{"id":52549,"date":"2015-04-09T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T17:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=52549"},"modified":"2015-04-09T11:24:31","modified_gmt":"2015-04-09T16:24:31","slug":"wheat-and-chaff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=52549","title":{"rendered":"Wheat And Chaff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Saint Paul Public Schools need to close a $20,000,000 budget shortfall.<\/p>\n<p>This is on a budget in an exceptionally highly-taxed city, that is already well over half a billlion dollars.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twincities.com\/education\/ci_27869238\/st-paul-school-board-settles-fix-20m-budget\">the plan<\/a> (emphasis added)?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Chief Executive Officer Michelle Walker said the district looked to <strong>cut administrators and supervisors<\/strong> rather than those who work in the schools, but &#8220;there are going to be impacts on both sides.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The deficit represents 3.8 percent of the school district&#8217;s $533 million general fund budget. It&#8217;s largely a product of <strong>negotiated increases in salary and benefits<\/strong>, as well as inflationary increases for things like utilities and equipment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>First: \u00a0as we&#8217;ve seen with the <a title=\"Priorities In Action\" href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=52224\">recent layoffs in Minneapolis<\/a>, it&#8217;s interesting that the districts are so loaded up on useless administrative mouths to feed in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>Second: \u00a0The &#8220;Equipment&#8221; line item is an interesting one:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Louise Seeba, who opposed the district&#8217;s 1:1 iPad initiative, which will cost roughly $8 million a year, suggested next year&#8217;s cuts are a consequence of frivolous spending.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I guess the voters, our parents, have to say, &#8216;You know what, thanks for that iPad, but now I don&#8217;t have special ed services to the level that I expect.&#8217; I think if the schools are upset, they might have a reason,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>Others downplayed iPads as a factor in the present budget picture because a referendum dedicated that money to technology.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In other words, &#8220;the iPads are being paid for by a special levy extracted from taxpayers due to an obscure vote in a low-turnout election dominated by teachers union spending; nothing to see here&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>File under &#8220;life in a one party city&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Saint Paul Public Schools need to close a $20,000,000 budget shortfall. This is on a budget in an exceptionally highly-taxed city, that is already well over half a billlion dollars. What&#8217;s the plan (emphasis added)? Chief Executive Officer Michelle Walker said the district looked to cut administrators and supervisors rather than those who work [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52549"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52565,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52549\/revisions\/52565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}