Al Maurer for District 38

Ken, Gordon and I want to thank all the wonderful, dedicated volunteers who believed in our message of vision, trust, and accountability and who spent countless hours in supporting us to get that message out to the voters. Although we came up short, we know that our message resonated with a significant portion of the community and we encourage all to stay involved in a school district that, in the end, belongs to all of us. We wish the best to the new school board as they face the challenges and opportunities of the future.

Here’s a very interesting perspective I got from Becky Medved about the City of Colorado Springs’ budget:

…This week, on Thursday,  Oct 27 there is a Formal Public Hearing on the City Budget.  I’m writing to encourage you to contact members of City Council to encourage them to support a conservative, sustainable budget so Colorado Springs can thrive in the future.  We’ve been briefed by the Mayor, as well as The City Committee, both suggesting a conservative sustainable budget approach to the 2012 Budget.  Three groups, including the city’s staff, the City Committee as well as Biggs-Kofford have looked at future projections for the budget which indicate the City’s expenses will exceed revenues sometime in the next five to eight years (depending upon the analysis).  In these uncertain economic times it seems prudent to not add back services now when they might have to be discontinued in the near future.  Rather than budget one year at a time we need to be looking down the road, building our reserves and begin to understand how to bend the cost curve down to avoid the projected serious financial consequences. We have an opportunity today.    Cities willing to build sustainable budgets now will have a better chance of thriving tomorrow. [Emphasis mine]

This is exactly what Ken, Gordon and I have been saying about the Lewis-Palmer school budget. The current board seem content that they have finally balanced their budget without using reserves, not understanding that rough budgetary waters lie ahead.

They claim 21% reserves, but at the last school board meeting when the reserve was briefed, it turns out that only 9.9% are true “reserves”; the rest are restricted funds. Restricted doesn’t mean a reserve: it means that they are committed (allocated) for a specific purpose. They will be spent. Of the 9.9% uncommitted reserves, 3% are reserves required by TABOR. They’ve managed a very thin margin indeed, but no one on the board seems to understand the difference between restricted funds and reserves.

As I reported last week, they have their eye on a mill levy override for next year.

If you haven’t voted yet, you still have a chance to apply the same conservative budgeting logic to the school system that Becky advocates for the city.

There have been a number of opinion letters in the Gazette recently about the school board race. Here’s the bottom line as far as I’m concerned:

The incumbents have finally dug themselves out of the financial hole they created. The problem is they are now out of ideas. When further cuts in state education funding happen in the next few years, they will fall back on doing what they’ve always done: cut teachers, increase class sizes and ask for mill levy overrides. In fact, Board President John Mann already floated the idea of a mill levy override at the May board meeting and it is on the schedule for the January advisory council. If you re-elect this board, it’s (bad) business as usual.

District 38 does indeed have great students, parents and teachers. What it lacks is strong, visionary leadership. As a teacher, I don’t want the budget balanced on the backs of teachers. As a taxpayer, I am uncomfortable with the high debt level the district is carrying and the number of unused and underused assets they are paying for. I want a reassessment of where we spend our money and to focus our efforts on the classroom, not on administrative salaries and overhead.

To get off the cut-and-restore train, District 38 needs new leadership. If you want to move forward, vote Ken Valdez, Gordon Reichal and me, Al Maurer, for District 38 school board!