[Local-Maine-Schools] Basis of fiscal note for LD 1932?

[Connerty-Marin, David]

Brian, 

 

Thank you for your email last week asking for the basis of the fiscal
note for LD 1932.  As you know, it is the Legislature's Office of Fiscal
and Program Review that determines fiscal notes, not the Executive
Branch.

 

The data provided to the Office of Fiscal and Program Review show
clearly that school administrative units (SAUs) in school unions cost
more to operate than those in any other type of governance structure. In
similarly sized SAUs, SADs and CSDs cost less to operate than units that
are in unions.

 

School size and other potential factors do not change the data. There
are SADs with small schools, such as SAD 4 in Guilford, that also
operate for less per pupil than similar SAUs in unions.  SADs have a
single school board and a single budget. Most unions have a
proliferation of decision-making authorities and therefore there is less
likelihood that any one entity will look comprehensively at either the
finances or the educational program.

 

I am attaching three items that may be of interest: a one-pager with
information about school unions and efficiency; a spreadsheet showing
per-pupil costs for different types of governance (I think this may
already be on your website); and several slides from a presentation by
Dr. David Silvernail of the Maine Educational Policy Research Institute
at USM - information he presented to the Education Committee some weeks
ago on this topic.

 

David

 

 

David Connerty-Marin

Director of Communications

Maine Department of Education

 

________________________________

From: Brian Hubbell [mailto:sparkflashgap at gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 8:47 AM
To: Connerty-Marin, David; David Silvernail
Cc: local-maine-schools at mainetalk.org
Subject: Basis of fiscal note for LD 1932?

 

To: David Connerty-Martin, Maine Department of Education
Cc: David Silvernail, Director, Center for Educational Policy, USM
Re: Basis of fiscal note for LD 1932?
Date: February 7, 2008

I was just reading the fiscal note attached to the Education Committee's
minority report on LD 1932 and I'm particularly curious about the
following:

Information provided by the Department of Education indicates that, for
fiscal year 2005-06,  the average per-pupil expenditures for school
unions that served pre-kindergarten to grade 8 students was $1,009
higher than the state average and $1,385 higher for school unions that
served pre-kindergarten to grade 12 students. 


Granting for the moment that the raw data underlying the correlation is
accurate, I'm very interested in what causal relationship is implied
here.  

Is the Department asserting that these same school systems could be
operated for $1000 per student less, either as SADs or as municipal
school districts, while maintaining the same schools and instructional
services? 

Yes or no.

If so, I'd be most interested to see the modeling that explains how
school union governance, in itself, generates those superfluous costs.

And, if not, I'd observe that the suggestion borders on statistical
fraud.

Brian Hubbell,
Bar Harbor

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mainetalk.org/pipermail/local-maine-schools_mainetalk.org/attachments/20080215/bdd5250a/attachment-0001.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: perpupilSAUtype.xls
Type: application/vnd.ms-excel
Size: 29184 bytes
Desc: perpupilSAUtype.xls
Url : http://mainetalk.org/pipermail/local-maine-schools_mainetalk.org/attachments/20080215/bdd5250a/attachment-0001.xls 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: unions-efficiency-performance.doc
Type: application/msword
Size: 32768 bytes
Desc: unions-efficiency-performance.doc
Url : http://mainetalk.org/pipermail/local-maine-schools_mainetalk.org/attachments/20080215/bdd5250a/attachment-0001.doc 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Observations on Regionalization 3 slides.ppt
Type: application/vnd.ms-powerpoint
Size: 47616 bytes
Desc: Observations on Regionalization 3 slides.ppt
Url : http://mainetalk.org/pipermail/local-maine-schools_mainetalk.org/attachments/20080215/bdd5250a/attachment-0001.ppt