Month: September 2017

Brad Rupert’s definition of “fiscal transparency” is not real fiscal transparency!

September 22, 2017 / ijsadmin

From his comments at the SJK Candidates’ Forum in Wheat Ridge last week, Brad Rupert wants us as taxpayers to believe that because of the size of the District, the District’s budget gets very complicated, very quickly. He was implying that either we wouldn’t understand the budget or the District doesn’t want to take the time to explain it to us.

With that comment, Brad also demonstrated his complete lack of understanding of budgets.

The fact of the matter is that school districts, no matter the size, have similar expenditures and line items. It is only the numbers in those line items that get bigger. Read the budget Brad. There is very little broken down by school and even in that case smaller districts would just have fewer schools. There’s nothing complicated about that. That’s just an excuse.

Brad also wants us to believe that the Financial Oversight Committee has responsibility for ensuring budget transparency. Really? Is this the same Financial Oversight Committee that approved a staff recommendation to use reserves to fund up to 1% of compensation increases this year if state funding was not what was anticipated? No organization funds on-going expenses with reserves unless it is a dire emergency. And Brad expects us to trust the Financial Oversight Committee? Sorry, I can no longer trust them.

But let’s talk about what real fiscal transparency looks like.

Before moving to Jefferson County we lived in New York state. Our school district was struggling financially, unlike the self-induced and mismanaged “fiscal crisis” our Board wanted everyone to believe we had this year.

In an effort to collaboratively look at the issue my NY District held 2 budget discussion/working sessions open to all members of the community. One session was held in the evening, the other on a Saturday to allow maximum attendance. Several members of the Board, the Superintendent, members of District finance and at least one member of all district departments attended each session. The District handed out line item copies of the District budget and then presented a high-level overview of the budget, why the district was struggling and financial alternatives.

Approximately 50 members of the community attended the same session I did, and this was from a district much smaller than Jeffco.

After that, community members could ask any question they wanted. It is my recollection that questions as mundane as reducing the frequency of landscaping during the summer were asked and answered.

The Board and District staff stayed until EVERY question was asked and answered.

That’s what real fiscal transparency is, Brad!

That’s what true collaboration with the community looks like.

It was a far cry from the “people can access the budget online” fiscal transparency that Brad Rupert wants us to believe is transparency. It was a Board that truly wanted to collaborate with the community instead of merely doing their “job” of boringly listening to 3 minute-constrained community members during public comment and then completely ignoring them.

Susan Harmon is just as bad. Her comment that she “think(s) that transparency is there” completely misses the point. It is even more disconcerting when she says that she “relies on the District’s presentations at the Board table”. Hey Susan, I want independent thinkers on the Board. I want someone that is at least mildly interested in the details. The District staff has repeatedly shown that they make poorly thought out recommendations and can’t be trusted (http://improvejeffcoschools.org/index.php/2017/02/14/jeffco-board-of-education-should-be-embarrased/ , http://improvejeffcoschools.org/index.php/2017/05/31/another-poorly-thought-out-recommendation-by-the-school-districts-staff/) . Board members need to do what they were elected to do and provide some true oversight.

And, you can add Ron Mitchell to the group of Board members who have no clue about fiscal transparency as he joined the crowd when he merely toted the thickness of the budget book he has.

Guess what incumbent Board members? Fiscal transparency is in the details, not in the “thickness” of the document.

You and the District staff aren’t providing real fiscal transparency, so stop claiming that you do!

Matt Van Gieson is right and Brad Rupert is wrong regarding Jeffco Budget transparency

September 19, 2017 / ijsadmin

Publishing a budget so that people can read it does not make the budget transparent.

For example, I doubt that anyone, other than someone in District finance, can answer the following budget related questions:

Under what budget line item are the salaries for the 2 HS GT Teachers that were targeted for elimination under the January recommendations?
What is the line item “Offset Budget Adjustment” under “Materials and Supplies” for Elementary, Middle and High Schools that mysteriously appeared in the budget this year?
Why was there a $6.7M Contingency budget for Elementary School Materials and Supplies in 2015-2016 when the entire Materials and Supplies budget was only $13M? Why was the Contingency line item raised to $13M in 2016-2017 when only $4M in total was spent on Materials and Supplies in 2015-2016?
Why couldn’t I get the 2015-2016 budget Actuals when I CORAed for that information in February 2017, 7 months after the close of the fiscal year?
Why did several 2016-2017 Adopted budget lines change from the 2016-2017 budget to the 2017-2018 budget?

I can’t answer questions 2, 3, 4 and 5, but the answer to question number 1 is that it is part of the Elementary School Contingency funds. Transparency would have that line item easily identifiable under the District’s GT budget. If you think that is transparent, then you must be blind. Note: I only know this because I had to file a CORA request to get that information.

There are just too many inconsistencies and unknowns to call the District’s budget “transparent”.

Let me talk about some of these issues and their lack of transparency to support Matt Van Gieson’s point and to contradict Brad Rupert’s blindly believing everything the District staff tells him.

“Offset Budget Adjustment” – This line item mysteriously appears on pages 85, 86 and 89 of the 2017-2018 Adopted Budget Web under Materials and Supplies for Elementary, Middle and Senior Level Detail. $4.4M, not an inconsequential amount. What is that? Is it being used to hide the enormity of the Contingency line item I will discuss below?
Materials and Supplies Contingency. This seems like a slush fund to me. $10M budgeted in 2015-2016, with none used as reported in the 2017-2018 Budget. After years of budgeting it is ridiculous that 41% of the schools’ 2017-18 Materials & Supplies budget is Contingency. 10% to 20% would be conservative with years of budgeting data. This appears to be a non-transparent slush fund if you ask me.

In late February 2017 I sent a CORA request to the District requesting 2015-2016 Budget actuals for the fiscal year that ended in June 2016. Amazingly, Budget actuals were not available, 7 months later. Is that budget transparency? I think not. I don’t even know how you can form the 2016-2017 budget without having a good idea of the previous year’s actuals & projections, but to be well into the 2017-2018 budget planning cycle and not have actuals from 2015-2016 is just unfathomable to me.

There were several 2016-2017 budget line items that changed from the 2016-2017 Adopted Budget to the 2017-2018 Adopted Budget. These changes weren’t just isolated to the Contingency line item as the Total line changed by an amount different than the Contingency change. Note the changes in the Contingency Budget and Total Budget items.

What happened here? Again, where is the transparency with this process? Since the 2016-2017 Budget was approved, I even question the legality of these changes and where they carried over to. But, whatever happened, it certainly wasn’t transparent.

And these were just the things I found in a high-level overview of the Approved Budgets. I think it would be safe to say that if I could find these things that there are probably more. And, there are probably people that Matt has talked to that have identified others.

In addition, I’ve previously written about the non-transparent budget maneuverings related to the Alternative Pathways Budgeting For Outcomes (BFO) allocation. (http://improvejeffcoschools.org/index.php/2017/06/14/transparency-in-jeffco-only-if-repeating-the-word-counts/)

Why is all of this important?

This is important for several reasons.

First, people, including Brad Rupert, are saying that the District’s budget is transparent. The fact is, as I have proven above, this is not true. Yes, there is a published document, but looking closely at that document shows that there are some things that require further investigation as Matt insinuated. The key point is that there is not a process in place that would allow people to ask questions similar to what I’m asking. That means non-transparency in my book.

Second, the large Contingency “slush” fund is most certainly not transparent. It shouldn’t be that large ($10M plus $4.4M in Offset Budget Adjustment). If this slush fund was looked at in January what could have been saved from the Board’s cuts? Certainly, the $660k savings from the closing of Pleasantview could have been easily absorbed by just the Elementary Contingency funds. Did the Board even really care?

What is most frustrating for me personally is that my daughter made a public comment on these exorbitant Contingency funds at the February 9^th Board meeting and I wrote a detailed letter to the Board regarding them. Yet Brad Rupert and his fellow Board members did not even discuss using more than just a minuscule amount of these non-transparent, and exorbitant, Contingency slush funds to pay for their desired compensation increases, resulting in budget cuts.

Don’t tell me the Budget is transparent when questions like I have above can’t be answered. Don’t tell me the Budget is transparent when it is more convenient to ignore constituents than take a minute to even investigate what $17M (in the 2016-2017 budget) in Contingency funds are actually being used for.

Matt is right and Brad is wrong with regard to Jeffco Budget transparency!

Incumbent Board members violate District policy on electioneering

September 15, 2017 / ijsadmin

The incumbent Board members (Ron Mitchell, Brad Rupert and Susan Harmon) violated District policy by electioneering on District property at the candidate forum on September 13^th.

Yes, that’s right, the people who establish and approve District policies and definitely know better, violated their own policy by placing at least 4 sets of campaign signs on the Wheat Ridge campus.

Much like the District’s ignoring the compliance requirements of state law (SB 191 – https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2017/07/11/jeffco-public-schools-diverging-from-state-law-on-timeline-for-evaluating-teachers/) because it thinks the law is “ridiculous” and isn’t applicable, maybe the incumbent Board members feel that the District policy regarding electioneering on District property isn’t applicable to them. It makes sense since the culture within a District starts at the top.

I’d prefer to have a Board composed of members who don’t think they are above their own policies and follow the rules.

Should we believe Support Jeffco Kids or the Colorado Fiscal Transparency Website when it comes to Jeffco’s Budget?

September 13, 2017 / ijsadmin

A recent blog post by Support Jeffco Kids (SJK) was titled “Unless You Count $ Twice, There is no Billion Dollar Budget”.

This post even led with the sentence “We’ve all heard the fictional story about the billion dollar budget for Jeffco and yet again this year, people are posting about it”.

Unfortunately for Support Jeffco Kids, the only fictional story is the one they are (once again) telling.

I don’t know about you, but based on SJK’s track record of exaggeration and misleading posts, I’ll believe the Colorado Fiscal Transparency website anytime when it comes to school districts’ revenues and expenditures.

The Colorado Fiscal Transparency site shows total spending of $933M and total funding of $981M for Jeffco in 2015-2016. That looks close enough to $1B for me, particularly accounting for increases over 2 years.

SJK can talk about the General Fund all they want, but if they had any understanding of financial accounting at all, they would understand that the budget is $1B.

Nice try though!

SJK wants to end the “false rhetoric”?

“Regardless, let’s end the false billion dollar budget rhetoric. “

as they wrote in their post.

But aren’t they the ones who are spreading the false rhetoric?

Sorry, SJK, once again your posts can be filed under “Alternative Facts”, “false” and “misleading”.

Note: As before, I was inspired to write this post because of another post by SJK that included the statement:

“It IS important to correct untruths and spread FACTUAL information online.”

I hope they don’t mind that I’m following their advice to “correct untruths and spread FACTUAL information online”!

Update September 18, 2017 – I found this text on the District web site (http://www.jeffcopublicschools.org/cms/one.aspx?pageId=927430):

As you review this information, we feel it is important to remember that Jeffco is the largest school district in Colorado, with more than 14,000 full and part-time employees.

The district’s total appropriated budget for 2016-2017 is $1,008,008,698.

I guess we really do have a $1B budget!

The Board failed on its most important task – hiring a Superintendent who could move the education needle.

September 11, 2017 / ijsadmin

Recently, there has been a great deal of self-congratulating on the part of our School District and Superintendent relating to Jeffco’s 2016-2017 test scores.

Most recently, we’ve seen an article published by the school district relating to CMAS Achievement.

While it is true that these results may be “all-time highs’, let’s be serious. Should we as parents and taxpayers be happy with results that show that barely 50% of our kids meet state ELA standards? It’s even worse with Math where only 40%, or less, seem to be achieving the state standards. That seems to be acceptance of mediocrity, at best, to me.

However, what is even more disconcerting is the comparison of Jeffco scores to those of Eagle County, where our new Superintendent was “Chief Learner” for 4 years and had plenty of time, within a small district, to make a real impact.

I don’t see that impact. In fact, NOT one Grade level or Subject in Eagle has scores better than Jeffco’s, most not even achieving the state “average”. What should we expect in the years to come in Jeffco? A regression to state averages?

What was the Board thinking when they hired someone without a proven record of academic related results? Did they hire a blogger/tweeter over someone who actually has a proven record? Didn’t the Board say that this was one of the most important decisions a Board could make? Did the Board even consider academic results or were they just bamboozled by a smooth talking social media specialist and “visionary”?

This Board didn’t do their job on their most important task!

We needed someone who could really move the needle with our kids. Eagle County’s results don’t indicate we got that. Those results point to the failure of our Board. We have a dire need for change on the Board to really move Jeffco forward.

Has Jason Glass met with anyone who might disagree with him? Quick Answer: No!

September 7, 2017 / ijsadmin

Support Jeffco Kids (SJK) has recently written about how many groups and individuals Jason Glass has met with in his first 39 days as Jeffco Schools Superintendent. Well, Congratulations!

However, do you see any individuals or groups on this list who might possibly have a different perspective on education or the District than him, other than politicians? Has he reached out to anyone that might fit into that category?

I don’t see anyone that might fit into that category on the list that was so carefully curated by SJK.

Let’s start with the great “listening” tour. This tour was held during normal work hours for most working people (except the session late in the day in Evergreen) and during the summer. This conveniently brought out the teachers, stay-at-homes and retirees. Not a lot of working people made these meetings. When I brought this up to Glass during a Twitter exchange he said that he would consider holding meetings that might be more convenient for working people.

He may have considered holding additional meetings, but they certainly didn’t happen. In my opinion, he missed out on getting a different set of questions than he got from the teachers, retirees and stay-at-homes. Was this an act of omission or intentional?

What about the parents of the kid who was threatened at Governor’s Ranch Elementary School last year who would like a meeting with him to discuss? Glass’ schedule is SOOOO busy that he can’t fit these parents in until September 29^th. Really??

Request to meet with Superintendent

When asked if she planned to meet with the superintendent, the mom said she put in a request.

“Dr. Glass has yet to reach out to us,” she said. “We were told the earliest Glass could meet with us was Sept. 29.”

Should we really believe that his schedule is completely booked for over 30 days and he can’t find 30 minutes to talk with parents who have a real issue? I’m sorry, but real “leaders” make time to talk with people who have issues and problems and don’t let those issues fester.

Has he reached out to ANYONE who might not agree with the current District staff and Board? If he really wants to listen he should hear different perspectives. I personally don’t know these people, but has he reached out to anyone from previous Boards (he’s talked to former principals, why not former Board members? Speaking of principals, did Glass reach out to former Wheat Ridge principal Griff Wirth who ran a great school but had issues with the District?)? Has he reached out to anyone from (http://www.eyeonjeffcoschoolboard.com/), Jeffco Students First or people with similar views? Or is it more convenient for him to just wish that the current Board “wins” in November, as he stated during the August Board retreat, so that he doesn’t have to engage people who may not agree with him or the Board?

Glass also knows that I have my own issues with members of the District staff who have blatantly and repeatedly lied to the Board, teachers and parents.

I started with comments posted to his blog on June 2^nd and moved on to emails.

From his 3 Questions for Jeffco (https://advancejeffco.blog/2017/05/24/3-questions-jeffco/) blog I wrote:

“We have Cabinet members who intentionally deceive and lie (and I don’t use that word lightly) to the Board, teachers and parents.
Restore some community trust in Denver West by getting rid of the people there who have forgotten who their real constituents are – the students.
Note: I can back up my accusations of intentional deception and lying with documentation and evidence and would appreciate a meeting so I can give that to you.
Let’s talk when you’re settled in!”

He completely ignored this comment.

I reiterated my accusation in an August 10^th email:

“ I don’t know what xxx told you and I certainly don’t know what he expects to accomplish with another parents meeting. The first one was an absolute disaster as he did nothing other than present inaccurate, misleading and deceptive numbers, essentially lying to the group. He was insulting, and parents and students alike called him out on his lies and attempts at deception. … Why won’t he have a discussion with the principal and SAC? Most likely it is because they will tell him that the numbers he is showing to people are intentionally deceptive and therefore complete lies.”

Don’t you think if someone accused members of your District staff of lying you would want to hear more?

Well, not Jason Glass!

In addition he has delayed and avoided getting people to talk about sustainable funding for the District’s HS GT program. Granted the Board directed collaborative approach to finding sustainable funding was made in February before Glass became Superintendent, but he clearly stated that he had been briefed on the issue during his “listening” tour, very early in his tenure. He now “owns” that issue and shouldn’t try to disclaim responsibility. However, to date the only thing he has done is to delay holding a collaborative discussion to some unknown date in the future, inexplicably tied to another meeting with only one set of stakeholders – the HS GT parents. That’s certainly not my definition of “collaborative” or even “listening” to all sides of the issue. And that’s not even talking about how badly the last District held meeting with the parents went .

He states that he has listened to me on my issues:

The funny thing is, I did check my emails. On July 25^th he said that he was bringing the GT issue up to his Cabinet. Yet, his response to my follow-up inquiry of how the cabinet meeting went was to back track on getting people together to discuss the issue by holding another HS GT Parents’ meeting in September (still not scheduled by the way). And then, only AFTER that meeting get people to talk about the issue.

My question to him was WHY? Why not begin talking now with ALL of the stakeholders instead of just the HS GT parents?

There was no response to those questions.

Once again, it seems to me that he is delaying and avoiding a real discussion on difficult issues with people who may not agree with his views.

Therefore, I don’t count what he is doing as real “listening”.

Glass knows how to contact me via Twitter, email or phone. I’m happy to make time to discuss my issues. Until that happens, count me as someone who isn’t buying the “listening” bill of goods he’s selling and SJK has bought.

If Glass is only going to listen to people who support him and repeatedly delays and avoids listening to all sides of hard issues, can he, or his supporters, really claim that he’s listening?

Not in my book!

Once again Support Jeffco Kids is the pot that calls the kettle black!

September 2, 2017 / ijsadmin

In a recent post (August 28^th) Support Jeffco Kids talks about “Misleading Dark Forces” who purchased the .com of their domain – supportjeffcokids.org.

But wasn’t this completely preventable?

Isn’t this a story more about the “error” the Support Jeffco Kids team made than how a .com domain name was “stolen”?

In fact, using the word “stolen” is completely misleading itself! The .com domain was NOT stolen. It was legally purchased. And, it was only available for purchase because of the “error” of SJK! If SJK wants that domain, maybe SJK should make the owner a monetary offer, similar to what happens every day with countless other domains instead of just complaining.

I also want to point out that it appears SJK allowed someone to legally purchase supportjeffcokids.co too!

I can’t and won’t address the legality of the use of and “false affiliation” claims made by SJK, but the fact is that the .com domain was NOT stolen. And I would think that the owners can do with that domain what they want as long as they don’t violate the provisions of the Colorado Charitable Solicitations Act C.R.S. §6-16-111.

If the owners of the .com domain want to transfer it, that is within their legal rights. People do it all of the time. It is not some “Misleading Dark Forces” making a transfer. The “Misleading Forces” here are SJK for trying to make people believe that a domain name was “stolen” and what people are legally doing is “misleading and dark”. It’s not!

I might want to suggest to SJK that if they want to prevent other people from legally purchasing similar domains (such as .io and .biz) that they go and purchase them.

In addition, I’d be happy to sell them supportjeffcokids.net for $100 if they want it too. They left that one available and I legally purchased it. If they don’t want it, maybe I will just forward it to my blog. Since I don’t solicit any money I don’t think they can claim I’m violating the Colorado Charitable Solicitations Act. And, I’m certainly not “Dark” as I can be easily found.

Note: I was inspired to write this this post because of another post by SJK which included the statement: