Comments to the Conservative Caucus, 1/31/07

Comments to the Conservative Caucus,

January 31st, 2007

By Randy Smith, DavisParents.org

Thank you for the opportunity to take a few minutes this morning. As mentioned earlier, I’m Randy Smith with DavisParents.org, an organization of Davis School District parents. In the next few minutes, I would like to share some of the lessons parents, taxpayers and legislators should learn from recent events in the Davis School District. There are many things that the families in DavisParents.org are concerned with, but last evening as I sat and listening to the Davis Youth Symphony, I was reminded once again how lucky we are to have such great teachers and programs in our district. The Davis Youth Symphony is a District wide symphony that is absolutely amazing. It is directed by a talented and dedicated musician and life time educator, Richard Marsden. He is supported by several talented music educators from throughout the district. My family and the families of many many others have been deeply enriched by this incredible program. Although my comments today are focused on things that are not so good, I don’t want us to loose sight of the fact that many things are going well.

The recent boundary debate
First, a little background about the recent school district boundary changes. By way of disclosure, I should point out that my family was not affected by any boundary changes, but obviously, many of the families in our organization were affected. The school district is about to complete High School #8. Even though this high school is at the north end of the district, the majority of the controversy resulted from the districts plans to send students south, away from high school #8.

In the August 1st school board meeting, Chase Rogers, Director of Planning for the District, reported to the Board that the staff wanted to change the boundaries in the south at the same time they filled High School #8 in the north. This was necessary because Bountiful High was declining in numbers and “bouncing off 3-A status”. However, after the Standard Examiner reported that the plan might be “A Play to Stay 4-A” the District started saying that it was not about athletics but rather to “protect programs”. Mr. Rogers then described the plan to bus Farmington students “right by Davis High” to Viewmont and then take the neighborhoods surrounding Viewmont and move them to Bountiful. He also reported that “Woods Cross was right where we want them to be”. He did not point out that Woods Cross was currently 190 students over the physical capacity of their school building. Six and a half months later, this is exactly the plan that the board approved.

Financial analysis and fiscal over-sight
So what does this tell us about the district’s level of financial analysis and fiscal over-sight? Even though this controversial plan was presented to the School Board four times, over six and a half months, the district never reported, to the Board or the public, the incremental cost of busing students away from empty classrooms at Davis High School to “protect programs” at distant schools. In fact, several members of the citizens committee, which had been tasked with drawing up the boundaries, reported that the district told them several times that “transportation was a state expense, not a district expense, and therefore they did not need to worry about transportation costs”.

This plan not only increased the transportation budget, but it requires that the needed renovations at Woods Cross also include an expansion of classrooms. This is amazing, especially when you consider that, this school year alone; the district denied seventy of the ninety students requesting a variance to Bountiful High. These requests were denied even though Bountiful had 170 empty seats. Why deny these requests? Because most of the requests were coming from Woods Cross High School students and granting the request would hurt “programs” at that school.

So, what programs would have been lost at Bountiful or Woods Cross? Parents submitted a GRAMA request to see this analysis. But no analysis had been done, or at least none was surrendered. Let’s think about it for a moment. Many schools in the State are smaller than Woods Cross or Bountiful High and they have Math, English, and Science. In fact they have all the core subjects. Academic research shows that high schools with student populations between 600 and 900 students perform best academically, so what programs could be at risk? Jewelry Making? Yoga? 4-A athletic classification? Probably. Maybe even AP French or German. However, here is the real unanswered question. What is the cost to save these programs? Given that AP French or Jewelry making are likely to have less then 15 to 20 students per class, what is the cost per student?

There are three Bountiful area high schools within a few miles of each other. If we could view neighboring high schools as part of a campus, rather than a rival school, just think how many more programs we could offer and how much more reasonable the cost would be.

Open Government
Parents questioned whether the rumored $750,000 donation to the $1,000,000 plus Astro-turf football field at Woods Cross High played a factor in the District’s boundary decisions. The parents requested a list of all contributions directly or indirectly to Woods Cross High School and were presented with a list all donors for the previous two years totaling $32,000. They asked again and were told that the list was everything on record. A week later the Davis Clipper interviewed the donor and asked if the district had made any boundary promises as a result of the donations. His reply was: “I’ve never publicly said whether or not I made a donation to the football field…but such a thing [boundary commitments] is just not worth discussing”.
That said, there is a new Astro-turf football field that was used this past football season. The district may not have done anything illegal, but is this the degree of transparency we can expect from our public school officials?

You’ve probably read that the district is spending scarce educational resources to fight parents in an expensive legal battle over violations of the Open Meeting laws. Why? What public benefit can result from resisting open government?

Title I scandal and the school board
A review of past 15 months of School Board meeting minutes did not find one account of a Board member asking the Superintendent to explain how the Title I scandal was able to continue so long or what was being done to prevent similar abuses. In fact, I’m not aware any public statements the district made, to the Board or others, describing any improvements to internal controls until after the Tribune reported that no changes had been made and the editorial board referred to the district as: “…a gullible administration asleep at the wheel. Moreover, the district can't even begin to regain the confidence of its patrons if it can't seem to rouse itself to the urgent need for immediate reform.”

Voters in Davis County, like much of the state, are complacent in regards to the administration of the district. As a result, very little attention is paid to the candidates for school board, leaving it wide open for a Superintendent to hand-select candidates and then once they are elected, the Superintendent builds a relationship that will secure his position. Superintendent Bowles has a pretty good job. He is at the head of a $470 million dollar venture and no one holds him accountable his lack of fiscal oversight. His opposition to HB144, requiring a retention election every two years, should not be a surprise to anyone. In our opinion, a good superintendent, like a good judge will not have anything to worry about.

Recommendations:

• We support efforts to increase the visibility and public debate over the election of local school boards.
• Require that education funding increases be spent IN (not on) the classroom.
• Require that a Fiscal Note be attached to every proposal presented for action by a School Board that will result in an increase in spending.
• Provide funding for the State Auditor to create “best practices” and then audit the internal controls and financial oversight of our school districts.
• Remove the loopholes in the “Open Enrollment” Statute (53A-2-213). See the handout for a copy of our comments to the Administrative Rules Committee later today.