Merrimack School Board Seeks Comment

The Merrimack School board has released its proposed school calendar for the 2013-2014 school year and is seeking input from parents.  You can look at the calendar here.

The Board will take up the calendar again at its next meeting, March 4, 2013 where any motions to change the calendar will be considered.  Be sure to get your feedback in before the meeting.

Follow this link to submit your comment

http://www.merrimack.k12.nh.us/board_members.cfm?master=292695&cfm=end

Federal Mandate Drives Up School Lunch Prices in Merrimack NH

Who says there is no such thing as a free lunch.  And it wont be just Merrimack, New Hampshire.  The Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010 Federal mandate essentially implemented price controls everywhere School lunch is served to fund free lunch, based on federal guidelines, decided on for everyone, by a few hundred Democrats, in Washington DC, in the historically significant later part of 2010.

The Democrat Congress put the USDA on point for this program, and empowered them to manage the new federal programs under the premise that it can eliminate hunger and improve nutrition.  But at the end of the day this is little more than Federal meddling, income redistribution (again), and  using the promise of federal grants and support  to turn your public school lunch program into  a taxpayer powered soup kitchen.

And not just any soup kitchen.  A soup kitchen that has to jump through hoops if it wants to please the Federal Bureaucrats empowered to decide who is worthy of what handouts and if local taxpayers must pony up to meet the federal requirements.

One of those retirements is that schools start charging students (parents) more for each lunch purchased (during a recession),  to satisfy the mandated price defined by the legislation, regardless of how much the lunch actually costs.  Yes, the Feds are telling local school districts across the Fruited Plain what they must charge for a school lunch; whatever cost reimbursement amount the feds are willing to provide for a free lunch, regardless of what it costs us to sell a lunch to a paying student.

The goal of the legislation is to give away more free lunches.  And you had better give away those free lunches. There appear to be incentives for districts that optimize their lunch give-aways based on federal eligibility standards defined by the DC bureaucrats.  So if the feds say you should be giving away ‘x’ number of free lunches based on the federal data for your district, regardless of whether anyone needs or wants them, you will fair better in the eyes of ‘The Secretary” if you can find them all and get them to opt in to the new taxpayer funded free school lunch welfare program.

Lunch Welfare by force.  That doesn’t sound socialistic at all, does it?

Over in Merrimack (as reported by Kimberly Houghton/Union Leader) it sounds like this.

Matt Shevenell, business administrator, said the price hike is in response to the Healthy Free Kids Act of 2010, a federal mandate to increase lunch prices so that revenues match reimbursements provided for free and reduced lunches.

The new law requires school districts within the next few years to charge the same amount as federal lunch subsidies.

Lovely.

The synopsis of Section 205 of the actual bill that price increase part sound like this.

Establishes requirements regarding the nonfederal contribution required of school food authorities receiving federal reimbursement through the school lunch program. Requires food authorities that have an average paid lunch price that is less than the difference between the free lunch reimbursement rate and the paid lunch reimbursement rate to set their average paid lunch price eventually so that the total per meal revenue received for those lunches is equal to the per meal revenue provided by the federal government for free lunches. Sets forth the formula for setting the average price for paid meals. Requires school food authorities that have an average paid lunch price equal to or greater than the difference between the free lunch reimbursement rate and the paid lunch reimbursement rate to adjust their prices annually by the inflation adjustment factor used for federal reimbursement rates. Allows a school food authority to reduce the average paid lunch price if the state ensures that nonfederal funding is added to the nonprofit school food service account of the food authority to satisfy the requirements of this section.

There are breakfast bailouts if you start a school breakfast program (free breakfast! until the Federal money dries up or departs), subject no doubt to your ability to maximize participation in the free lunch program, and even bailouts for day care and adult programs.

The bill passed the Democrat Senate in early August 2010, then sat in hiding until early December 2010, when Democrats were ramming through lame-duck wish list bills after their humiliating November defeat.  Obama signed it as fast as he could.

If it is not obvious, I do not approve, even though my kids have been eligible for free or reduced lunch for as long as I have had kids.  And no, I have never used the program because I simply do not need it–my kids bag lunch-it or pay regular price for hot lunch.  Despite what the government says we are ligible for.

S. 3307 is just a power grab that federalizes lunch, complete with the hoops, loops, ass-kissing, report filing, administrative state expanding, bureaucrat paying, income redistributing BS, of which the weight of expense and responsibility will inevitably fall on local governments who–for a fraction of the cost now (in most cases)–could have, or already have, dealt more than adequately with their own local situation.

But that’s not good enough.  We have to increases the cost for a school lunch, over what it actually costs, becasue the Federal government said we must. (It is the law.)  And if we don’t spend it and the bureaucrats at the USDA don’t mandate its use in other ways–which is always possible, it probably becomes another slush fund worthy of fraud and abuse.  Lord knows we need more of those.

USDA Program Link

GOVTrack S. 3307 synopsis

You are reading "Federal Mandate Drives up Local School Lunch Prices"  by Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com.(Home)

Are Campaign Signs Like Gray Hairs?

by Steve MacDonald

The joke says that when one gray hair gets yanked out a bunch come to the funeral.

A few days ago someone stole the Krupp for School Board sign from my yard.  I only had one.   Today, there are five of them.  I have room for a dozen more if I should happen to lose another and this is a very busy road.

 You are reading Are Campaign Signs Like Gray Hairs? by Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com. (Home)

Pay As You Throw Had To Go

The Merrimack Town Council bent to the will of the voters and scrapped plans to institute a pay as you throw program.  That would have required residents to buy special bags for trash at $1.00 or $1.50 per bag, and you could only use those bags at the town dump.

But we've been warned.  This is an issue that will be revisited. Or so we have been told.

Well screw that, lets look at it now.

According to the Town this program could save taxpayers 0.19 cents/1000 off the tax rate.  Let's just pretend it will do that.  If I do some back of the envelope calculations I would save (.19x 250) about $48.00 on my tax bill.  Money is money and who am I to complain, you ask?

Well, if I can mange to only generate 48 bags of trash over the course of a 52 week year (or only 32 if I use the family size bag) then I break even. Sure, it's less than one bag per week for a family of five but lets not be negative.  The end result is the institution of a program whereby the town contracts to buy bags, pays the bill, distributes the bags to local merchants, who sell them to the willing townsfolk, (and then send that revenue back to the town), while the humble townsfolk use these bags to dispose of their refuse, no one misplaces, loses, destroys, or embezzles anything, cue chirping birds, rainbows and Gregorian chant.

This is government efficiency in action.  I can either use the existing tax system to pay the 0.19/1000 on my tax bill that results from passing on pay to throw, or involve an entire (error free) supply chain, constructed by my benevolent municipality, with a new product, and new rules, and many middle men, that will actually cost me at least twice as much out of my pocket per year to use.

Yeah.  Saves me money?  I see that now.

cross posted

The Cost of Defining "Adequate" In Merrimack NH

A funny thing happened on the way to the 'off-hand comment' on the Merrimack TEA facebook page.  I was accused of not using "real and accurate data" and that my "rhetoric was not doing anyone any good."

Nothing surprising there I suppose but to stay on point--what was it I said that earned me such a response?

I announced that if you took the total Merrimack School budget and divided it by the total student enrollment that it cost more than  sending your kid to UNH.  This appears to have riled some people up.  In fact someone sent me a nice itemized list of the "costs" of sending your kid to UNH for a year just to prove I was wrong, and to justify how Merrimack's cost per child wasn't as much.

So here we have the "costs" to go to UNH.  Keep in mind that this is (I suppose) meant to be relevant to the comparison I made.

Tuition: 10,730

Mandatory Fees: 2,942

Room and Board: up to 6,198

Meal Plan: up to 4,324

Then add thousands of dollars for books a supplies -

you are over $25k a year.

 

These prices are HIGHER if you are not a NH resident

Fascinating.  And yes, I suppose it could cost this much for one year at UNH, but is that relevant to the point I was trying to make?

The Merrimack school budget for 2011-2012 (if passed) is $65,340,419.00.  The town projects that 4227 students will be 'educated' that year, down from 4354 this year and 4665 the year before that. This works out to $15,457.87/per student for one year of k-12 education in the Town of Merrimack.

How does that compare?

Well, my detractor includes room and board, the meal plan, and books to arrive at a sum of over $25,000.00 per year and hey! non residents pay even more. (even when they vote as residents, by the way).

My response?  How much more would it cost to send a kid to school in Merrimack if the School board included, a dormitory, room and board, and an additional meal plan.  If the law of averages applies, more than 25,000.00 per year.  But let's just go the other way with this.

First, we don't have out of state or probably even out of town residents attending class in Merrimack.  If we do, I'd suggest we charge them $10,000 more per year for that 'quality' education and we can then use that to offset town residents school taxes.  Maybe we could have a contest.  Everyone in town can recruit from outside the district and whomever gets to ten kids first wins a new Mercedes.

Room and Board?  Seriously?  Room and Board? I've only lived in town for twenty years but if there is a public school dormitory somewhere I'll have my kids dropped off in an hour.  I have some excellent ideas for re-purposing their bedrooms during the school year.  I'm also rather keen on all the money I'll save on room and board, meal plans, and electricity at home, since I appear to paying for it in my tax rate already.

The Meal plan.  I have one of those.  It's called a bag lunch and change from my pocket for milk.  If they want a hot lunch, I need special paper with dead presidents on it or a check to charge up the lunch card.  So again, I appear to be paying twice for something that is already "built in" to the cost of a public school education.  And correct me if I am wrong but even the kids who get a free or reduced lunch could not possibly cost that much and that may well be offset in part or whole by some state or federal funds.

Books and supplies?  Every year the list of supplies I must provide gets longer. And the stories of teachers buying their own supplies are legendary.  So should we count those as additional expenses or back those costs out?  And the text books?  If you mean to compare the ones in public school to those used at the college level--even a crappy college-- there's no comparison.  Public school texts are like big picture books on 50 pound paper, double spaced and light on depth for easy delivery and consumption.  We could save a few million by going back to books where the real estate on the page was more words than pictures and written in type below thirty points.

So what are we left with?  Tuition and fees which amounts to $13,672.00 the exact figure posted on the UNH web site, and the one I used to make my claim that it costs more per student to send a kid to Merrimack Public school  than it does to UNH.

To be fair, I was not specific.  And there are other costs like transportation that we have not addressed.  But this comes down to the people of Merrimack accepting that their K-12 per student costs on a truly comparative basis are not much unlike having them live and eat at home while attending UNH.  Is that a good deal or should we be trying to do better?

There is clearly a seismic rift between the institutional-acceptance mentality of a level funded contract, or what might be considered a good deal on the cost of a public education, or the need for an expensive and expansive (excessive) curriculum and reality.  We are not in reality here.  At $15,000.00 per student plenty of people would opt to keep one parent at home and educate their own kid, or even all of their kids.  Yet the amount most frequently used when talking about a voucher or a credit to parents who consider home schooling or a private school is only $3500.00 to $5000.00 per year?  Where did the other 10-grand per kid just go?  Administrative costs?  There's a conversation worth having.

Public education has far exceeded its mandate and in doing so its costs.  We need to get back to basics, focus on real education, and the goal of teaching kids how to think, not what to think.  Because at 15Kper kid per year, UNH comparison or not, someone is getting screwed.

cross posted