HB 1607 – Public Schools Could See Buckets of Free Money?

by Steve MacDonald 

Skip just posted a nice letter from the Londonderry Superintendent of schools in which the Super appears to lobby the state Senate in opposition to HB1607.  This bill establishes an education tax credit for businesses or groups that set up scholarship programs to help offset the costs of non-public school tuition.  This could allow more parents to enroll their kids outside of the governments education monopoly and on paper at least take the paltry sum of $3,450.00 per student with them when the business is reimbursed for its donations with a tax credit of that amount.   The business is, of course, free to set it’s award at any sum above that at their discretion, but the credit is (I assume) maxed out at $3450.00 per student.

Needless to say, the Super (Nate Greenberg) doesn’t care for the bill.  By his calculation each school district will lose money it needs to teach students and would necessarily downshift those costs onto local property taxpayers to make up the difference.

That argument sounds like it might hold water–the entire lobbying question Skip raises aside–but only if taken in the vacuum of the space between the typical bureaucrats ears.  I wont revisit all the Super’s arguments here, just follow the link if you feel confused, but in my district, this bill would, on paper at least,  be like the school district finding a winning lottery ticket every single year.

In Merrimack the actual ‘on-paper’ cost per student is well over $14,000.00 each.; total enrollment of 4700 (ish) divided by our roughly 65+ million dollar school budget.  If a parent can only take $3,450.00 per child, then the town is still getting paid $11,000.00 dollar per child with no child left to teach.

To see how that looks if we borrow the formula the Super’s letter…

COPUPPSE (Cost of Over-priced Under Performing Public School Education) -  PTPR (Pittance of Tuition Parent Receives) = JPSS  (Jackpot for Public School System)

In my case, using the 5 fewer students per grade level model, including kindergarten, that would net the district an extra  $700,000.00 per year in revenue for which there are no “students” to spend it on.  Free money?

So the problem won’t be downshifting costs on taxpayers,  it will be a Super and a School Board explaining why the district still needs more than $11,000.00 dollars per non-existent student not to educate those non- students that do not exist.   $700,000.00 – 0 = $700,000.00.

And having made that argument successfully, should we expect that as a line item in all future school budgets regardless of the outcome of HB 1607?  “We’d like to add a million to the school budget for not educating roughly 90 non-students, in the next fiscal year.”

HB1607 is like free money, unless of course the taxpayers want to have a discussion about why it costs so damn much to send a kid to public school.  That might be a problem worth the Super’s time

So Quit your bitching.

You are reading "HB1607 - Public Schools Could See Buckets of Free Money?" by Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com.(Home)

Comments

[Rick Barnes]

Steve,

Allow me to play devils advocate here for a minute (for the record I support the bill)...

The "cost per student" is actually an interesting animal in that if you pay out $14k per student and lets say you have 100 students, if you lose a student your budget doesn't automatically drop by $14k. More then likely the cost per student increases for the remaining students.

The reason for this is how the district spends its money. If you have a teacher with 15 kids and one kid leaves that teaching job doesn't disappear. The teacher is still needed for the 14 kids. Instead the cost of that teachers salary is now spread out over fewer kids making the cost per student increase. That said, if there are 5 teachers each with 15 kids and the total class size drops by 15 in total then you would see the savings as that teaching job would no longer be needed.

There are also cases where costs increase as the result of kids leaving public schools as well. As was pointed out in the Merrimack's school meeting, the cost of busing children to private schools falls on the public school budget. Even if the parents choose another town the Merrimack tax payers are forced to bus that child the extra distance increasing the costs of their busing.

The only costs you would see directly disappear as a result of 1 less child are the costs of consumables such as workbooks that kids write directly in, science kits that get used up, etc. And I can assure you from my years serving on the budget committee, the cost of consumables is a fairly small portion of the over all cost per student.

[dave]

Trying to fix public schools by nibbling around the edges will not work. It's like putting a bandaid on your toe when the real problem is incurable cancer of the brain. Pull the plug, give every parent a voucher they can use anywhere.... or better yet, get the government out of schooling all together.

[Steve]

Rick, I realize it is not apples to apples, but it should be in some respect, and if people approached it that way, they might find more opportunities to keep the costs closer to reality. But the bureaucracy never has any such incentive, and uses it's weight to push things the other way, so we are forced to create this kind of context to make a point, yes? Why can't we teach a kid for $3450.00 each?

And I'd suggest we stop paying to bus kids to private schools. If a Parent takes responsibility for their child's education they should take responsibility for all of it.