In this episode of WichitaLiberty.TV: Wichita school board member Joy Eakins joins Karl Peterjohn and Bob Weeks to discuss important issues facing the school district. View below, or click here to view at YouTube. Episode 170, broadcast October 28, 2017.
Transparency issues surrounding the Wichita public school district are in the news. There are steps that are easy to make, but the district resists.
It’s difficult to view a meeting of the Wichita school board.
If you — perhaps a taxpayer to USD 259 — would like to watch a meeting of the board of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, your options are few. You can attend the meetings in person. Or, if you subscribe to certain cable television systems, you can view delayed repeats of the meetings. But that’s it.
Live and archived video of governmental meetings is commonplace, except for the Wichita public schools. Citizens must either attend USD 259 meetings or view delayed broadcasts on cable TV, if they subscribe.
There’s a simple way to fix this. It’s called YouTube.
When the Sedgwick County Commission was faced with an aging web infrastructure for its archived broadcasts, it did the sensible thing. It created a YouTube channel and uploaded video of its meetings. Now citizens can view commission meetings at any time on desktop PCs, tablets, and smartphones. This was an improvement over the old system, which was difficult to use and required special browser plug-ins.
Sometimes citizens have taken it upon themselves to post Wichita school board video on YouTube so that citizens and taxpayers may view meetings. Click for an example.The Wichita school district could do the same. In fact, the district already has a YouTube channel. Recently, it has started posting video excerpts of some meetings.
So the district has demonstrated it has the technical capability and resources to post video of meetings to YouTube. Now, in addition to the excerpts, it should post video of all meetings in their entirety.
Yes, it takes a long time to upload two or three hours of video to YouTube, but once started the process runs in the background without intervention. No one has to sit and watch the process.
I have asked the district why it does not make video of its meetings available online. The district responded that it “has a long-standing commitment to the USD 259 community of showing unabridged recordings of regular Board of Education meetings on Cox Cable Channel 20 and more recently AT&T U-verse Channel 99.”
Showing meetings delayed on cable TV is okay. It was innovative at one time — a long time ago. Okay. But why aren’t meetings shown live? What if you can’t watch the meeting before it disappears from the broadcast schedule after a week? What if you don’t subscribe to cable TV? (This is becoming more common as more people “cut the cord” and rely on services like YouTube for television.) What if you want to watch meetings on your computer, tablet, or smartphone?
I don’t think the fact that meetings are on cable TV means they can’t also be on YouTube. But that seems like what the school district believes.
Sometimes increasing transparency is so easy. We must wonder why governmental agencies resist.
Kansas school fund balances rose this year, in both absolute dollars and dollars per pupil.
As Kansans debate school funding, as the Kansas Supreme Court orders more school spending, and as schools insist that spending has been slashed, a fact remains: Kansas schools don’t spend all the money they’ve been given. Unspent fund balances grow in many years, and grew this year.
Fund balances are necessary for cash flow management. They buffer the flows of receipts and expenditures. The issue is what levels of balances are necessary, and, more importantly, how the balances change over years.
In Kansas, school districts report fund balances on July 1 of each year. Looking at fund balances on that date over time gives insight into how districts are managing receipts and expenditures. If a fund balance falls from July 1 of one year to July 1 of the next year, it means that the district spent more money from the fund than it put in the fund. The opposite is also true: If a balance rises, it means less was spent than was put in.
Based on recent data from the Kansas State Department of Education, fund balances rose rapidly after 2008, remained largely level from 2011 through 2015, and rose for 2016 and 2017.
For the school year ending in 2017, total fund balances were $2,016,863,070. (This value does not include non-school funds like museums and recreation center funds.) For 2016, the figure was $1,871,026,493. This is an increase of $145,836,577, or 7.8 percent.
Around half of these fund balances are in bond and capital funds, which are different from operating funds. Without these capital funds, balances rose from $935,116,567 to $970,188,922. This is an increase of $35,072,355, or 3.8 percent.
When fund balances rise, it is because schools did not spend all their revenue. If schools say that cuts had to be made, and at the same time fund balances are rising, Kansans might wonder why schools did not spend some of these idle fund balances.
I’ve gathered data about unspent Kansas school funds from Kansas State Department of Education and present it as an interactive visualization in a variety of tables and charts. Data is available for each district since 2008. You may explore the data yourself by using the visualization. Click here to open it in a new window. Data is from Kansas State Department of Education in current dollars (not adjusted for inflation). Visualization created using Tableau Public.
Top chart: Fund balances in all funds except non-school funds. Bottom: Without bond and capital funds. Click for larger.
In this episode of WichitaLiberty.TV: Karl Peterjohn and Bob Weeks discuss some statistics regarding downtown Wichita and then the Kansas school finance court decision. View below, or click here to view at YouTube. Episode 169, broadcast October 14, 2017.
Now, WichitaLiberty.TV has new broadcast times. The regular Sunday broadcasts on KGPT TV channel 26.1 (AT&T U-Verse 49) at 8:30 am, repeated at 4:30 pm, are unchanged. Here is the full broadcast schedule:
Saturdays on KGPT channel 26.9 (Newsmax TV)
10:00 am: The new episode
10:30 am: Repeat of last week’s episode
5:00 pm: Repeat of new episode
5:30 pm: Repeat of last week’s episode
Sundays on KGPT channel 26.1/AT&T channel 49 (Cozi TV)
8:30 am: Repeat of the new episode
4:00 pm: Repeat of the new episode
4:30 pm: Repeat of last week’s episode
Shownotes
Downtown Wichita jobs, sort of. The claim of 26,000 workers in downtown Wichita is based on misuse of data so blatant it can be described only as malpractice.
The Rose Standards for Kansas students, as codified in K.S.A. 2016 Supp. 72-1127:
(1) Sufficient oral and written communication skills to enable students to function in a complex and rapidly changing civilization;
(2) sufficient knowledge of economic, social, and political systems to enable the student to make informed choices;
(3) sufficient understanding of governmental processes to enable the student to understand the issues that affect his or her community, state, and nation;
(4) sufficient self-knowledge and knowledge of his or her mental and physical wellness;
(5) sufficient grounding in the arts to enable each student to appreciate his or her cultural and historical heritage;
(6) sufficient training or preparation for advanced training in either academic or vocational fields so as to enable each child to choose and pursue life work intelligently; and
(7) sufficient levels of academic or vocational skills to enable public school students to compete favorably with their counterparts in surrounding states, in academics or in the job market.
From the Wichita Pachyderm Club: A forum of candidates for Wichita school board. Recorded June 16, 2017.
At the lectern is Pachyderm Board Member Todd Johnson who moderated the forum.
Wichita school board candidates. Click for larger.The eight candidates in attendance were from left to right, Betty Arnold and Ben Blankley for District 1; Julie Hedrick and Trish Hileman for District 2; Mike Rodee for District 5; and Walt Chappell, Shirley Jefferson, and Ron Rosales for District 6.
All of these candidates plus two candidates who could not attend today’s forum will move forward to the November 7, 2017, General Election.
In school district elections, all qualified voters district-wide in the Wichita Public School District have the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice from all four Board of Education Districts in the November election.
In this episode of WichitaLiberty.TV: Kansas Policy Institute Dave Trabert joins Bob Weeks and Karl Peterjohn to discuss the Kansas economy, budget, and schools. View below, or click here to view at YouTube. Episode 149, broadcast April 30, 2017.
Despite years of purported budget cuts, the Wichita public school district has been able to improve or maintain student/teacher ratios.
When discussing school funding, there is controversy over how spending should be measured. What funds are included? Is KPERS included? Should we adjust for enrollment and inflation? What about bond and interest funds and capital outlay?
The largest expenditures of schools — some 80 percent nationwide — is personnel costs. In Kansas, and Wichita in particular, we’re told that budget cuts are causing school class sizes to increase.
When we look at numbers, we see that the Wichita school district has — over the long term — been able to maintain or reduce its student/teacher ratios. (Student/teacher ratio is not the same statistic as class size.) There have been a few ups and downs along the way, but for all three school levels, the ratios are lower or nearly the same than they were ten years ago. (Click charts for larger versions.)
This means that Wichita schools have been able to increase employment of teachers at a faster rate than enrollment has risen.
So however spending is categorized in funds, whether KPERS contributions are included or not, whether the funding comes from state or local sources, whether spending is adjusted for inflation, the Wichita school district has been able to improve or maintain its student/teacher ratios.
Data is from USD 259 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for 2016, Miscellaneous Statistics, page 118, and CAFR from other years.
A letter in the Wichita Eagle illustrates harmful attitudes and beliefs of the public school establishment.
The letter is titled “Wrong direction.” It was submitted by John H. Wilson, was published on February 26, 2017, and may be read here.
What’s wrong in this letter? Here’s one thing: “First, the ill-founded assertion is that parents are well equipped to identify the best school for their children. Wrong.”
This is an incredibly bigoted assertion. This is one of the standard arguments against school choice, that parents — particularly minority and low-income families — don’t have the ability to make wise choices in schools for their children. Instead, an educated elite, of Wilson is a member, must make these decisions, they say.
There is a whif of plausibility in Wilson’s claim. In Wichita, where there is no school choice except for a small tax credit scholarship program, parents don’t have much experience making decisions regarding schools for their children. Across the country, however, where parents are given choices, we see parents becoming involved. With school choice programs, parents have a chance to make a difference.
Here’s something else that is rich in irony. With school choice, Wilson says, “Public schools organization and management would become a nightmare.” The private sector, however, manages situations like this every day. The irony is that the fleet of public school administrators hold many advanced degrees in public school administration. But school choice, evidently, is too complicated to manage.
Finally, Wilson references “a highly successful and proud institution, our public schools.” I’d like to call his attention to the nearby chart of results from the Kansas school assessments for the Wichita school district. According to the Kansas State Department of education, “Level 2 indicates that the student is doing grade-level work as defined by the standards but not at the depth or level of rigor to be considered on-track for college success. Level 3 indicates that the student is performing at academic expectations for that grade and is on track to being college ready.”
Looking at fourth grade reading — a very important benchmark — we see that considering college-level readiness, 35.5 percent of students are at that standard. But only 17.6 of African-American students are at that level, and 29.7 percent of Hispanic students. The performance is worse for math, and worse again at eighth grade for both subjects.
I don’t think this is “highly successful,” and I don’t see how Wilson is proud of this legacy. Except: He’s part of the public school establishment, which vigorously protects itself from any meaningful competition.
Kansas school assessments for Wichita. Click for larger.
An interactive presentation of Kansas state school assessment scores at the state, district, and building levels.
Kansas State Department of Education makes available school assessment results at its website Kansas Building Report Card, available at ksreportcard.ksde.org. The present assessments were first given in 2014, although results for that year were not made available.1
KSDE background explains that scores on the tests are categorized in four levels: “Kansas assessment results are now reported in four levels. Level 1 indicates that student is not performing at grade-level standards. Level 2 indicates that the student is doing grade-level work as defined by the standards but not at the depth or level of rigor to be considered on-track for college success. Level 3 indicates that the student is performing at academic expectations for that grade and is on track to being college ready. Level 4 indicates that the student is performing above expectations and is on-track to being college ready.”
When KSDE presents assessment results through the report card website, it shows the percent of students whose scores fall into each category. While this is useful, I present the data in a different way, using these categories:
Level 1
Level 2 or higher
Level 3 or higher
Level 4
Thus, “Level 2 or higher” holds the percentage of students doing grade-level work or better, and “Level 3 or higher” holds the percentage of students on track to being college ready or better.
There are three visualizations, one for building-level results, another for district-level results, and another for state-level. (Because of the differing sizes of buildings and districts, it is not possible to simply aggregate statistics to a higher level.)
From the Wichita Pachyderm Club: A forum of candidates for Wichita school board. Recorded June 16, 2017.
