Friday, January 15, 2010
A $75 Million Error on MCS Funding
Posted by John Branston on Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 2:06 PM
The Tennessee Court of Appeals makes a whopper of an error in its decision this week on the funding for Memphis City Schools. If you do the math, it comes out to $75 million in school expenses, and that's an amount that should get members of the Memphis City Council doing some homework before raising anyone's taxes or forking over millions of dollars to MCS.
On the second page of its ruling, the court says MCS "serves approximately 112,000 students." No, it does not. According to MCS, the system serves "about 105,000" students. The Tennessee Report Card says the actual number is 104,829 students. School funding is determined by enrollment. The per-pupil funding (from all sources) for MCS is $10,394. Multiply that by 7,171 — the difference between the actual enrollment and the number the appeals court wrongly assumes to be accurate — and the result is approximately $75 million.
If the state Court of Appeals doesn't know how many students there are in MCS, you have to wonder two things: Does ANYONE know how many students there really are in MCS, and how many other false assumptions does the appeals court make?
MCS enrollment has long been a guessing game. You can find numbers as high as 118,000 and as low as 103,000 in various press reports, report cards, and MCS publications in recent years. One thing is clear: the trend is down. In 2007, according to the Tennessee Report Card, MCS had 110,753 students.
The bigger the number, the greater the funding. Or the bigger the ripoff.
Before it makes a decision about school funding, the Memphis City Council should bring Superintendent Kriner Cash and his lieutenants to City Hall and ask them this:
What is the current enrollment, and how do you know this?
What was the enrollment for the last five years?
How many students are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, and how do you know this? Are you issuing blanket certifications to schools to maximize federal funds and turn cafeterias into profit centers?
Why did you build Manassas High School and Douglass High, both of which are under-enrolled, at a cost of more than $45 million?
Why have you not closed schools in parts of the city where there are not enough students to fill them?
Today's city school student is tomorrow's county school student, and vice-versa. Shelby County has been operating schools in annexation areas for years, then turning them over to MCS. Next up in the batting order is Southwind High School, with nearly 1,500 students.
Blogger Tom Jones makes an important point in his Smart City post about city of Memphis residents being taxed twice for city and county schools, while county residents are taxed only once. The bottom line is that there are plenty of questions that need to be answered before MCS collects any more money from Memphis taxpayers.
Comments (14)
Showing 1-14 of 14
John, I have heard from some in MCS that by 2011-2012, the enrollment number will be closer to 99,000. Not sure how they came up with that number. But, if what you say is true about trends, it appears that they were right on the money (excuse the pun).
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tom, in other districts that are losing enrollment (detroit, for one), "counting day" in the fall is a big deal and the push is made to get the numbers up.
Class.
Class!
CLASS!
Thank you. Now who can tell me how to count the number of students enrolled in the Memphis City School system. Little Johnny?
@*#&(@&$!
I don't think that's appropriate, Little Johnny.
Oh! Sister Mary Elephant, I know! I know!
Yes, Little Jenny. Please tell us.
You take the number of students who enroll in each school, and you add them all together.
I'm sorry, Little Jenny, that is not correct. Obviously, you weren't paying attention to the question. I teach civics, not math. In the Memphis City School system, one student doesn't equal one student. One student equals $10,394. Therefore, you can't just add them all up, because that would mean a loss in funding.
Yo! Sister Mary. Isn't it true that funding schools on a per-pupil basis in an invitation to commit fraud?
That is correct, Mr. Balboa. I...
Young man! Give me that knife!
If the people running the schools can't count, how do they expect the students to?
To quote you: "The per-pupil funding (from all sources) for MCS is $10,394. Multiply that by 7,171 — the difference between the actual enrollment and the number the appeals court wrongly assumes to be accurate — and the result is approximately $75 million."
The key there is "all sources." The Appeal Court decision breaks down all those sources and the city accounts for about 10 percent--though it's like a string that holds everything else together. But I digress.
If the City's funding is only 10 percent of the pie, then how is it a $75 million question for the City to pose to MCS? It's more like a $7,500,000 million question, no?
To build on my earlier comment, I think your article is suggesting that all of MCS's funding sources have been overfunding the school district for years. Right?
In 1999/2000 school year, MCS says there were 117,878 students. It stayed about that same level through 2006/2007, when it fell to 115,321, then 111,357, then 108,446. That's a substantial drop in few years. Everything I've seen so far indicates a further drop in students. They may have been padding the numbers in the first half of this decade, or else everybody decided to move these past couple years. There actually is some data to argue that a lot of people left the city over the past year or two.
But allegedly padding the data isn't the same argument as to whether they should be funded by the City.
Richard brings up a great point. The can of worms is in the books, the budget, the sources of funding, and the line items that are connected to certain funding. Much like the county budget, you just can't take apart a cost center or expense line without being constrained or mandated by some other authority. That's why AC would always say that he could only affect about 20% of the actual county budget. We have created a monster, and there's no current way to reform it at any one level.
"Why have you not closed schools in parts of the city where there are not enough students to fill them?"
Because every time the subject is broached, parents in said schools throw a hissyfit, the School Board gets scared and they drop any such plans
The MCS is a budgetary black hole. It doesn't seem to have control of it's expenditures and there is no accountability via the school board. In addition, there is collusion in contract bidding and political trading/patronage resulting in malinvestments like Manassas, Douglass, and the Nutritional Center. I understand that running an urban school system will cost more because of dealing with various and complex poverty related issues. I believe people would pay if there was transparency and progress being shown, but it always feels like we get a new Superintendent every 4 years, who institutes a 5 year plan. Year 1 we find out the previous superintendent was a disaster and he/she have to institute a new plan. Year 2, we're still setting the plan up. Year 3 is too early to measure achievement. Year 4 signs are looking good. Year 5 start all over. What's permanent is the bureaucracy that seems to take on a life of its own. Bredsen's biggest failure for Memphis and Shelby county was not taking over the school system and instituting real reform.
I feel certain that every penny that can be extracted and given to MCS will be, whether legal or not. I think the phrase " Oh there were some slight errors that we overlooked in our number" is all that will happen. With a superintendent named
"CASH" what do you think?
Memphissigncompany.com
I have been saying MCS was a giant scam for years, ever since my kids started going there, It's becoming less so with new leadership. THANK GOD!
They lose about 3000 kids a year, and that doesn't count the expulsions.
There are a LOT of good people there attempting to do the right thing, but, there are FAR TOO MANY used to getting their way doing the wrong thing everyday.
Read what John Vergos wrote for the Flyer about two and half years ago concerning MCS. Nothing has changed. Great oped.
http://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/time-f…
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