published in the Current
SOUTH PORTLAND – Although called as a workshop on the proposed $42.8 million
school budget, Monday’s special session of the South Portland City Council
turned into a protracted debate on test scores, information school board
members seemed at first reluctant to release in that venue.
In fact, the only budget item discussed at any length was a
reported $4 million surplus, a favorite target of Albert DiMillo Jr., a retired
CPA and occasional Current columnist, who has dogged school directors for much
of the past three years.
“The big picture is this,” he said, following the workshop. “South Portland spends way more than
anyone on schools, and their test scores are bad.”
School Superintendent Suzanne Godin, took “exception” to
DiMillo’s claims, and while city councilors seemed satisfied by meeting’s end
with her explanation of test scores, they have yet to give their final word on
the budget. That will happen at their next meeting, on Monday, May 2. Voters
will then get their say at the polls on May 10.
For his part, DiMillo claimed South Portland spends 71
percent more on system administration that neighboring Scarborough, and could
save $2.9 million just be slashing itself to a similar size, Godin championed
the opposite view.
“We have a very, very small administrative structure for the
size district we have,” she said, adding that the school department “continues
to struggle” with cutting a curriculum coordinator position five years
ago.
Who’s right is hard to say, as Councilor Maxine Beecher made
clear. Armed with a boatload of budget documents, and a page of questions posed
by DiMillo, she called on another CPA, she said. The results were not edifying.
“For normal people, it gets deeper and deeper (until) it’s
like, I don’t even want to know,” she said.
Chief among Beecher’s questions, and DiMillo’s complaints,
is the school department’s $4 million surplus, a carry-over fund recently
allowed by special legislation to exceed the usual maximum – 3 percent of the
total budget.
That cap was lifted, said the district finance director,
Rafe Forland, because state officials realized school districts need to set
aside money now for when the well runs dry on federal stimulus and jobs-bill
funds. In South Portland, those federal dollars cover $1.6 million that would
otherwise have to be paid by state and local taxpayers. The school department
will draw $1.2 million from surplus this year and next, said Forland, leaving
it with just enough in 2013-14 budget to pay for what federal emergency funds
are buying now when that money runs out.
Godin said hikes of 8 and 9.6 percent, respectively, in
regular instruction and special education since 2010 are illusionary. The 2010
budget was written at a time when the school was under a state curtailment
order, along with its own freeze on spending. The 2012 budget seems like a
large increase, she said, only because the economy is beginning to improve.
“We’re trying to return to pre-curtailment (spending)
levels,” she said. “We are in a place where if we don’t continue to move
forward in terms of the professional development, the staffing and the
resources that we need to be providing for our students, we are not going to be
able to move forward academically.
“I continue to be concerned when year after year we are
being held to the standard of the last two years,” said Godin. “Those were very
anomalous-type years for South Portland.”
However, DiMillo would not truck to that explanation. He
gained some notoriety writing essays in 2009, in which he picked apart an
overhaul to Maine’s tax code, and which some credit with helping to spur a
citizen’s initiative that repealed it, and he appeared intent of doing the same
for South Portland.
“The surplus is not there because they did such a good job,”
he said, claiming to have found numerous auditing errors. “It’s there because
they screwed up, and they’ve screwed up three years in a row.”
“I continue to think the budget has errors,” he said. “All we hear about is them slashing
positions, but if these numbers are real – and I don’t think they’re real – why
does the school budget have such huge increases in costs? Let’s stop pretending they don’t have
any money.”
But that was about as far as he got. Two minutes in, his
time was called by Mayor Rosemarie De Angelis. The balance of the
two-and-a-half hour workshop was devoted not to financial numbers, but to test
scores. Here, too, Godin found an
opportunity to “take exception.”
Before she could do so, however, she had to wait out a
staring contest between the council and members of the school board, who seemed
reluctant to turn over the requested data.
“I’m saying this as respectfully as I can,” said school
board Chairman Ralph Baxter Jr., “but I am concerned about where we go with
this information.”
“I’m not sure how these (test) numbers change your
decision-making as to the budget,” said school board member Richard Carter.
“Would we get more money because we’re doing a good job, or less because we
need to do better?”
“I’m going to answer your question with a question,” replied
De Angelis. “Does the answer determine whether you share the information?”
Baxter said he felt a budget workshop was not the
appropriate venue in which to review test data, adding in retort that, in any
case, testing data are “not new news.” All the information was released to the
public during a State of the School address last November, he said.
While Councilor Thomas Coward did not deny this was true, he
describe the school website, where the data is archived, as a “bottomless pit
of information.”
“My question is,” said Carter, trying again, “ what would
you do with the information? Not, why do you want the information – it’s good
information – but what would you do with it in a budgetary context?”
“I don’t understand how this data is going to drive the
budget. That’s the question,”
agreed Baxter.
De Angelis let the question hang in the air for several
beats before giving her reply.
“I’m not going to speak for the council,” she said. “Rather than go down through the
council and try to get answers to that, I think it just might be helpful if
you’d answer the questions.”
The resulting review of test scores featured a protracted
debate between Godin and Councilor James Hughes on the varietal classification
of “apples and oranges.” Godin
claimed SAT scores posted by South Portland juniors cannot be compared to those
logged by their peers nationwide, because Maine is one of the few states in
which taking the test is not optional. Hughes agreed, but said he was trying
ferret out any trend in the local scores.
Godin said that, too, was apples and oranges, because each graduating
class has its own unique character.
Hughes disagreed. “It may
be Macintoshes and Galas, but it’s still apples,” he said.
When several councilors questioned a decline in growth
within each class, as it progresses through the grades, outgoing Assistant
Superintendent Steve Bailey stepped in to say students don’t show as much
progress in later grades because, as they get older, “the questions get
harder.”
By the time the meeting wrapped up, the two boards appeared
to have reached some level of détente. Councilors thanked school officials for
sharing. Hughes, in particular, said the information exchange makes him “more
sympathetic” to views expressed by the administration.
Still, there remained some reservations, if not for the
budget proposal now being considered, then for future budgets.
“I hear a lot of people saying they are scared for the next
couple of years,” said Councilor Patti Smith. “It’s tough. One of these years,
some really tough decisions are going to have to be made between (funding)
professional development for teachers and other things.
“In years to come, it’s going to get tougher and tougher,”
she predicted.
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