More USD 259 Deception

.

Today I happened to stumble across a nice little chart that is titled "2007 Mill Levy Comparison" on the USD 259 website. Looking at the chart, one would immediately surmise that the mill levy for Wichita Schools is lower than surrounding districts. In fact, the chart contains this little blurb "Adding 3.5 mills would still keep Wichita the lowest in the area".

Well how about that? Wichita has the lowest mill levy rate in the area! As you might expect, the USD 259 PR department isn't on the level. In fact, they are being purposely deceptive and their claim is patently false.

Lets take a look at three sets of numbers for local school districts...


+++++++++++Bonds++++Rec Com+++Total Mill Levy++++Total to Dist
Wichita ------5.88(9.38) ----0.00--------53.23 (56.73) --------53.23 (56.73)
Derby --------5.78------------6.89---------51.39------------------44.5
Haysville-----13.71-----------0.00---------58.88-----------------58.88
Valley Cen---14.96-----------4.42---------57.73------------------53.31
Mulvane-----12.68-----------3.32---------51.98------------------47.97
Clearwater---10.14-----------7.------------58.98-----------------51.00
Goddard-----19.11-----------0.00---------61.29------------------61.29
Maize--------13.67-----------1.00---------53.27------------------52.27
Renwick-----11.56-----------0.00---------54.68------------------54.68
Cheney------10.01-----------3.21----------60.74------------------57.53
Andover-----17.62-----------3.25----------59.49-----------------56.24
(not SG County)


A bit of explanation before we dive in: These numbers are from the Kansas Department of Education website from 2007. The "Bonds" column represents total mills to cover the cost of Bonds and Interest. The "Rec Dept" is the mill levy for local recreation departments. "Total Mill Levy" is all categories, including those not on this chart. The final category is the total amount that the school district actually receives.

Under Kansas law, cities or school districts can bear the responsibility for collecting the property tax for a local recreation commission. It is essentially a pass through and the schools districts do not keep those tax revenues. Why does it matter? It doesn't. However, if the USD 259 PR folks had not added the total irrelevant Recreation Commission numbers into their calculations, USD 259 would not show the lowest mill levy as they claimed.

In fact, Wichita is 8th of the 10 Sedgwick County districts, and would jump to 6th in overall mill levy with an additional 3.5 mills to cover the bond issue.

It's interesting that the 259 officials would bring up the Recreation Commission revenues. In the last column, I subtracted the Rec Com mills to get a figure of the mill levy amount that is actually going to the school district. Currently, Wichita ranks 6th of 10 school districts. With an additional 3.5 mills, 259 would jump up to 4th.

Here's the rub, besides the dishonesty of the 259 leadership in putting this together, the proposed school bond will drive the total mill levy in USD 259 higher than Maize. In real terms, USD 259 would even receive a higher mill levy than Andover Schools.

If the Wichita School Board is complaining about families moving out of the district now, wait until the raise the mill levy higher than the 'rich' districts while still not improving the 76% graduation rate.

The Bond and Busing

Almost all Wichitans would like to see the end of mandatory busing, for a variety of reasons. The USD 259 Department of Snake-Oil Sales has been hard at work promoting the idea that there is a direct tie between passage of the $350 million bond issue and the end of mandatory busing.

The USD 259 web page entitled "Bond issue supports the end of busing for desegregation" explains

With the end of forced busing, elementary students in the Assigned Attendance Area now have an opportunity to return to their neighborhood schools if they choose to do so.

“As more kids over time come back to their neighborhood to attend school, we will eventually need more space in those schools,” said Martin Libhart, Chief Operations Officer.

Without getting into issues like the savings to the district from ending busing, it is clear that termination of the busing program should not hinge on the passage of the $350 million bond issue.

There are nine schools in the AAA (assigned attendance area) and directly adjacent to the AAA.

Currently, none of the schools is at capacity. L'Ouverture is the closest with 350 students in a school with capacity for 360. Isley, on the other hand, only has 202 students in a school designed for 450. Among the schools* there is currently space for an additional 583 students before present capacity is reached.

There are very real concerns about ensuring that the schools in the AAA meet the standards as the schools in the rest of the district.

Under the bond proposal, three of those schools will receive no expenditures for upgrades: Gordon Parks (built in 2008), L'Ouverture (remodeled in 2004), and Washington (2003).

One school, Isley, will be completely replaced by a new $10 million elementary school even though it had a new addition built in 2005.

The remaining five schools would receive a total of $10,534,000 in new construction, for a grand total of about $20.5 million going for improvements in the AAA and adjacent areas.

That's 5.8% of the entire $350 million bond issue....or 26% of USD 259's unencumbered $77 million cash balance last year....or 58% of the district's $35 million annual capital improvement budget.




*This does not include Gordon Parks as USD 259 has no current information included in the bond plan