The school board election is on Tuesday, May 21st. I urge you to vote for Robert (Bob) Cox.
I’m not saying that because I’m the Treasurer of his campaign. It is quite the opposite. I’m the Treasurer of his campaign because I believe we desperately need him on the Board of Education.
Some of you may recall that I tried to get Bob elected to the School Board two years ago. We fell short by fewer than 200 votes. Since then there have been more layoffs and more security breaches. School safety and fiscal responsibility were the two core issues that Bob ran on then, and he runs on them again now as nothing has changed for the better.
Why Robert Cox?
Bob has an in depth understanding of the operations of the school district that goes far beyond that of any current member of the Board of Education. School district employees go to him with their concerns and complaints without fear of retribution from the district. Parents also go to him when their children have been bullied or denied special services to which they are legally entitled. Some of us have read about what he does on the pages of Talk of the Sound, but many aren’t aware of what he does behind the scenes, often working with Board members or senior administrative staff to help families cut through the bureaucracy of the school system. If Bob is on the Board, he will be an advocate for you and your family in a time of need.
Bob understands where there is financial waste. He has long been an advocate of installing a time and attendance system, something we subsequently discovered was also recommended by both the school’s internal auditor and the district’s security consultant, VRI. He will also seek to install an inventory management system, streamline administrative overhead, and change our budgeting practices to reflect actual costs rather than inflated projections, a practice that has led to a dramatic misallocation of resources.
Bob understands the complex finances of the school system. I have spoken at length with him about reserve fund accounting, pension accounting and proper budgeting practices. He has an amazing ability to process and digest new information. I’m sad to report that many current members of the Board of Education still don’t understand the mechanics and meaning of our reserve funds (more on this below).
Bob has foundational knowledge of the financial and operational problems that have led to avoidable staff and program cuts. Since he understands these issues implicitly, he will not take excuses from the administration as fact. Today our Board is plagued by something I call disparity of information. That means the administration knows more about the school than the Board members do, so the administration can give seemingly plausible explanations for why they “can not” cut waste out of the system. This is why virtually none of the recommendations of the Community Advisory Committees have been adopted. Bob will not be at a disadvantage when charging the administration with making positive change, because he knows as much as they do about school district operations.
Bob is in this for the right reasons. He wants to improve the school district for everyone because it’s the right thing to do. The school district needs repair and he has the knowledge and ability to bring change to the system very quickly.
Who am I, and why is this so important to me?
My family moved to New Rochelle in January 2002. I have two boys who attend the Davis school and my wife works as a teacher at an elementary school in Connecticut. I have a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and an MBA from Fordham University. For the past 16 years I have worked in the field of investment management. I analyze budgets and management teams for a living, and I give failing grades to the New Rochelle Board of Education. They have failed to provide the school administration with any oversight which is why we have run out of money despite years of tax increases. Over the past 10 years the school property tax rate is up 80% while enrollment is up 6%.
I became involved with School Board issues two years ago when the administration announced their intent to cut busing services to out-of-district private school students. At the time, my older son was attending Solomon Schechter in White Plains and I wanted to lobby the Board to retain the service. Once I started researching the spending history of the school district, my concerns shifted from busing to the financial solvency of the school system.
When I was doing my research and I asked the administration for copies of the last 10 budgets they charged me almost $500 for them, pointing out that they were entitled to 25c per page and there were a lot of pages to be photocopied. They must have hoped I would go away after hearing the cost. Instead, my curiosity was piqued: if the administration did not want me to have the budgets, then there must have been some juicy information in them. It turned out that nine of the ten budgets they gave me were extra copies they had lying around the office. I had already paid for them through my taxes, but I paid for them again anyway.
The budget history suggested that the school district had run a profit from 2006-2010. But if that were true, where was the money? I met with a School Board member over breakfast and told him about the profits. He didn’t know anything about them and suggested I file a Freedom of Information Act request for the financial audits of the school district. Why didn’t he just give me the audits himself?
The District complied with my request and the audits revealed that the profits were being kept in a series of reserve accounts. These are “rainy day” bank accounts where the district had socked away more than $20 million while firing teachers and custodians and nurses and threatening to cut busing. I found that problematic. Worse, nobody on the Board seemed to have a clue about the money.
I found that the administration engaged in “slush fund budgeting”, whereby they would pad various accounts with extra money in the budget document and then use those funds for other expenditures or save them in the rainy day accounts. The two areas of the budget where they added the most slush were employee benefits and…any guesses?
Busing.
Yes, you read that correctly. Busing. In the four school years between 2006-07 and 2010-11, the administration padded the busing line with almost $9.5 million of extra dollars that were ultimately spent on other things. There was no budgetary need to cut busing to out-of-district private school children. I have my theories about why they threatened to do that, but I’ll save that for another time.
As I dug through the budget and the audits, I found many problems. They are too numerous to repeat here, but some are addressed in the report written by the Citizens Advisory Committee in 2012. You can find a link to that report on Talk of the Sound. I also encourage you to read the report written by the 2013 Committee which had some great suggestions for the school district as well. So far, very few of the suggestions have been adopted.
I want to stress that I am not a disgruntled parent. My children have thrived at the Davis school. In particular, Principal Harrell took steps to ensure that my son would have an easy transition from Schechter. The teachers and staff at the Davis school have had an incredibly positive influence on both of my children and I am eternally grateful to have them working in the New Rochelle School District. Our school system is filled with talented and dedicated people.
But our school district is also facing severe financial constraints that threaten to destroy the strengths of the system. We are now cutting into the meat of our budget and this is reflected in oversized classes, degraded plant and equipment and unclean buildings. Go walk into an elementary school boys’ bathroom in the afternoon and you’ll see what I’m talking about. The pressures are only going to get worse from here.
Which path will we take?
There are several actions that the administration can take over the next year that can reset our spending trajectory lower for the 2014-15 school year without cutting staff. Unfortunately, the Board has been unwilling or unable to demand that the administration take any action about anything. They don’t even require guidelines for class sizes as our neighboring towns do. In fact, until last year, they did not even ask to see the monthly class size reports produced by the administration! Is it any wonder, then, that class sizes are ballooning?
We are running out of time. I gave a presentation to the Davis PTA in February that projected a budget deficit of $4 million dollars for the 2013-14 school year. I was too low by almost $2 million dollars. The administration plans to cut 44 positions in the upcoming school year. That’s the worst way to reset the spending trajectory. Because of these cuts, the structural budget deficit next year will fall to $1-3 million. If we don’t make operational changes, then we will have to cut 10-30 more staffers.
Of course, we could avoid these cuts by raising taxes by more than the 2% tax cap. That would require voters to approve the budget with a 60% majority. With the school tax rate up 80% over the past 10 years, I’m not sure the voters in New Rochelle would approve escalating tax increases. I attended a meeting in Sutton Manor recently and a resident there told me that their neighborhood pays $1 million in New Rochelle taxes annually while sending only three children to the school district. How much more can we shake from that money tree before they simply say no?
If Robert Cox is elected to the Board of Education then we will have a chance to change the way we operate in order to protect the financial integrity of the school district. If he is not elected, then we will have to endure either more cuts to staff and programming, or accelerated tax increases as far as the eye can see.
Which path will you choose?
I choose Robert Cox and a bright future for our children and our City.
Adam D. Egelberg, CFA
