase state spending by 4 percent.

Source: “PA’s Fiscal Picture Grows Dimmer”, The Commonwealth Foundation, June 7, 2010

A few days after my post on May 1st, I received the following email from a parent in northeastern Pennsylvania. While I have received dozens of communications like this previously, this particular email offered a true sense of self validation in helping to make a real difference…even beyond the landscape of Northwestern Lehigh School District.

Mr. Fisher,

I happened upon your website www.prideandpromise.com and really would like to commend you on a well organized site that addresses issues so pertinent to all residents, students, and taxpayers in PA. I would truly appreciate and enjoy the opportunity to speak with you about the site and also about the issues you cover.

I reside in Northeastern PA and have been active as a taxpayer and parent in my school district’s discussions about finances and education. I am in the process of working with a group of other residents interested in more transparency and fiscal responsibilty within our district, given the current economic climate. After seeing the resources you have made available to residents in your area, I would love to see that type of resource available to our residents. Unfortunately, right now the school website is lacking and school board meeting agendas, notes, and budget proposals are not available unless you physically go to the school to review the information there.

I have seen other districts in PA such as Pennsbury and your site that disclose so much more information that I really feel like our area is behind and citizens are left in the dark. One other area I really took away from some of your posts is the actions that your school board is taking to address the PSERS crisis (specifically the letter to legislatures that your district sent asking for guidance and assistance with the upcoming pension increases). I feel like our board is not doing a lot if anything to address the dire circumstances the rates will create. (Unless of course, it is happening behind the scenes, although I doubt it, considering many of our school board directors have family employed as teachers in the district.

Well, now that I’ve given you a brief overview of my interests, I do hope that we can get in contact. And again, my congrats to you on a great website and the proactive discussions you advocate and approach.

Sincerely,
MH

[Note: I have purposefully removed the author's name and contact information]

As you can probably guess – I was very eager to take advantage of this great opportunity to learn more on public input and perception. Our conversation lasted nearly two hours. During our dialog, it was clearly evident that some of my reasons for wanting to serve as a school board member were quickly reinforced.

Active and engaged stakeholders are a very important asset to any organization. Parents, students, teachers and community members NEED timely and concise information to issues that affect them and their school districts. Collectively, they WANT proactive communication…and they MUST “feel” engaged and a collaborative part of the process.

To start – transparency must become MORE than just a convenient buzz word for today. This initiative must be the foundation of district-wide commitments to developing policies and procedures to help open the doors to promote greater understanding and advocacy.

In building these strong alliances, technology-enabled stakeholders REQUIRE a new level of information access that has historically not been a part of the culture in public education. Now more than ever, technology infrastructure must be fully leveraged to create a searchable archive of information and applicable data. And any notion of our public’s perception to existing dead-ends and narrow, one-way streets filled with roadblocks must be completely eliminated.

We must continue to diligently transform any outdated ideologies into the necessary attitudes of customer service and fiscal responsibility to all our shareholders.

Here are a few suggestions from Benjamin DeGrow, Education Policy Analyst at the Education Policy Center in Golden, Colorado:

1. Easy to find. Users should be able to find a link to the database of expenditures directly from the local education provider’s website.
2. Detailed. Each expenditure should be attached to a unique record that at minimum includes: The transaction amount;  the transaction date;  the recipient’s name and address (if employee payroll is included, workplace addresses should be used to provide reasonable privacy), to ensure clear identification;   the name of the budget fund;  the budget fund’s associated revenue sources, to help determine whether an expenditure was funded by local and state taxes, federal grants, private grants, or user fees;  and the purpose of the expenditure, so local education providers can explain once and avoid misunderstandings.
3. Free to use. An “open” format ensures the user can access all available expenditure data without having to purchase additional software. To meet this criterion school agencies can export files into a free XML or CSV format, and upload the files to the online database for citizens to access.
4. Searchable. A structured format ensures the user can find and sort expenditure data by relevant category details. Searchability is a highly important feature that distinguishes a user friendly online database from a descriptive PDF uploaded and posted online.
5. Regularly updated. Since school districts and other education providers typically prepare financial reports for monthly board review, an update of expenditure data each month is entirely reasonable.
6. Available notifications. Local education providers easily can create RSS feeds or similar mechanisms to which users may subscribe for automated notifications of data updates.
7. Archived data. Expanding information technology capabilities will continue to enable low cost data storage. Expenditure data should not disappear, but should be kept in place permanently.

It’s time to unlock the vault.

Subsequently, a complete copy of the new teacher’s contract was obtained through the District’s approval of my Right to Know Request. It might appear a little “odd” that I would file an official request for information that I presumably already had available.

While this is true on the surface, it also clearly demonstrates my recognition of “walking a fine line” of responsible actions [as a school board blogger] to share information in an appropriate manner.

Agenda Highlights:

B.  Curriculum/Building Issues

1. 7th Grade Team “Roar” baseball project presentation
2. Presentation of recommendations from 2009-2010 Curriculum Council
3. Report on 2009-2010 Professional Development and 2010-2011 Professional Development plans
4. Approval of Act 80 Days for 2009-2010

A dynamic discussion ensued after a consensus could not be achieved for the 1.57 mil increase option, which included reductions from its approved Preliminary Budget on February 16, 2010.

A recommendation for a 1.25 mil increase appears on the agenda for this week’s school board meeting on May 12th.

A personal comment: As illustrated by only one community member in attendance at this budget meeting, the District needs to continue to explore new ways to enhance public awareness and engagement. During public comment, this resident also suggested the use of the new marquee as an additional means to advertise Board meetings. “Kudos” for sharing that idea.