Citizens for KPS

 

The April 20 Gazette Viewpoint by David Kreager and Debra Ryan, from the Gull Lake School Board, presented a philosophical argument against the millage. However, there is little substance behind their philosophy.

The essence of their complaint is that rather than enacting the millage, the other school districts in the county should make “difficult decisions” to cut budgets. But they have no concrete proposals to make that would allow such “difficult decisions” to actually reform school budgets in a way that will not harm services to students.  Their op-ed evades a “difficult reality” for their point of view: if  their position prevails, and the millage renewal is defeated, the quality of educational services to students would be reduced, which would hurt both students and the county’s economic growth.

Their ideas for budget cutting include: “consolidation of more school services, creating more leverage to reduce health-care costs, sharing of best practices that better utilize school revenue, or ideas on how we can lobby Lansing to address school funding issues”. There is no way that these proposals would reduce school budgets by anywhere close to the $11 million raised countywide by the millage renewal.

“Consolidation of more school services”:  County school districts already do some consolidation of school services through KRESA, in areas such as special education, career and technical education, arts education, and purchasing. Furthermore, as Julie Mack, education reporter for the Gazette, discussed in her School Zone blog on April 3^rd, research suggests that once a school district is more than 1500 students or so, there are no significant cost-savings from further school consolidation. (See http://blog.mlive.com/schoolzone/2008/04/economies_of_school_consolidat.html )  The overwhelming majority of students in Kalamazoo County attend school districts with more than 1500 students. Therefore, the cost savings from further consolidation of school districts in Kalamazoo County are minor. And this ignores arguments against consolidation from a perspective of community autonomy.

“Creating more leverage to reduce health-care costs”: They don’t explain what this means, and it is difficult to see how any “leverage” results in easy reductions in health care costs. As has been made clear repeatedly at this website, public schools in Kalamazoo County have already taken considerable steps to reduce health care costs, which is primarily done through increasing employee cost-sharing for health care costs. Given increasing health care costs, school districts will continue to make reforms in employee health care, with or without the millage renewal. Any such reforms will have to recognize that significant increases in employee cost sharing will have to involve some offsetting increases in regular wages, if the teachers’ wage and benefit package is to continue attracting and retaining high-quality teachers.

“Sharing of best practices that better utilize school revenue”:  This suggestion is vague. County school boards and administrators already extensively discuss cost-savings ideas. There are no new “best practices” that will save $11 million.

“Ideas on how we can lobby Lansing to address school funding issues”: It is unclear how anything more that can be done will immediately make a substantial change in school funding. Kalamazoo County school districts already lobby Lansing extensively on school funding issues, both directly and through various lobbyists, including the Michigan Association of School Boards. For example, the Kalamazoo School Board meets at least once a year with all the state legislators that represent our school district, to explain to these legislators how the state’s budget priorities are adversely affecting the quality of services we can offer to students.  Despite the extensive lobbying that has already been done of Lansing, since 2005 the state government has cut real funding per student, adjusted for inflation, by more than 3%.  The local conversation and decisions about the millage would be quite different if Lansing’s budget priorities had been different, and Lansing had raised school funding over the last 3 years by 3% more than inflation.

Part of Mr. Kreager and Ms. Ryan’s position appears to be based on second guessing the budget decisions of the other 8 school districts in the county, and claiming that Gull Lake’s budget decisions have been superior.  According to their account, Gull Lake has used the enhancement millage revenues to meet capital needs, whereas most of the other school districts have used the money for operating purposes.

Their judgment fails to reflect the different budget situations facing different school districts. Some county school districts have faced budget challenges that are far greater than those faced by Gull Lake. For example, at the time the enhancement millage passed in 2005, Kalamazoo Public Schools’ budget situation was that the budget was to be cut $2 million if the millage passed, versus $5 million if the millage failed. And these budget cuts followed $17 million in budget cuts that KPS had already made since 1999. Therefore, the KPS Board made the decision to devote the enhancement millage revenues to reduce the magnitude of cuts in services to students, which means that the millage was spent for operating purposes.

Despite the Kalamazoo Promise, and the resulting increase in enrollment and revenue for KPS, KPS’s net budget cuts since 1999 are still about $17 million. From the perspective of KPS students, it still is a reasonable decision to use the millage revenues to maintain better educational services to our students.

Behind Mr. Kreager and Ms. Ryan’s Viewpoint is the notion that Kalamazoo County should best compete for businesses through eliminating the enhancement millage, even if this comes at the cost of reduced services to students. What this fails to recognize is that business location decisions depend on the quality of local public services, and in particular the quality of local education. Of course, business location decisions also depend to some extent on local taxes, as well as on many other factors, such as local wages, the productivity of local workers, the quality of local transportation infrastructure, etc. 

How does this all add up in terms of the best economic development strategy for Kalamazoo County? From the standpoint of the county’s economic development, is it better to cut taxes modestly through defeating the enhancement millage, even if this means cuts in services to students? This is a matter of judgment, and of weighing the importance of taxes vs. educational services at this point in the county’s economic history. Kalamazoo County is certainly never going to be the lowest cost business location in the world. Kalamazoo County can, however, be one of the highest labor productivity business locations in the world. And labor productivity depends upon local education,  which helps to attract highly educated and skilled parents, and helps increase the skills of future workers.

Mr. Kreager and Ms. Ryan briefly refer to “one community leader”, without naming him, who said in the Kalamazoo Gazette that it would be “economic suicide” to defeat the enhancement millage.  The community leader they do not name is Ron Kitchens, CEO of Southwest Michigan First. Ron Kitchens’s sole job is to maximize the economic growth of this county. His job depends upon making accurate judgments about whether the community’s economic growth is better increased through lower taxes, or through maintaining educational services to children.

Mr. Kreager and Ms. Ryan’s response to Ron Kitchens is to argue that he doesn’t understand that Gull Lake used the enhancement millage for capital purposes,   with the implication that using the millage for capital purposes will not affect business location decisions. Whether or not using millages for capital purposes affects business location decisions is certainly debatable. But in any event, Mr. Kreager and Ms. Ryan then contradict themselves by pointing out that most school districts in the county, based on their individual budget circumstances and their students’ needs, have used the enhancement millage for operating purposes, which certainly immediately affects the quality of educational services to students.  Therefore, it appears that Ron Kitchens does accurately understand that eliminating the $11 million provided by the millage would adversely affect educational services to students. It is this adverse impact on students that is of concern for the county’s economic development.

It is worth looking more fully at what Ron Kitchens said, as quoted in the March 30 Gazette. (Available at http://www.southwestmichiganfirst.com/pdf/03302008_Gazette_Can%20taxpayer%20pain%20produce%20exonomic%20gain%20for%20county.pdf )

 From the March 30 Gazette:

“It would be economic suicide to take that $11 million out of the schools right now,'' said Ron Kitchens, chief executive officer of Southwest Michigan First, the county's economic development agency.

``The amount it would take off tax bills is not enough to have a real impact on citizens or the cost of doing business, but it is enough that the impact would be pretty immediate for school districts. It would devalue homes. We would immediately lose jobs and lower the quality of children's educational experience. It would devalue the long-term economic structure of our economy.''

Kitchens said failure to renew the millage would undermine attempts to brand the Kalamazoo area as the Education Community. ``You can't be the Education Community if you don't invest in education,'' he said.” End of quote from Gazette.

There is nothing in Mr. Kreager and Ms. Ryan’s Viewpoint that effectively contradicts this argument. A defeat of the enhancement millage would not only reduce educational services to students, but would also harm the county’s economic future.