Learn About Brian Kaleita for School Board

HELLO - - -



Thank you for reading my blog ! I am the only registered Republican candidate for one of the 4 open seats on the State College Area School Board in this November's general election. My wife Margo & I own & operate a property management business here in State College. We have lived here since 1978 and we have raised three daughters in this wonderful town. We have been married for more than forty years and we intend to stay that way. Our oldest daughter graduated from State High in '93, went on to PSU in the honors college and is now a tenured professor of engineering at a major midwestern university. Our number two daughter graduated from State High in '02 & likewise went to PSU in the honors college. She is now a program manager at a large southwestern US university. Our youngest daughter graduated from Grace Prep in '06, and will be returning to college in January.

We have watched State College grow and change in the 30 plus years that we have lived here and we have appreciated all that is good about our adopted home town. As native New Yorkers, we have often remarked that while we are glad that New York is there, we are even more glad that we are here !

We very much want State College to remain the lovely and affordable town that we have appreciated so much and that was a nearly perfect place to raise children. One alarming trend that has caused us some concern is the constant escalation in school property taxes that has occurred here, especially in the past ten years or so. Rising school taxes have made many parts of New York and New Jersey virtually unaffordable for young families starting out. While that is not yet the case in State College, we are rapidly heading in that direction. And we are already at the point where school taxes have become a very heavy burden on young renters and older folks on fixed incomes as well. School property taxes were increased again this year when the district did not even need the additional money ! The Board said they would set aside the excess to meet future obligations. Where have we heard that before ?

Margo & I built our business the hard way, inch by inch, day by day, & year by year. We never spent more than we could reasonably afford, and we very carefully evaluated each expenditure and every new acquisition before committing to it. Every year we struggled to pay our constantly rising school property taxes, and watched in dismay as year after year school property taxes rose by way more than the annual inflation rate. In fact, in the past ten years alone the inflation rate has been about 28%, while school property taxes in the SCASD have increased by nearly 50%.

Last year the "new" school board appointed me to serve on the steering committee for facilities, and with that experience I began to gain a better understanding of why our school taxes are escalating so much. Simply put, it is WASTE. And exceedingly poor decision making. School Boards seem these days to be fond of blaming such things as "unfunded mandates" for their budgetary and tax woes. To be sure, unfunded mandates from the state or federal governments don't help. But in State College that claim is only a part of the story. There are many aspects of school finance that are under the control of the school board, and our board needs to do a far better job of managing these issues. The "old" school board squandered nearly $6 million on a poorly conceived and unpopular mega high school plan that nobody wanted. They then proceeded to gamble with taxpayer dollars by "investing" in a complex scheme involving bond rate hedging, derivatives and interest rate swaps. This almost inexcusable blunder may yet cost the taxpayers more than $8 million. Knowledgeable stockbrokers and other investment advisors alike agree that investing in derivatives is one of the very riskiest forms of investment around, and certainly not prudent for a school district placing taxpayer dollars at risk. Putting this in perspective, a total of $14 million in losses due to poor management is equal to about 12% of our current operating budget. As I said: exceedingly poor decision making !



HERE ARE SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE OPERATION OF THE SCASD:


The current operating budget for the State College Area School District is over 109 million dollars. We have about 7100 students enrolled in our district. (Over 300 fewer students, incidentally, than were enrolled just ten years ago.) This means that we are spending over $15,000 per year per student. Where does all this money go ? Most of it (about 3/4 of it) goes for salaries & benefits for employees. Despite declining enrollment we now have about one hundred and fifteen more employees than we had ten years ago, when we had far more students. Does this make any sense ? Fewer students but more staff ?

We have over forty administrators. Ten of them work at our high school. The rest work at the central office or at other school buildings. Of the ten at the high school fully six of them have the word "principal" in their job title. A seventh is called a "director" for the Delta program - - - essentially the same as a principal. Do we really need to have six or seven principals for one high school ? The total salaries and benefits for all these administrators cost the taxpayers more than $5.3 million a year, or in excess of $130,000.00 a year for each administrator !

In addition to these "official" administrators, we have another category of employees called "supervisory," or "quasi-administrative." There are about 20 persons in this group, and they cost taxpayers well over a million dollars a year in salaries & benefits. Another group of 14 SCASD employees are called "Coordinators," and these folks earn considerably more than regular teachers. The highest paid of these "Coordinators" is presently earning a total of over $133,000.00 a year in salary and benefits. ($99,500 in salary alone.) We are told this "Coordinator" and several others teach no classes at all. The rest are said to spend half of their time as classroom teachers.

SCASD presently has about 645 schoolteachers, nearly 20 more than five years ago. You may be surprised to learn that well over one hundred of our schoolteachers cost the taxpayers more than $100,000.00 a year each in salaries and benefits. One of them, a driver's ed. teacher, collects over $106,000.00 a year in salary & benefits. A brief search of government data on salaries and wages reveals that a driving instructor in a private driving school in our part of the country might expect to be paid about $39,000.00 a year, and that is for a full-time 12 month a year position.

The starting salary this year for a brand new teacher with no experience is $40,000 a year (5% more than it was last year,) plus the usual 32% for benefits. Teachers are not required to obtain a Master's degree, but they are given substantial monetary "encouragement" to do so in the form of significant tuition reimbursement and hefty increases in salary.

Our teachers and administrators got a very sizable pay boost this year - - the fourth year of a five year contract. The union contract called for a 5% pay increase for teachers, but any teacher not yet at the maximum pay step also got another "step" increase for a total increase of about 8.6% of pay. Similar raises are scheduled for next year. I think it is accurate to state that our teaching staff is rewarded adequately. Job seekers think so too, apparently, as there are at present nearly 2000 applications on file for teaching jobs in the SCASD. There are another 1,000 or so applications on file for other positions in the district. It is worth noting, too, that in this enormous economic downturn that has been going on for some time now our current Board president respectfully approached the teacher's union and quietly asked them to help ease some of the economic pain being experienced by the rest of us by sacrificing only about 1% of their raises. The teachers unanimously voted to refuse.

And while school district wages, salaries and benefits continue their rapid climb, the teachers' retirement fund, along with most other investments has tanked. Since by law we, as taxpayers, are on the hook for public school employees' pensions, massive infusions of taxpayers' money will be required in the next few years. If we have been unenthusiastic about SCASD's history of 4% annual tax hikes for the past 20 years, consider the prospect of 8% or more in annual tax increases to pay for pensions and further, probably even higher increases to additionally cover the massive building and re-construction project now underway.


ABOUT OUR SCHOOL BUILDINGS

As if all of the above were not cause enough for concern, SCASD appears to be poised to continue its profligate ways by spending millions of dollars that we don't have on a huge building and re-construction program. The "steering committee" on which I served (referred to in the earlier part of this post,) finally decided after much community input, that we want our high school to stay where it is: i.e., on the North & South sides of the Parkway. So far, so good. The committee also decided that our elementary schools need major attention, to the tune of somewhere between 50 and 65 million dollars. This is a sum that could perhaps be managed if the projects were carefully spaced and bond issues were handled in a professional manner instead of via risky and disastrous gambling in derivatives as engaged in by the "old" Board.

Unbeknownst to most members of the steering committee, however, our out of town consultant and facilitator, William DeJong, had conducted a few workshops with mostly SCASD employees and a tiny handful of community members, and concluded that the Board needed to adopt a series of so-called "educational specifications" that would, if carried out in full, require the near total demolition and re-building of our two otherwise quite usable high school buildings. These "ed specs" were really not specifications at all, but rather an elaborate wish list orchestrated by DeJong and some mainly school district employees who seem determined to replace our existing high school buildings with something that I do not believe our community really wants at all. There seemed to be a concerted effort to persuade our Board & our citizenry that our existing buildings are not suited to continued use as secondary school buildings, - - a conclusion with which I disagree strongly.

The North & South Buildings are about 50 years old and clearly need some renovations and upgrading. They need new windows, improved heating systems, better flood and runoff control at the North Building, and various other more or less routine maintenance and upgrading. But they do NOT need to be demolished and they are NOT at the "end of their useful lives" as school buildings, as DeJong's "ed specs" imply.

Unfortunately, the "new" Board voted to accept the DeJong "ed specs" as to the high school buildings despite the objections of citizens who had been following these matters closely throughout the whole process. On the bright side, "accepting" the ed specs does not necessarily mean implementing them. I believe that anyone who inspects and examines both of these high school buildings, as I have done, will come to the same conclusion that I have come to: renovation and prudent updating are all that is needed.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE ?

If the School Board tries to rush through a major building campaign simultaneously with all the other issues addressed in this blog AND in the middle of a harsh recession, taxpayers are in for major trouble. There have been too many mistakes in judgement and poor decisions made by previous Boards and even a few by this "new" Board. Cumulatively, these mistakes are catching up with us. Last Spring a few of us asked the Board to hold back on the 4% raise that the already very well paid administrators were scheduled to get in July. The Board refused. A few of us, as noted above, asked the Board to reject the DeJong "ed specs". Again the Board refused.

And there are a multitude of other management issues that the School Board needs to address to stave off a tax disaster. For example, SCASD seems to have a turnover rate of between 20 & 40 professional level staff members each year due to retirements and resignations. Instead of replacing retiring staff with new hires from other districts with many years experience and consequent higher pay levels, why not hire recent graduates at lower or even entry level pay grades and realize significant payroll savings thereby? Why not take a serious look at attrition as a means of bringing staffing levels more in line with the realities of an enrollment that is projected to continue to decrease over the next five years? Why not contract out some services (such as the print shop) that could probably be more cost-effectively provided by private outside vendors than by expensive district employees? Why do we have almost 20 more teachers on the payroll now than we did when enrollment was higher? How about freezing all unnecessary travel expenditures for the duration of this economic downturn ? And freezing administrative salaries as well?

In the face of all the current adverse economic news SCASD has basically continued its pattern of what I would describe as near reckless overspending and risk taking with taxpayer dollars. I am afraid that unless some restraint is soon exercised we are headed for a very bad situation as a school district.


WHY SHOULD PEOPLE VOTE FOR BRIAN KALEITA ?

I am asking for your support in this school board election because I believe there is a reasonable chance that a major tax crisis can be averted if prudent measures are undertaken soon. I hope to work with some of the folks on the "new" Board to assist them in grasping the nature of the problem and understanding the degree of economic hardship that is presently taking place all around us. The building campaign, while necessary, must be undertaken only as we can afford it. Negotiations with employee unions must be much more guarded than in the past. The Board should never speculate in financial markets. Staffing must be brought in line with enrollment declines. Administrative salaries must be capped until they are more in line with school administrative salaries elsewhere. It is time to make some hard decisions !

YOUR SUPPORT ON NOVEMBER 3rd WILL BE APPRECIATED !


If you found this blog to be helpful and informative about SCASD issues and the election, please e-mail it to your friends and relatives, and ask them to e-mail it to others as well. Help us put a stop to the unwarranted tax hikes. Thanks for reading this post !