Feb

Welcome to the Future

Admin — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 13:00:00 -0600

Last year at our annual conference, I posed several questions. First, as a school leader, whatever your specific area of influence, I challenged you to ask yourself, “Do I operate with an on-going sense of urgency and acknowledge that I have to be willing to change in order for public education to move forward?” Then, I asked, “How will you respond organizationally to the change ahead?”

We are at the crossroads of change and the stakes are high for public education. We live on a battlefield of sorts, and our cause is the right of every child in America to a free, quality public education. However, the point of our struggle can’t be just to survive, but to leave a legacy. To build an enterprise that makes such a distinctive impact on the world it touches, and does so with such superior performance, that it would leave a gaping hole - a hole that couldn’t be easily filled by any other institution - if it ceased to exist. But we cannot succeed without change. Niccolo Machiavelli said, “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.” However, when asked, “Would you rather work for change, or just complain?” 81% of the respondents replied, “Do I have to pick? This is hard!”

We have a new governor and a largely freshman legislature in Lansing. Change is coming fast and the years ahead will be exciting and also challenging. No doubt, mistakes will be made as we all push forward, both by Lansing and by schools. But in the words of Robert Bobb, Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager, “The status quo no longer has status.” There is relevance in his words. The stakes are high for public education. Change is imminent.

But what trends are driving the change in our global and ever flattening world? What will change look like in the next decade? And how will that change impact education? Understanding key developing trends is critical to our ability as business leaders to navigate the future and positively position public education. This year, we at MSBO are excited to welcome an individual to our annual conference who will spend an hour with us exploring the “extreme future”. Dubbed “Dr. Future” by Yahoo, and “Digital Guru” by CNN (where he is a frequent commentator), we are honored to welcome our keynote speaker, Dr. James Canton.

Dr. James Canton is known for predicting the key trends that have shaped our world. He is a leading authority on future trends in innovation and is recognized as one of the world’s leading futurists. He is CEO and Chairman of the San Francisco based Institute for Global Futures, a think tank he founded in 1990 that advises business and government (including the White House) on future trends impacting financial services, health care, population, life sciences, energy, workforce, climate change and globalization. According to Publisher Weekly, “Canton's goal, however, isn't predicting, it's convincing Americans to take a more active role in envisioning and safeguarding the 21st century before somebody else does. His lively scenarios are designed to spark debates, and they surely will."

Be prepared to think about things in ways that are new to you. Are you ready to navigate the changes of the future? Are you ready for the Post-Genomic society? Where people trade their DNA on eBay? Where corporations conduct talent wars? Where health enhancement is a trillion dollar market? Where virtual supply chains and on-demand products rule? Where real-time collaborative organizations thrive? These are just a few of the trends that Dr. Canton will be sharing with us.

We are at a crossroads of change. Please join us for a session on the amazing possibilities that the next decade may bring! Change is imminent. How will you respond organizationally to the change ahead?

Reflecting on a PaySchools Milestone

Admin — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 12:00:00 -0600

In these tough times of budget reductions resulting from costs increasing at a faster rate than revenue, we look at best practices to help streamline our business operations. One such program is one of MSBO’s products and services – PaySchools.

Recently, our PaySchools application hit a milestone – topping $1 million in accumulated purchases! My district implemented PaySchools in the fall of 2008, in an effort to provide parents with a convenient way to make payments toward student activities and fees. In 2½ years time, we have collected over $1.1 million on the sale of over 27,000 products. As I reflect back on these past 30 months, three main themes resonate with me: the program’s popularity with parents, improved internal controls for the district, and more efficient accounting.

Parents Love PaySchools

Parents love the convenience and ease in paying for school activities and fees using PaySchools. Many are paying their bills online already, and they love the convenience of this application. I continually hear positive feedback from parents about this program, especially with regard to payments on school lunch accounts.

We have worked with PaySchools to integrate with our food service student account program. This integration allows parents to make payment directly to their children’s school lunch accounts, view account balances, and even set up an automatic email when the account balance drops below a pre-determined threshold. We’ve set up the integration to perform automatic backups to our school lunch software multiple times daily, so when a parent makes a payment, they can see the account balance updated online within a few hours. School lunch account payments have accounted for nearly 20,000 of the 27,000 transactions in my district.

Improved Internal Controls

One of the selling points of the PaySchools application for our staff is the reduction (or complete elimination in some cases) of money handling by club sponsors, coaches, teachers, secretaries, and other staff. Dozens of staff members have been granted rights to run sales reports in PaySchools for their respective categories of products, so they can run lists of students who have paid for their activity online. This has resulted in a significant reduction in the handling of cash and checks by staff, which has improved the school district’s internal controls. One such example is the annual 8th grade Cedar Point trip at our middle school, where more than 250 students take this trip annually. Prior to the implementation of PaySchools, the two lead staff members would collect nearly $20,000 in cash and checks from students and chaperones, handling large sums of money and making frequent bank deposits. We have completely eliminated the money handling component of this activity by requiring payments using PaySchools. Funds are directly deposited into the district’s bank account, and the activity fund is credited for the online sales. The staff members simply log into PaySchools and run periodic sales reports to update their student rosters.

We have seen similar results with activities for other activities, such as our band/orchestra boosters, cheer team, and student fines.

More Efficient Accounting

PaySchools deposits each day’s sales via batch direct deposit to the school district’s bank account. Each product in PaySchools is established with a corresponding general ledger account code, and each day we run an Account Code Report for the previous calendar day’s sales. From this daily report, a single cash receipt is entered into our accounting system, and the funds hit the district’s bank account within two to three business days from the date of sale. This single daily cash receipt records what previously was recorded on dozens of individual cash receipts in the school buildings. This has reduced cash receipt handling throughout the district.

In addition, we have seen a dramatic decrease in the quantity of checks returned from the bank due to non-sufficient funds. We occasionally experience a PaySchools transaction reversal, due to insufficient funds; however, this is very infrequent. For example, in the past ninety days, only nine of the 5,017 PaySchools transactions have been returned for insufficient funds. Our experience has been that very few people will submit payment using electronic funds if they don’t have the funds in their accounts to cover.

The integration of the PaySchools application in my district has been one of our easiest and most successful implementations. It has enhanced the customer service to our parents, while improving internal controls and accounting in my district. PaySchools is an excellent example of the high quality products and services offered by MSBO.

MSBO Update

Admin — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 11:00:00 -0600

MSBO Executive Director David Martell and MSBO Associate Director Bob Dwan discuss the Governor's Executive Budget, an upcoming MSBO budget survey, as well as announcing the February winner of the MSBO Annual Conference drawing.

February 2011 Column from MSBO on Vimeo.

Can You Trust a Groundhog? We Don’t!

Admin — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 09:00:00 -0600

Punxsutawney Phil emerged just after dawn on Groundhog Day to make his 125th annual weather forecast and predicted an early spring. Well, we don’t believe him and we’ve heard there is another storm heading toward Michigan this weekend.

Because of this latest weather prediction – we have decided to change our Property Tax–Advanced course to a Webinar.

The date is the same – Tuesday, March 1, 2011.

The time is the same – 8:45 AM-4:00 PM.

This workshop builds on Property Tax Basics by reviewing and going into further detail on some topics, such as Headlee computations, levies, and the tax settlement process. You will gain an understanding of how Boards of Review and Michigan Tax Tribunal adjustments affect the tax levy. Presenters will review in detail the alphabet of Tax Increment Financing Authorities, specific local taxes and how they affect your district’s property tax levies, and state aid.

Find out how to reconcile your property tax receipts to make sure your district is receiving all the taxes and funding it is due, and to ensure you are not surprised with an unexpected state aid billback.

Register now for the Property Tax–Advanced Webinar 
An email with a link to join the webinar and materials will be sent to registered participants.

SB-CEUs: .6 SB-CEUs have been approved. You must be logged in on time and stay until the end of the program.The SB-CEU form must be completed and faxed or mailed to MSBO no later than two weeks after the webinar has completed. You will receive an email to complete an evaluation to receive SB-CEUs.

For Data Driven Decisions – You Must Have Data – Participate in MSBO’s 3rd Student Transportation Benchmarking Survey

Admin — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 08:00:00 -0600

MSBO’s Student Transportation Benchmarking Survey is intended to build on the 2007 and 2009 surveys by providing school districts with comparative performance metrics and information on best practices in student transportation. The survey has been expanded this year to include additional data on transportation policies and the use of contracted services. In addition, there is an effort to begin collecting data that is specific to ISD operations. This will provide the foundation for on-going comparison of these systems.

The survey will be open for responses during the month of March with a final report expected to be posted to the MSBO website no later than June 15.

Your participation is strongly encouraged in order to provide districts across the state with the broadest possible array of options to reduce support services costs in an effort to maintain as much money in the classroom as is possible. If you have any questions please contact Scott Little at 517-327-2582 or slittle@msbo.org.

Let the Registrations Begin!

Admin — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 07:00:00 -0600

MSBO’s 73rd Annual Conference & Exhibit Show is the best professional development value available to Michigan School Business Officials and vendors who provide us products and services.

This year’s highlights include four Pre-Conferences: Facilities, Food and Nutritional Services, Issues Facing The Business Manager and Transportation, Michigan's Budget Director John E. Nixon, and our keynote, Futurist Dr. James Canton. Back by popular demand is the Legislative Panel Discussion moderated by Off The Record host Tim Skubick, as well as 13 certification classes. Details of the certification classes can also be found in the conference brochure.

This year is also the 20th anniversary of the SET SEG Fun Run/Walk. Sign up on conference registration form.

It is important that you register now so we can get an accurate count for meals and our clinic sessions. We are also assigning meeting rooms based on the number of people we expect to attend each session. If you registered as part of the Early Bird program, you still need to complete your registration by going online and telling us which clinics you plan on attending.

Don't miss out!

MDE Monitoring Some District ARRA and EDF Grant Programs

Admin — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 06:00:00 -0600

The Michigan Department of Education (MDE) is scheduling monitoring reviews for the ARRA ESF and Education Jobs Fund grant programs. Monitoring reviews may be conducted as either an on-site visit or a desk review.

The following grants will be reviewed:

ARRA ESF (CFDA #84.394) for: FY 2009 (092525), FY 2010 (102525) and FY 2011(112525)
Education Jobs Fund (CFDA #84.410A) for: FY 2011 (112545)

Examples of documentation required for a monitoring visit include, but are not limited to, the following:

Evidence of financial management systems
Financial management reports of grant activities that document payment requests, grant expenditures by date, and/or contracts
Payroll records

Staff or consultants with direct knowledge concerning the preparation or distribution of these documents are required to be available for any questions that may arise during the monitoring. School districts chosen for on-site monitoring or desk review will be contacted in the near future.

If you have any questions, contact the MDE Grants Administration and Coordination Unit at (517) 373-1806.

MEMSPA 2011 Annual Conference – Call for Presenters

Admin — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 05:00:00 -0600

The planning committee for the 2011 MEMSPA Annual Conference, scheduled for December 7-9, 2011 at the Kalamazoo Radisson is accepting breakout session applications. Here is a link to the sectional speaker proposal form: https://memspa.org/images/pdf/speaker-proposal-form.pdf. What do you know that you think our principals need to know? MEMSPA welcomes your proposal.

Know Your Statistics

Admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:00:00 -0600

I came across an article on the Internet recently that originally appeared in USA Today on September 16, 2003. The title of the article was “U.S. tops the world in school spending but not test scores”. The article pointed out that the U.S spends more public and private money on education than other major countries. The article went on to discuss the appropriate level of funding to achieve reform, in this case dealing with the federal No Child Left Behind legislation. But is the U.S. really the leading spender on primary and secondary education as the article states?

According to data released by the United Nations, between 2000 and 2002 the U.S. spent 5.7% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on education, which ranked 37th in the world and tied us with Estonia and Austria. Not first as the USA Today article would like everyone to believe. What country was number one in terms of percentage of GDP spent on education? - Cuba, at 19.7%. Some of the countries surpassing the U.S. were Yemen at 9.5%, Malaysia at 8.1% and Bolivia at 6.3. The average was 4.9%, so I am glad to say that at least we are spending above the average. So, it depends how one decides to look at data and what point you are trying to make. It sort of reminds me of writing a college term paper – you can find information and statistics to support just about any argument you care to make.

I decided to do some more research to see how Michigan fares against the other 49 states and the District of Columbia. According to the webpage statemaster.com, which gets its statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics, between 1969 and 1989 Michigan’s per pupil expenditure on K-12 education increased by 80%. Pretty impressive, I thought, until I discovered that for the same time period, Massachusetts increased its funding by 116.9% and Alaska by 112.8%. OK, but Michigan experienced some good economic times during part of that period (not the early 1980’s), and we have been struggling through a recession for a good seven or eight years now, so how did education funding fare over a more recent period? Between 1994 and 2004, Michigan increased its K-12 per pupil expenditure by 13.4%. Only five states increased its spending by a lower percentage; Nevada at 12.9%, Oregon at 12.1%, Washington at 10.6%, Florida at 8.5%, and Alaska at 5.9%. Even with a meager 5.9% increase, Alaska spent $11,551 per pupil in 2004 compared to $9,947 for Michigan. What state was the leader? Vermont increased spending by 47.5% over this same time period and spent $12,749 per pupil in 2004. Massachusetts increased spending by 34.7% and spent $12,398 per pupil.

I then looked at teacher to student ratios, and Michigan ranked 45th at 18.1. Number one was Vermont once again at 11.3 and Massachusetts fared well again also, coming in number 12 at 13.6%. Near the bottom and ranking 46th was Nevada at 19.0 and number 47 Washington at 19.3 students per teacher. Could there be a correlation between spending increases on education and class size? Alaska by the way ranked number 22 at 14.7 students per teacher.

Next I looked at how our students did on 4th grade math and reading tests and 8th grade math and reading tests. Michigan students ranked 31st, 31st, 33rd, and 27th respectively in these four categories. Vermont students meanwhile ranked 5th, 2nd, 5th, and 3rd while Massachusetts’s student ranked an impressive 1st, 1st, 1st, and 2nd. Vermont and Massachusetts had some of the highest per pupil expenditures amongst the states. The last statistic I looked at was Best Educated. According to the definition, it de-emphasizes spending for public education and instead measures states based on student achievement, positive outcomes, and personal attention from teachers. I would like to know how they measured personal attention from teachers. Vermont and Massachusetts scored high once again at 17.58 and 14.48, respectively while Michigan’s was a negative 1.41. Washington was a negative 2.17, Florida a negative 4.41, and Nevada a negative 13.11. Is there a correlation between spending and student achievement? My very brief non comprehensive analysis would certainly seem to point that way, and is counter to what a lot of others say.

As I stated previously, one can find and summarize statistics to support any argument they desire. I believe that this will be an important year for school funding, and we may see some major changes before the calendar year is done. Already proposals have been introduced in the legislature to limit administrative costs to no more than 28%, 5% pay reductions for all public employees, 20% employee premium co pays on health insurance, and probably a host of other ideas that will be coming out to help the state save money and deal with its non-ending budget deficits. Each one will have an affect on our budget. Our job as school business officials is to know our statistics. Know how the statistics are calculated. If our district rankings appear to be out of the norm, we need to figure out why. Is there a rational reason why? Are there efficiencies that maybe we are not taking advantage of? Our Superintendent, school board and community will want to know. The times ahead may be turbulent. We need to be the voice of calm, and know our statistics.

Funding and Privatization Concerns in the Public Schools

Admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:00:00 -0600

As schools continue to struggle with balancing our budgets, the pressures of consolidation and collaboration push us to become creative to “reimagine” the educational system for K-12 students. In trying to keep cuts as far away from the classroom as possible, we have to continue to look at how our schools are staffed, how our programs are operating and justify each and every expense to make our schools lean. With the uncertainty of state funding and a current revenue structure that challenges us each year, until the system is changed to make funding for schools sustainable, schools will be forced to continue cutting programs and expenses. As we look forward, districts will likely see increasing costs; as the employee base upon which retirement expenses are calculated continues to shrink due to privatization, the challenges of benefit cost pressures, and the challenges of declining property tax bases and student enrollment.

As our state Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan said, “We're looking at the new 3 R's. The solution will be a mix of revenues, reforms, and reductions. We need all three.” I agree; we do need all three. However, it appears change won’t happen quick enough to prevent more schools from becoming deficit districts. As we have witnessed in many areas of State government, everything takes time and the schools are running out of time. We continue to do more with less, while we keep our overarching principal of providing quality education.

There are a number of high-powered groups pushing creative ideas and suggestions to work towards a sustainable solution. These include SOS, Save Our Students, Schools and State (a coalition promoting changes in how students are taught, and how schools are funded and operated) and the Practitioner’s Summit, (a coalition of public school officials throughout Michigan taking action to propose solutions).

These issues have a great impact on our schools. The playing field has changed and an emotionally charged atmosphere exists in many schools as we try to do what is right. Unfortunately, what is right is not always easy. While trying to be fair and evaluating what the “minimum” acceptable levels are, while still providing all the required/mandated education curriculum and resources, the uncertainties that surround all these changes are taking a toll on many of us. Staff feel unappreciated and performance can suffer, the work atmosphere can cause an arena of lack of trust and the relationships between the Boards of Education, administration, teachers, custodians, bus drivers, secretaries, etc. wears thin.

The big picture still puts schools in the position of deciding the haves and have nots when it comes to privatization. Privatization can take a number of different forms. It can be through a private company, through consolidation of services with an ISD or through the hiring back of a retired school employee through a third party. There can be tremendous cost savings to schools in privatization, and some employee groups have been subject to this trend more readily than others. But the reality is how far do schools go and at what cost? Currently, a number of schools have either privatized or looked into privatizing substitutes, transportation, custodial services and food service. As the looming cuts continue to pressure schools, there are no sacred cows. Privatization is being considered for many areas not considered before.

The identified cost savings may be great, but the peripheral costs may be greater. There is a balance, which cannot be measured by the bottom line. This is a difficult reality for many schools. Trying to find this balance and doing what is best for schools and students, puts forth significant challenges. Without question, these unprecedented challenges will require a “reimagination” of our K-12 educational system.