Are you paying attention, Lynn Wachtmann and Matt Huffman?
From John Curry, November 23, 2011
You are about to get an education in Public Education Funding 101 from a Superintendent in your own area! Let's hope your supporters also read this letter.........
John
Kalaida superindendent says: Public schools could be as efficient as private schools
Jared Denman
Staff Writer
November 23, 2011
Staff Writer
November 23, 2011
KALAIDA - During the legislative report at last Wednesday's regular Kalida school board meeting, Superintendent Don Horstman publicly criticized H.B. 136 and State Representative Lynn Wachtmann's co-sponsorship of the bill. "I'll take exception, Representative Wachtmann is just flat out wrong. Rep. Wachtmann is not apologetic for the fact that he does not consider himself a fan of public education. If you look at H.B. 136 and how it works, they want to tout the efficiencies of private education. It'd be really easy to be as efficient as private education if we could follow the rules that private education does. It's very frustrating when Rep. Wachtmann and other members of the legislature refuse to put things in place to force those people [private schools] to follow the same rules we do. If it's such a great plan we have, make them follow our rules. And if our rules are so bad, that it's keeping us from operating efficiently, then let us do what they're doing."
Horstman went on to illustrate where public schools bear the cost of providing services to private schools such as LCC: "I have shared with the board a letter from LCC that their cost to educate a kid in 2009 going into 2010 was roughly $7,400. If you go back to 2009-2010, half of the districts in this county were within $500 a kid of LCC. Let us operate the way LCC does. Shawnee provides all of their busing, their guidance counselor, a math teacher who's on extended time. Two years ago we bought an $80,000 bus. If we don't have to buy an $80,000 bus because we're going to be able to force some other school district to bus our kids, we're going to save a lot of money. It's easy to be efficient when you don't have to operate under the rules the state puts in place. You're not given the freedom to operate the way the schools that supposedly are the most efficient which are your parochials. It would be an interesting if you took our spending per pupil and you wiped out all our bus expenses, our special education expenses and the cost of one of our math teachers and our guidance counselor. We can do it for almost the same amount of money as LCC and we pay our people better. So are you really more efficient?"
However, comparing LCC which resides in a city of 38,711 and outnumbers the entire population of Putnam County which comes in at 34,499 according to the 2010 Census, is comparing apples and oranges. A closer comparison would be to look at the per pupil cost of Sts. Peter and Paul in Ottawa which, according to their business manager, is $4,450 with the church subsidizing 50 percent of that cost with an additional $65,000 to $85,000 coming from an endowment.
According to Ohio Department of Education numbers, for the 2009-2010 school year, it cost $9,238 to educate a pupil in the Kalida school district. Building operations expenditures contributed $1,205 of that per pupil cost. Even subtracting this from the per pupil cost, which yields $8,033, it's still $3,583 more than what it costs at a comparable private school. If each school age child in Putnam County (7,126 children K-12 according to Census Bureau figures) were to receive the maximum scholarship amount of $4,626, it would save the county an estimated $5,353,056-$19,333,120.
When asked in a follow-up interview about families who decide to send their children to private schools paying for a service they do not use, Horstman's first point was that private schools don't share the cost of getting levies on the ballot and secondly that we pay for many services through taxes that no longer benefit us. "What did that private school have invested in collecting those tax dollars and running a levy?
There's also a cost associated with that. So once again, they're receiving the benefit of a public tax levy that they didn't have to do any of the work to get to pass. And as far as the argument I'm paying the taxes but I'm not using the service, I pay taxes and I've never been to Hocking Hills State Park in my whole life. It doesn't mean it's not a valuable service to provide. I have elderly relatives. They pay taxes and they don't drive anymore. Their taxes are still going to pay for snow removal and things like that. I think you've got to be careful about saying I'm not using the service I shouldn't have to pay the tax because then your school levies are only going to be taxed to people to have kids in school. You could make that argument. I no longer have a kid in school so I'm not going to pay my portion of the property tax that goes to the school district. As a society, we've made some decisions over the last 250 plus years that we need some level of taxes to provide some basic services that everyone's going to benefit from."
However, a school levy involves property taxes on all owners in a given school district and is enforced by local and state government. Not only is the cost burden of public education born by all in the school district, if you fail to pay property taxes fines could be leveled or you could be taken to court. Families that send their children to private schools on the other hand, bear the complete cost burden of educating children by the tuition they pay and the subsidies of private organizations.
Park lands like Hocking Hills are not entirely funded by tax monies. They make profit with entrance fees and site rentals like cabins and picnic shelters. Roads are largely paid for by the tax on gasoline and even if an individual no longer drives, they benefit from the transportation of goods along these roads. Services such as busing and special education provided by public school districts are already paid for via property taxes families have paid.
"It would be easy to compete against Rep. Wachtmann's water company, Culligan Water, if he had to provide all of the shipping costs for my company. If he's forced to provide a service to me through shipping all of my product that I don't have to pay, and then I can claim that I'm more efficient and therefore I have a better product. I think he'd have a problem with that," stated Horstman in closing.
Horstman went on to illustrate where public schools bear the cost of providing services to private schools such as LCC: "I have shared with the board a letter from LCC that their cost to educate a kid in 2009 going into 2010 was roughly $7,400. If you go back to 2009-2010, half of the districts in this county were within $500 a kid of LCC. Let us operate the way LCC does. Shawnee provides all of their busing, their guidance counselor, a math teacher who's on extended time. Two years ago we bought an $80,000 bus. If we don't have to buy an $80,000 bus because we're going to be able to force some other school district to bus our kids, we're going to save a lot of money. It's easy to be efficient when you don't have to operate under the rules the state puts in place. You're not given the freedom to operate the way the schools that supposedly are the most efficient which are your parochials. It would be an interesting if you took our spending per pupil and you wiped out all our bus expenses, our special education expenses and the cost of one of our math teachers and our guidance counselor. We can do it for almost the same amount of money as LCC and we pay our people better. So are you really more efficient?"
However, comparing LCC which resides in a city of 38,711 and outnumbers the entire population of Putnam County which comes in at 34,499 according to the 2010 Census, is comparing apples and oranges. A closer comparison would be to look at the per pupil cost of Sts. Peter and Paul in Ottawa which, according to their business manager, is $4,450 with the church subsidizing 50 percent of that cost with an additional $65,000 to $85,000 coming from an endowment.
According to Ohio Department of Education numbers, for the 2009-2010 school year, it cost $9,238 to educate a pupil in the Kalida school district. Building operations expenditures contributed $1,205 of that per pupil cost. Even subtracting this from the per pupil cost, which yields $8,033, it's still $3,583 more than what it costs at a comparable private school. If each school age child in Putnam County (7,126 children K-12 according to Census Bureau figures) were to receive the maximum scholarship amount of $4,626, it would save the county an estimated $5,353,056-$19,333,120.
When asked in a follow-up interview about families who decide to send their children to private schools paying for a service they do not use, Horstman's first point was that private schools don't share the cost of getting levies on the ballot and secondly that we pay for many services through taxes that no longer benefit us. "What did that private school have invested in collecting those tax dollars and running a levy?
There's also a cost associated with that. So once again, they're receiving the benefit of a public tax levy that they didn't have to do any of the work to get to pass. And as far as the argument I'm paying the taxes but I'm not using the service, I pay taxes and I've never been to Hocking Hills State Park in my whole life. It doesn't mean it's not a valuable service to provide. I have elderly relatives. They pay taxes and they don't drive anymore. Their taxes are still going to pay for snow removal and things like that. I think you've got to be careful about saying I'm not using the service I shouldn't have to pay the tax because then your school levies are only going to be taxed to people to have kids in school. You could make that argument. I no longer have a kid in school so I'm not going to pay my portion of the property tax that goes to the school district. As a society, we've made some decisions over the last 250 plus years that we need some level of taxes to provide some basic services that everyone's going to benefit from."
However, a school levy involves property taxes on all owners in a given school district and is enforced by local and state government. Not only is the cost burden of public education born by all in the school district, if you fail to pay property taxes fines could be leveled or you could be taken to court. Families that send their children to private schools on the other hand, bear the complete cost burden of educating children by the tuition they pay and the subsidies of private organizations.
Park lands like Hocking Hills are not entirely funded by tax monies. They make profit with entrance fees and site rentals like cabins and picnic shelters. Roads are largely paid for by the tax on gasoline and even if an individual no longer drives, they benefit from the transportation of goods along these roads. Services such as busing and special education provided by public school districts are already paid for via property taxes families have paid.
"It would be easy to compete against Rep. Wachtmann's water company, Culligan Water, if he had to provide all of the shipping costs for my company. If he's forced to provide a service to me through shipping all of my product that I don't have to pay, and then I can claim that I'm more efficient and therefore I have a better product. I think he'd have a problem with that," stated Horstman in closing.
posted by Kathie Bracy at 10:38 AM
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