Progress Oshkosh

Last night I attended the Progress Oshkosh open meeting. The goals, as I understand it, of the meeting were to present some ongoing/proposed plans Progress Oshkosh has been working on, seek additional ideas from the public of what they would like to see in Oshkosh, and invite members of the community to join Progress Oshkosh (no fees involved). They had several very good ideas for making our community more welcoming.

With Richard Wells from UWO having presented a workshop to the OASD BOE about the sports complex funding, I was not surprised that he would be at this function plugging for community support. A gentleman seated next to him actually made some comments about the sports center. Information of interest to those following school district issues was a comment that OASD pays UWO $40,000 per year to use Titan Stadium. The reasoning is because if we did not have our games at Titan Stadium, we would be "forced" to have our games at the schools. [I interpreted his tone as that would be a bad thing.] He went on to comment that the schools do not have the facilities and "West does not have a field." OASD does not have the funding to build facilities or fix up what we have so it is natural to use Titan Field. UWO is looking for OASD to make a better effort to support the sports complex, as well as, the city and possibly the county. The sports complex with be the third largest field in the state (Lambeau being 1st and Camp Randall being 2nd). I took that to mean that UWO is hoping OASD will pour some more money their way since we have nothing for our kids to play on anyway. Needless to say, I do not have a high opinion of this gentleman's statements.

The second item of interest, as it made it into the paper, is that I was interviewed as a meeting guest about the Progress Oshkosh petition drive to reduce the County Board to 19 members, half the current number. I took some petition papers and am currently circulating them. Since my quote was so brief and did not explain my position on the issue and since I have been asked by several people today what I am thinking by supporting this, I thought I would explain here.

I do believe the County Board should be reduced. One reason is that it would save money. It would also be more efficient with fewer committes doing essentially the same thing. I do not know what the magic number should be. Considering the size of the county, I could see 25 being possible. Tony Palmeri pointed out that nineteen is too small for county government because you lose something in the representation ratio. I agree to a point with that. I do not have enough information to know if nineteen is the way to go and have seen no information that reducing the county board is a bad thing. Progress Oshkosh asserts that a smaller board would be more efficient and create more healthy competition for the seats. They have some information to back that up including a past board supervisor. Progress Oshkosh is also convinced that the general public would support a cut of this magnitude. One county board member was in attendance and he was strongly opposed to cutting the board so drastically. I have heard other County Board Supervisors are concerned about losing their long held seats to more challenges. I don't know if that is true or not. Since the referendum Progress Oshkosh is asking for is not a special election and it would cost nothing to add it to the April ballot, I think the public should have their say. It may not even come to that as there are two resolutions before the County Board to reduce the size to 32 or 36 members.

This is democracy in action. A community group doesn't like what they see, they are taking steps to let the public decide. It doesn't cost anyone anything to have the question on the ballot. The idea could save money or at least send the message that the public wants some kind of change in that direction even if it doesn't pass. Would I support every referendum request? No. As a matter of fact there is one that will be on the November ballot that I will not support and one not on the ballot regarding curriculum that I would not support. In this case it is free to let the people have a direct hand in their government.

What do you think about the statements made about the UWO sports complex and cutting the County Board?

Underpaid Teachers?

There has been comments on several blogs and in several threads about union benefits and pay versus what burden the average taxpayer can afford to bear. I did a little searching to get a better comparison on teacher salaries and benefits as most information is comparing apples to oranges. The fact is a teacher's paycheck cannot be compared to a corporate trainers paycheck, for example. The reason is, while both are essentially teachers, one works nine months a year while the other works 12. One works 40 hours per week, on the clock, the other about 35. A corporate trainer could get overtime, comp time, or both. Teachers, generally, do not. Corporate trainers pay more toward benefits along with deductibles. Teachers pay 5% and usually have little to no deductible. No matter what private sector job we look at for comparison, we run into problems and it is very difficult to change apples and oranges into apples and apples.

I did find an article that tried to answer the questions by making some comparisons as equal as possible.

Some highlights from the article:


Public school Private school private, nonteacher public, nonteacher
Four year degree $40,976 $33,384 $40,560 $47,424

Master's degree $52,208 $43,576 $49,816 $58,760



Public school teachers stated they work 41.5 hours per week; other public sector employees state they work 40 hours. Private sector employees stated they work 41.2 hours per week.



Benefits fro Wisconsin Public school teachers:
Monthly Insurance Cost for Single $374
Monthly Insurance cost for family $843
Percentage school board pays for single 97%
Percentage school board pays for family 95%
Monthly board cost for single $363
Monthly board cost for family $801
Monthly teacher cost for single $ 11
Monthly teacher cost for family $ 42



Union teachers Non-teacher WI union Non-teach WI union w/ 4 yr deg Non-union teach
$881/week $728/week $762/week $705/week


"If there is any inequity revealed in this analysis of teacher salaries, it is one related to the effects of collective bargaining. Because collectively bargained teacher salaries are not based on merit, the best teachers make significantly less than the top employees of other labor market sectors, even though the average public school teacher remains very high."

Check out the article and tell me what you think. Are Wisconsin Public School teachers paid too little, too much, or just right?

OASD Budget

In light of the recent issues with the city budget, I thought I would try a survey for the OASD budget. You can vote for more than one.

What could help the OASD budget?
	Cut expenditures and/or contract some services.
	Cut or freeze salaries.
	OASD employees pay more than 5% for insurance.
	Cut positions.
	Sell advertising or naming rights.
	Consolidate buildings and sell the emptied ones.
	Other.
	Nothing, the budget is perfect the way it is.
Free polls from Pollhost.com

God versus Darwin

This week Dr. Sandra Gade, retired physics professor, spoke once again about the theory of evolution and how such science should be taught in Oshkosh Public School District. Gade has tried to get a petition together in the hopes that the BOE will allow a referendum to change the science curriculum. Even with a petition, the BOE does not have to vote to place the referendum on the November ballot.

It sounds like Gade has a large following. I have not seen nor signed the petition. Several science teachers form OASD and UWO have spoken in opposition to Gade's claims that Darwin's theory is junk science (my words) and cannot be proven. What do you think? Should we change curriculum? Is there anything wrong with evolution? Is Darwinism flawed? How do we reconcile this "discrepancy" if there is one?

How to Reform Your Local School Board by Steve Loehrke, 2005

I found this article doing some research for grad school. I thought some of the information was interesting. I am not endorsing the author, nor the source. The article came from The Wisconsin Conservative Digest. I am a staunch liberservative and consider myself a Demorepubligreen. At least that is what one of those online "what is your party affiliation" quizzes determined. Please do not try to examine my intent for posting this and simply look at some of the suggestions to help us lessen our financial worries and making our kids our only focus. This post is a bit long, the article is longer. I tried to pull good stuff without losing the overall points of the article.

Some notable quotes:

"Demographics showed that our school district would be switching from an increasing enrollment to a declining enrollment. I have observed that an increasing enrollment hides many financial problems while a declining enrollment emphasizes the problems. Our school district had been running deficits budgets and was depleting its fund balance to pay regular expanses. Our mill rate was one of the highest in the area. Our administrative overhead was one of the highest in the county. Our employees health insurance costs were one of the highest in our neighborhood. Our post retirement costs were the highest in our conference. [...] No one wanted to tighten the belt."

"... I called our Business Manager and our District Administrator and told them that they must fix their proposed deficit budget before our Board meeting on Tuesday, or I would fix the deficit and they might not like my plan. I emailed them my ideas. By noon, they called me back and we had a balanced budget. By the end of the year we put more money back into the reserve fund than the extra money received from taxpayers under the referendum. The next year we paid off all school constructions loans except one loan that we refinanced at less than two percent interest. In year three, we paid off our WRS prior service loan. We eliminated all short term borrowing. "

"I have a whole list of things we did to balance our budget. For a few examples, first we reduced administrative overhead. Then we combined non-union jobs. [...] We actually raised the wages of our teachers to one of the highest of our comparable school districts. We kept all class offerings except Driver's Ed which was available privately. We kept all extracurricular athletic and academic activities. None of our schools closed. When I researched comparable school district's budgets, schedules, and union contracts, I found out that many other districts could do the same things we have done. "

"When we passed our new policy with teacher accountability, I soon found out that teacher unions do not like their members to be even partially evaluated based on the results of their teaching ability."

Here are some of Steve's suggestions that he feels should be mandated by the state. "These suggestions do not cost taxpayers extra money":

*Replace the seniority based pay scales with performance based pay.
*Change the state statutes that prevent outcome-based compensation strategies, remember, What is best for the education of our children?
*Shut down the schools and fire the administrators that cannot do their job.
*Eliminating the QEO should only be considered if the government also eliminates binding arbitration. Binding arbitration is broke and needs to be fixed.
* The QEO should be tied to the annual increase in revenue cap.
* The state needs to allow all schools to unilaterally change to the state Uniform Benefits insurance program.
*It is too difficult to non-renew ineffective teachers.
* Centralize Jobs. Why can't we just copy the curriculum and purchase the same textbooks as the number one performing school district in the state? The government has standardized tests. Where is the standardized curriculum to match?
* Change DPI rules to allow a school district to be run by a Business Manager. Do not require experience as a teacher. This causes inbreeding.

Some Things We Did to Balance Our Budget: (Some Oshkosh has already or recently implemented. We're in the right direction.)

* Identified and removed slush items from the budget.
* Replaced the District Administrator with a Business Manager.
* Prepaid most school construction loans. Refinanced final remaining loan at under 2%. Eliminated short term borrowing.
* Prepaid WRS prior service loan which had 8% interest rate.
* Reduced administrative overhead. Reduced some staff.
* Negotiated new union contracts.
* Reviewed expense accounts. Combined jobs.
* Sought volunteers for non-instructional work that formerly required paid employees.
* Created an insurance committee.
* Stopped paying for snow days for some employees.
* Paid for professional development of some key employees.
* Job sharing with adjacent school districts school nurse.
* Eliminate unfunded police liaison officer.
* Reduced number of school busses.
* Computerized the school lunch program.
* Co-sponsored some projects with the Booster Club.
* Reviewed and updated all school policies.

What Does WEAC Have To Say?

A lot of information and accusations have been flying about unions lately. Since my interest is in education I looked up the teachers' union, WEAC, website. Here are some of the things I found:

Public schools outperform private schools in reading and math.
* "Public schools significantly out-scored Catholic schools.
* Of all private school types studied, Lutheran schools performed the best.
* The fastest growing segment of the private school sector, conservative Christian schools, were also the lowest performing.
* Charter schools scored significantly lower than non-charter public schools in 4th grade, but scored slightly higher in 8th grade. "

Wisconsin's top teachers are looking at a mission to send the best of the best in teachers on leave from their home schools and sending them to high-need schools. "Right now, those teachers tend to be concentrated in the wealthiest districts that can pay the highest salaries, but they are probably needed the most in poor urban and rural districts with the largest number of high-needs students."

Delegates call for changes for changes to NCLB. "“They're tired of excuses for lawmakers not backing up the so-called No Child Left Behind Act with adequate resources to get the job done," said Reg Weaver, NEA president. "And they know that children and students are the ones hurting from those excuses. Now they'll help turn their first-hand expertise with these problems into sound education policy.”"

4-old kindergarten" called 'the great equalizer' "

"250 local officials sign anti-TABOR letter

"Teacher Minimum Standards"
Salary improvements exceeding the cost of living in each year (CPI-U plus) on each cell.
Maintaining all scheduled salary step advances.
Maintaining uniform wage and benefit structures for all current and future employees.
Maintaining the value of all current benefits.
Securing WEA Trust long-term care insurance.
Securing language addressing concerns with the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) – also known as the “No Child Left Behind” law – the federal Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), and the state’s teacher licensure law, PI 34."

There is also an extensive parents' resource page.

If we want to have a fair discussion of union versus non-union when it comes to teachers, we should actually know what WEAC is about.

I have also found a couple of lists of non-union school districts if anyone is interested in seeing how they compare. These are just a few:

Almond-Bancroft
Marion
Port Edwards
Tigerton
Tomorrow River
and Tri-County
Milton
Palmyra-Eagle

20/20 Stupid In America

Take a look at this, it is not the whole segment that was on, but it is nearly 4 minutes on what was covered. What do you think?

Stupid in America

New School Year, New Look For OASD

Over the summer, I had relatives visiting from Colorado. They were very curious about what Oshkosh had to offer and were especially curious about the differences in schools between here and Denver. There was a fleeting discussion of the "what-ifs" of moving here. I drove down to the Coldwell Banker Realty office on Oregon to get a map of Oshkosh and any other info they might have. Their relocation packet was very comprehensive and interesting. I wish I had had one when first moving to Oshkosh (lucky me, my cousin left it behind). Though my cousin and her family will not be moving to Oshkosh, we were all impressed with the magazine-type publication about the OASD. It can also be seen on the OASD website. I worked on it as a member of the Traeger Elementary Site Council, but our discussions did not do the final product justice.

At the last school board meeting I extended my compliments and that of my relatives to Dr. Heilmann in the hopes that those who were part of the final product would get my private kudos before I offer my public kudos. Warm fluffies are nicer en mass. Also, I was not sure who to thank for the wonderful job. The list is long and distinguished from site councils to local businesses who gave OASD a deal on printing to the realtors who are distributing it. If you have not gotten one or seen it, check out the OASD website, stop by a local realtor, or check with your employer. Several copies are floating around the community. There really is more than meets the eye right here in Oshkosh. Thank you OASD for putting in the effort and letting our district shine. The information is invaluable for residents and newcomers alike.