We're Still Concerned About Newton Public Schools Spending

From Joshua Norman

On May 1, the Newton TAB and Newton Patch published my guest column focusing on Newton’s FY 2014 budget, which passed unanimously.  Two weeks later, Geoff Epstein responded with his guest column [“Post override engagement, progress”, May 15, page B4].  William Heck responded with a Letter to the Editor [“Newton Schools are Too Costly”, May 22, page B3] and Geoff responded to Bill’s letter.

We remembered Geoff’s March quote on Ken Parker’s program “What impressed me the most about the NO Campaign in 2008 was that Dan Fahey and Jeff Seideman engaged with the government afterward to make a change.  I think Setti needs to go to the NO campaign and talk to them and filter out anything there that is substantial that he needs to adjust because they have a case, to a degree.”  

Rather than calm, Epstein’s opinion pieces reinforced the Newton Taxpayers Association’s concerns about the costs of the Newton schools.

Epstein argued that school spending grew from 1995 to 2014 because of rapid growth in health insurance and Special Education. We see that health insurance and SPED represent nearly half of the budget (up from ~30% in 1995) and prevented Newton from maintaining foreign languages in elementary schools and adding enriching education programs like a 21st century technology plan and full-day kindergarten.

Despite spending $90K on the SPED review in 2010, Newton’s SPED spending (net of all aid) still increased from $51.9M in 2010 to $61.8M in 2014, even though the SPED review highlighted $20M/year in potential savings (Pages 17, 38 and 49).

Epstein also ignored the fact that we took issue with all the non-resident student programs.  We took issue with all the non-resident student programs (METCO, EDCO, staff kids and “Approved to Attend students”), not just METCO.   We have 538 non-resident students; this population exceeds the enrollment of each of our elementary schools.  Epstein argues that 538 kids only cost $500,000 per year as opposed to the $7M/year that we have concluded.  If 538 kids only cost $500K/year collectively, why did we even have an override?  Why do our kids cost so much more per student especially when a disproportionate number of them are eligible for SPED services?

Concerning Epstein’s vote against the 2014 budget, we weren’t upset by it, we merely compared his enthusiasm for the override with his concerns about the digital education program.  We supported naming rights while Lisle Baker opposed naming rights and wanted a bigger 2013 override to fund technology.  I contrasted his concerns that “digital education cannot and should not be solved by donation models” with his interest in connecting into the alumni network (to supplement & bolster the school system’s resources) and the unanimous support the School Committee gave to the naming rights program in 2012.

I also disagree with Geoff’s conjecture that my conclusion about the $11.4M compensation increase and the $11.4M override is “mystical numerology” because money is fungible.  The override put $11.4M more money into the pot over and above Prop 2½’s limitations.  It filtered through and funded more of that 76% of what we fund all the time – compensation and benefits.  Of that, $4.2M went to fund new hires and $7.2M went to fund pay raises for existing employees even though FTE headcount in Newton’s largest department (Newton Public Schools) has increased at a faster rate (7.7%) than enrollment growth (4.3%) since 2012.

School Compensation increased from 83% in 1995 to 84.3% in 2014: Hingham Public Schools only pays 80.7% of its school budget in compensation.  If Newton’s compensation proportion was the same as Hingham’s, Newton could reallocate $6,709,453/year from compensation to the Capital Stabilization Fund for the new Ward Elementary School ($38.1M) building project plus additions to Williams ($19.25M) and Pierce ($20.1M) in the 2019-2023 Capital Improvement Program projects without requiring operating or debt exclusion overrides for these building projects.  This could be phased in via compensation growth that is 2%/year for five years instead of 2.5%/year.  The reduced compensation growth can be implemented from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2020 as part of the FY 2015-2017 and the FY 2018-2020 labor contracts.

Although I disagree with Geoff’s excuses, I reached out to him to determine where we may have common ground in the hopes that we can work together in moving Newton’s educational excellence forward with fiscal responsibility.

In conclusion, I was not the only person that was concerned that Geoff’s conclusions ended up reinforcing the poor value proposition Newton Public Schools provide Newton taxpayers.  The Newton Public Schools Superintendent’s budget nearly tripled since my freshman year at NNHS.  This doesn’t include $26.6M/year in school-related costs buried in the city-side budget.  And yet we don’t have a cutting edge technology program to improve education and reduce costs.  Nor do we have foreign languages in our elementary schools like Brookline has.  Nor do we have a credible, low-cost full-day kindergarten program like Belmont has.  Nor did the school department use the money to maintain and improve our school buildings.  Think about it!