Educators Oppose ‘95/5’ Formula for School Spending

Ventura County educators are already gathering ammunition to fight a ballot initiative that would mandate how school district money is spent: allotting 95% to the school sites while limiting administrative expenses to 5%.

Months before voters will see the measure, teachers, trustees, parents, principals and superintendents in school districts from tiny Santa Clara to massive Simi Valley are sounding the same warning: Although the initiative has amazing appeal, it makes for lousy law.

“I think it would devastate school districts everywhere in California,” said Oak Park Supt. Marilyn Lippiatt. “It would eliminate the support structure we have in place to help schools.”

The so-called Educational Efficiency Initiative--which has already qualified for the June 1998 ballot--could reach voter hands as soon as November if the governor calls a special election, as many expect.

Right now, preliminary estimates show that none of Ventura County’s 20 school districts would meet the 5% standard for administrative spending, although Oak Park and Simi Valley come close.

Foes claim such spending restrictions would force smaller districts to unify into impersonal, larger districts or shift their administrative duties to already busy teachers.

Ultimately, they say, all school districts could lose some of the local control they now exert and end up spending more money by shuffling central administrative services to school buildings.

Supporters--most notably the Los Angeles teachers union--say the initiative, called “95/5” for short, would put more taxpayer dollars into the classroom.

“It changes the priorities of school spending from downtown to the school site,” said Bill Lambert, director of governmental relations for United Teachers-Los Angeles, the union sponsoring the initiative. “We think the public in general understands that that’s where education takes place. . . . That’s where the money belongs.”

Given that intrinsic allure, he added, the initiative--once a proposed state law that died in committee--is expected to pass handily. It would take effect in the 1999-2000 school year, and school districts could lose a portion of their lifeblood--average daily attendance dollars from the state--if they didn’t meet the 95/5 provisions.

Beyond United Teachers-Los Angeles, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Los Angeles Mayor Richard J. Riordan and Assemblyman Bill Leonard (R-San Bernardino) are also supporting the initiative. Opposing it are the state branches of the PTA, and the school administrators and school boards associations. The California Teachers Assn. has so far stayed out of the fray.

“We think it’s a terrible idea,” said Ray Reinhard, the director of School Services of California Inc., a consulting firm for public school districts. “We call it the UTLA power grab” to put more money on the bargaining table.

“The districts that would really get clobbered by this are the small rural districts, for the most part,” Reinhard said.

Unhappy Educators

So it is hardly surprising that 95/5 is roundly despised in Ventura County, where the percentage spent on administration is estimated to be between 5.16% in Oak Park Unified and 16.18% in Santa Clara, home of the little red school house.

County educators accuse the initiative of being a state-sized solution for a Los Angeles-area problem. It is unclear and unnecessary, they say.

“We see this as trying to re-create all the school districts in the state in the image of Los Angeles Unified,” the second-biggest school system in the country, said county schools Supt. Charles Weis. “We don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Added Hal Vick, executive director of the Simi Valley and Conejo Valley teachers unions: “Is this the best way to deal with the problems with bureaucracy they have in Los Angeles? L.A. is so big that I guess they feel that they can mandate and dictate to the rest of the state. In some cases, that’s probably a good thing, but in some instances, it’s not. Bigger is not necessarily better.”

Small districts, proud of their intimate setting and independence, already feel threatened.

Take Ocean View Elementary, a school district of about 2,400 students and a superintendent, an assistant superintendent and directors of personnel, fiscal services and special federal programs. It doesn’t appear particularly bloated, but about 11.35% of the district’s operating budget--plus developer fees, building fund and deferred maintenance fund--is devoted to administration.

“Where are we supposed to cut to get to 5%?” asked Paul Chatman, a trustee for the district running southeast of Oxnard. “Even if we got rid of a superintendent, we’re still not there. . . . Somebody still has to be in charge. So do you have a superintendent and not call them a superintendent?

“This doesn’t fix anything.”

This is what educators are saying before the initiative has been fully clarified. Simple as the percentages seem, everyone is wondering what’s in the 95 and what’s in the 5.

Some of that is obvious. Salaries for teachers, nurses, librarians, security guards and principals are part of the 95. Site renovations and pencils, books and desks are, too. Salaries for superintendents, personnel directors, business managers and data processors fall under the 5, as do curriculum development and instructional research.

Here comes the confusing part: What about the principal at Olivelands School, who is also the superintendent of the Briggs Elementary School District? Should her salary be pro-rated? Where do centralized maintenance crews fall? Many of them are based in headquarters, but they mow lawns, clean grounds and paint walls at school sites. Or how about insurance? To get lower bids, school districts buy a blanket insurance policy that covers individual campuses.

And the list goes on.

“Even the California Department of Education, last I heard, was not entirely clear on what the intent of the initiative is,” said Stan Mantooth, assistant superintendent for business services in the Ventura County superintendent of schools office, which would be unaffected by 95/5. “We are anxiously awaiting further clarifications of this initiative. We would like to figure out what the actual percentages would be.”

Based on 1995-96 reporting to the state--called annual program cost data reports--the county superintendent’s office came up with “very preliminary” accounts of what percentage local school districts spend on administration, Mantooth said.

With the processing of student records, maintenance and operations included in administration, many larger school districts are close to the desired 5%--Simi Valley comes in at 5.76%, Conejo Valley at 6.61%, Oxnard Union at 7.26% and Ventura at 8.55%.

Smaller Districts

Smaller districts do not fare as well. Mupu in the Santa Clara Valley comes in at 15.9%, Mesa in Somis at 11.24% and Santa Paula at 11.16%. This phenomenon is attributable to economies of scale, in which little districts have to provide the same educational services and meet the same guidelines as bigger districts, but have fewer students over which to spread the cost, Weis said.

The original legislative proposal on which the initiative is based had more flexibility for small districts, but educators fought it, said Assemblyman Leonard, who was a state senator when he wrote the Educational Accountability and Efficiency Act. The act died in legislative committees two years running, so United Teachers-Los Angeles decided to take it to the voters.

Leonard argues that the 95/5 ratio can be reached if small districts have the will to whittle waste.

“An awful lot of small districts [are] a lot lower than the big school districts,” Leonard said, pointing to the Rim of the World Unified School District in San Bernardino County, which has about 6,000 students and spends 3.65% of its budget on administration.

“And an awful lot were higher. . . . Even though [95/5] might be harder on some small districts because of their size, it would be doable.”

Lambert, the lobbyist for the Los Angeles teachers union, said he couldn’t imagine that parents in smaller districts were happy that 10%, 11% or 15% of their tax dollars go to “downtown bureaucracy.”

“There are 40 small school districts in California that are either lower than or right at 5%,” he said. “If they can do it, so can you. Maybe this will force smaller school districts to do a better job by paring down. We’re not interested in school districts becoming unified.”

School principal and teacher Mary Marsh said everyone in the 34-student Santa Clara Elementary School District shares jobs already. In her district, the school secretary is an answering machine.

“I look at our school board--a grandma, a mother and an aunt,” Marsh said. “If there was anything that was excessively wasteful, they would be the first people to say ‘We’re going to cut this back. This should go to more purposeful uses.’ ”

And forced unification is a fear indeed.

“That’s really scary,” Marsh said. “We don’t want to unify. We like being our own district in our own area. We have a waiting list of people who want to get into this school district. I get calls about that every day.”

Others wonder what happened to the notion of local control. Aren’t school boards supposed to determine the best way to spend money?

In Simi Valley, the school district is close enough to 5% that the initiative wouldn’t dramatically change things, said Supt. Tate Parker.

“The trouble I have with it is that the management of a school district needs to be entrusted to a board of trustees. That’s what they’re elected to do. The public already has a vehicle for seeing how public funds are spent.”

That vehicle, he said, is the school board election.

The UTLA’s Lambert sees it differently: 95/5 is “the ultimate in local control.”

“I think the people in Ventura County are going to vote for this when they figure that they can move a ton of money from the downtown bureaucracy to where their kids go to school,” he said. “If 95% goes to the little red school house, they can hire the symphony if they want to . . . .The problem is you don’t have local control when you spend [16%] away from the school site.”

Because the 95/5 initiative defines administration in terms of where a particular function--say, payroll--is done rather than who does it, another pervasive fear is that it would shift administrative duties from superintendents and business managers to teachers and principals.

“Payroll done at a central district office equals administration,” said School Services’ Reinhard. “But if a district puts a PC in every principal’s office and says ‘Do your own payroll,’ it doesn’t count as administration. . . . It’s somewhat arbitrary.”

People must be paid. It’s just a matter of who does the paying, said Ron Merson, a Briggs trustee who has not decided whether he favors the initiative.

“You can shift it on paper--the numbers--but the work still has to be done,” said Merson, whose district serves 413 students near Santa Paula. “If there aren’t administrators doing the work, who does it? It seems to me, it’s the teachers. But they’re supposed to be teaching.”

Also undecided is Mesa School Principal Aldo Calcagno, part of the 391-student Mesa district.

“I really don’t want to see anything that changes the instruction of students,” he said. “And I’d hate to transfer anything to already burdened teachers. I want their focus to be on instruction. Other people can handle the stuff on the periphery.”

The 95/5 initiative could also be pricey, educators warn.

“This measure could wind up increasing, rather than reducing, total administrative spending,” Reinhard said. “If every school site does data processing, it’s less efficient and more costly. But the district that did the more costly approach certainly would comply with the measure, and the efficient district that did data processing centrally might very well violate the 5% cap.”

Similarly, a school district taking bids for nine portable classrooms is likely to get a better bulk price than would nine schools buying one bungalow a piece.

“The reason [school districts] centralized in the first place was efficiency,” said Conejo Valley Supt. Gross. “Teachers and principals are trying to run schools, not be purchasing agents.”

Even if the initiative isn’t perfect, Leonard and lobbyist Lambert say the motivation is noble.

“I want my tax dollars spent in the classroom in ways my students can see, can touch, can talk with,” Leonard said.

That’s a laudable goal, said Simi Valley parent activist Coleen Ary.

“In the great, pie-in-the-sky world, sure, I’d like to see [95/5] happen. But I don’t think they deliberately bloat the bureaucracy. It’s the [education] code that’s in the way.

“It all goes back to local control,” she continued. “We send our money to the federal government and the state government, and it comes back to us with so many strings attached that we have to have administrators. . . . .A smarter ballot initiative would have been to repeal a great portion of the . . . code.”

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School Administrative Costs

The so-called 95/5 initiative would limit how much school districts can spend on administration--5%--versus how much they could spend on school site operations--95%.

Based on estimates from 1995-96 school year financial figures, none of Ventura County’s 20 school districts now meets the 95/5 criteria.

This chart shows how much county school districts spend on administration (including superintendents’ and directors’ salaries, data processing, grant administration and maintenance and operations); total expenditures from all funds (including operating budget, deferred maintenance fund and developer fees); and administrative costs as a percentage of total expenditures.

Depending on how maintenance and operations money is counted, the administrative percentages could fall one or two percentage points.

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Total School District Enrollment Admin. Costs ELEMENTARY Briggs 413 $152,163 Hueneme 8,020 $2,860,711 Mesa 391 $180,652 Mupu 118 $85,316 Ocean View 2,320 $1,322,049 Oxnard 13,683 $5,669,512 Pleasant Valley 6,930 $2,829,195 Rio 2,796 $1,274,366 Santa Clara 34 $27,572 Santa Paula 3,448 $1,883,698 Somis Union 325 $143,062 HIGH SCHOOL Oxnard Union 12,983 $4,748,534 Santa Paula Union 1,366 $681,732 UNIFIED Conejo Valley 17,993 $6,383,364 Fillmore 3,515 $1,532,615 Moorpark 6,587 $2,914,769 Oak Park 2,967 $1,133,099 Ojai 4,132 $1,513,019 Simi Valley 18,627 $6,085,776 Ventura 16,560 $6,780,200

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Total Expenditures Admin. Costs School District (All Funds) (as % of total) ELEMENTARY Briggs $1,668,758 9.12% Hueneme $34,379,662 8.32% Mesa $1,607,392 11.24% Mupu $536,475 15.90 Ocean View $11,647,315 11.35% Oxnard $68,941,251 8.22% Pleasant Valley $30,933,970 9.15% Rio $12,346,081 10.32% Santa Clara $170,420 16.18% Santa Paula $16,879,521 11.16% Somis Union $1,359,933 10.52% HIGH SCHOOL Oxnard Union $65,443,446 7.26% Santa Paula Union $7,964,133 8.56% UNIFIED Conejo Valley $96,592,484 6.61% Fillmore $16,571,460 9.25% Moorpark $30,320,184 9.61% Oak Park $21,946,894 5.16% Ojai $17,625,546 8.58% Simi Valley $105,623,049 5.76% Ventura $79,327,124 8.55%

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Source: Ventura County Superintendent of Schools Office estimates