By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
Davis, CA – This issue might be the biggest threat to the school district’s parcel tax. The critics are completely wrong and really don’t understand how school financing works, but it doesn’t matter—most people don’t understand the issue either.
I noted this with Michael Harrington’s letter and I note now with a follow up letter.
The writer opines, “I, too, disagree with the policy of inviting hundreds of out-of-town families to fill up our schools so the DJUSD doesn’t have to make hard choices to close one or two schools.”
She adds, “I’m all for funding DJUSD if warranted, but maybe it’s time to close a school (or two) to help reduce the property taxes (cost of living) in Davis?”
The problem is it makes intuitive sense. If you have declining enrollment, if part of your strategy to stabilize enrollment is based on out of district transfers, then it makes sense to the average person that the solution is to bite the bullet, close a school or two, and stop taking out of district transfers.
The problem as I have attempted to explain many times over the last five years, is that approach won’t work because it doesn’t solve the problem which is the actual decline in enrollment.
I will add two points to that. First, out of district transfers are also a Band-Aid 
approach. They temporarily sure up and stabilize the enrollment, but they are not a permanent solution. The permanent solution or at least the long term one (since permanency does not exist in this world) is to plan for housing so people with families can afford to move here and people can afford to move here or live here when they start families.
The second problem with this approach is that declining enrollment is not the reason why we have a parcel tax. The parcel tax is in place primarily because the school district is disadvantaged by the state funding system which prioritizes (and btw, rightly so) school districts with higher percentages of low income and disadvantaged students.
That gives those districts additional resources to help better educate those students. That’s a good thing. But it means less money for Davis, which has traditionally made up for it through the parcel tax.
The reason why closing a school is not going to help the problem is that the issue of declining enrollment is an ongoing process. The problem in essence is not that the schools are too large, it’s the relative population is slowly declining year over year—and removing out of district transfers and reducing the size of the schools won’t do anything to stop that.
In fact, just the opposite is true. All removing additional out of district transfers will do is increase the rate of declining enrollment for the next 15 years, lower the amount of ADA money the district receives, and handicap the school district.
The problem is that is not intuitive. People need to understand the mechanics of funding. The fact that the district gets somewhere between $10 and 12,000 per year per student. The fact that a classroom is comprised of some 25 to 30 students, so a classroom of students brings in at least $300,000 per year, but the total comp for one teacher is close to $100,000. A lot of the other district costs are fixed.
So, each time, you lose 15 students, the district is losing about $150,000 in ADA money but can only cut half a teacher in response (on average). And it’s worse than that because the decline is across grade levels and across schools.
Moreover, eliminating out of district transfers won’t stop this problem. The district is losing students every year in projections into the future. So even if you stop transfers and close a school, the next year, you have the same problem—trying to find that $150,000 that you just lost in ADA money. Over that time, that becomes crippling.
If anything, closing a school could force the district to ask for more and not less in the way of parcel tax money.
The one thing I agree with Harrington and the follow up letter, “Mr. Harrington requested the school board provide a substantive response to this concern. I would be interested in hearing the school board’s response to Mr. Harrington. “
The district has to be able to separate the issues, explain this stuff in plain language. And it has to do so fast because the parcel tax election is only four months away.
David, I don’t disagree with your premise that DJUSD needs to get ahead of this issue, but this is the (approximately … possibly more) sixth article you have written on this in the past 12 months, and none of those articles have done anything to actually get ahead of the issue with your readers. Each artice effectively says the two words that no man should ever say to a woman … “trust me.”
In each of your articles you have made the assertion that the cost savings from the reduced teacher head count and the reduced teachers’ salaries and benefits will be less than the reduction in ADA revenues. Never once do you discuss the reduction in administrative costs, or the reduction in clerical support cost, or building maintenance costs, or grounds maintenance cost, or materials acquisition costs, or insurance costs, or overhead costs.
Further, you never acknowledge that the ADA revenues have already been lost, and that closing the school will not actually result in any additional loss of ADA revenues, because the students from the closed school will still be students in DJUSD, just housed at a different facility. What we have currently is a suboptimal allocation of academic resources, with class sizes throughout the District below their reasonable capacity. As a result the District’s costs per pupil are higher than they need be.
With all the above said, it isn’t your responsibility to do the District’s work for them. They need to come to the epiphany that the only way they are going to succeed at the polls is by being proactively honest with the voters about the true state of District finances … including the expenses that are actually being spent, as well as the expenses that are being deferred … most notably building and grounds maintenance. They need to also be honest about how poorly the District pays its teachers when compared to other comparable Districts in the region. If they do that then they may actually EARN the trust of the voters. Just saying to them “Don’t worry, you won’t get pregnant” is only going fuel greater skepticism and more distrust.
In closing, I fully support the current interdistrict transfers policy. The vast majority of the students who are in that transfer portal have a direct connection to the Davis community, with many, many of them having one or more parents who work withing the DJUSD cachement area. With housing affordability being what it is, offering their children schooling in the same community where they work is very reasonable.
It may also be time for DJUSD to contemplate challenging the State’s funding system in court.
First, the district will get nowhere challenging the funding formula in court. The Serrano decision put a form of this in place almost 50 years ago. If anything, wealthier districts are more likely to see a reduction in funding as there’s a growing recognition that parcel taxes have become an end run for those communities.
David posted a while ago a study by the district showing that closing a school saves only about half of the direct costs to run the school. It’s time to dig that out again.
But further, anyone proposing to close schools (especially multiple ones if we shut off the 1,000 interdistrict transfers) MUST propose which specific schools will be closed and then go to every public meeting that discusses those closures. If they are unwilling to do that then they are just poseurs with no legitimate standing in the discussion.
Richard, let me answer your points in reverse order. I personally will be glad to go to every one of the public meetings. I will even be wiulling to be the master of ceremonies at each of those meetings. I attended each and every one of the water rate educational meetings hosted by the City at schools and fire houses.
Second, the decision about which school(s) to close is one that should be supported by a solid analysis of the costs associated with each of the schools. For example there is considerable information available that the facilities of Emerson Junior High are a “money pit” and that cutting our losses on those poorly designed and poorly constructed buildings is in all likelihood a wise decision. There hasn’t been as much “buzz” about any of the Elementary Schools, but there is plenty of fiscal history to support an objective dispassionate assessment of which facilities are dragging the DJUSD finances down into the red and/or generating lots of deferred expenses for facility maintenance and repair.
Davis is a school district that has fully embraced “manetism” and as a result a huge proportion of DJUSD students do not attend the aschool closest to their neighborhood. If the Spanish Immersion program were moved from its current facility(ies) to different facilities, the route to school would change, but the program(s) would not.
You may be right about challenging the funding formula. It would seem to be vulnerable though considering the recent Supreme Court decision regarding Affirmative Action.
One additional point Richard … democracy is at the heart of your comment above “But further, anyone proposing to close schools (especially multiple ones if we shut off the 1,000 interdistrict transfers) MUST propose which specificschools will be closed and then go to every public meeting that discusses those closures.” You are illuminating the power of individual constituents/voters.
However, you simultaneously turn your back on democracy when you attack the people’s right to vote thanks to Measure J.
How do you rationalize that fundamental contradiction?
An additional point that I think is missing as well – even if you shut off interdistrict transfers, that doesn’t immediately eliminate (I think it’s closer to 700 than 1000 students). Once a student has been admitted to the school district, they are there. So basically what this would do is shut off new transfers. That means that the district loses somewhere around 70 students a year. At some point that will be enough to close a school. But perhaps not immediately. In the meantime, the district is going to lose $700,000 every time time they shut off 70 students from entering the district. Closing a school is calculated to save perhaps 600,000. In short, the process of ending out of district transfers creates a 14 year calamity for the school district that cannot be saved by closing schools.
David, it definitely is time to take Richard up on his statement, “David posted a while ago a study by the district showing that closing a school saves only about half of the direct costs to run the school. It’s time to dig that out again.”
If DJUSD chose to close an elementary school today, hows much ADA revenue would DJUSD lose as a result of that decision and lets then compare that loss of revenue caused by the closing to the costs saved … as detailed in the study by the District.
Can you republish the study?
I will look for it.
But again, one of the complications is one of timing. Once the district accepts a student, this becomes their home district and the district cannot kick them out. So the district could not close an elementary school today.
David, I agree 100% with your timing comment. And I repeat, I am 100% in support of DJUSD’s current practice of taking inter-district transfers.
Timing also is a key element in looking at the impact of a school closing. The timing of the loss of students and their associated ADA is in the past. That revenue loss is “sunk” just like sunk costs are already expended and can’t be recouped. The timing of a school closure is in the future, with very directly attributable associated cost savings, but no directly attributable revenue losses.
So, as long as there is capacity to accept the closed school’s students at other DJUSD schools … in existing classes in existing class rooms and with existing teachers, a school closing has only positive dollars and cents upside (equal to the amount of teacher, administrative, maintenance, and overhead costs that are saved.
David, your article doesn’t really make much sense. The article basically says the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) doesn’t pay Davis enough (for socio-economic reasons I believe). Okay…but that’s not a reason for the school districts end result fiscal problems. It’s a factor that needs to be mitigated.
In any business financials are about income – expenses. It’s that simple. So if the widget I’m selling can’t sell for enough to cover the cost or at least a minimum profit margin then I need to decrease the costs or find other streams of revenue.
I will probably vote for the parcel tax since I have kids in the school system. But if I didn’t have kids in the school system, I’d be kind of annoyed. I mean sure we all need to help out the community. The problem I have is that the district doesn’t seem to offer a plan for getting out of it’s fiscal dire straits. But it’s kind of like having an adult kid that decided to devote themselves to environmental causes or social justice…but then has to keep asking you for rent money. You want to say: “okay son/daughter, I’m happy to help but what are you going to do so that you can start paying your own rent without my help?”
I’ve advocated for public housing here in the past. My basic philosophy is if real estate developers can make money off of real estate, why can’t cities/communities as well? I believe a possible solution to the district fiscal problems in the long term could come from leveraging the districts greatest assent. It’s land. They can do this by: building, owning and renting residential units.
I think right now the district is trying to figure out what to do with 2 acres of underutilized office buildings in central Davis not too far from the downtown. If they built that thing out as a mixed use project at 16 units per acre that would give them 32 units and some space for their distance learners meetings (I think that’s what they use the space for). 15 units could be market rate units to pay for the project and later generate income. 5 units could be affordable housing units for those with very low income and 11 could be work force housing (priced for people between 80%-110% of the local median income) reserved for teachers.
Knock down a school and put up more housing to generate income. The current elementary schools have big single story land foot prints. In other parts of the country schools are built as multi story buildings with a much smaller land foot print. Another long term solution would be to rebuild the schools and reclaim some of that land and use it for housing (for teachers and revenue).
In the short term, the school’s facilities are under utilized assets. Just the other day I saw an online community request for a place to hold a kid’s birthday party indoors for about 70 people. The person said all the usual city facilities were booked. The first thing I thought of were the newly built Multi Purpose Rooms (MPRs) that weren’t being used on most weekends. Chavez, Birch Lane and North Davis Elementary schools all have new facilities (the other elementary schools may have them as well). I know that Birch Lane rents out it’s MPR to the 4-H club once a month (on an evening on a weekday). I’m guessing there are plenty of UCD students that would want a facility to hold a graduation party or a few of them might want a cheap place for a small wedding?
Anyway it’s all about finding additional revenue streams to supplement the waning income from the state for students. It’s about bolstering the district’s income so it isn’t continuously dependent on the community to pay for it’s fiscal deficiencies.