Author: gary-watts@sbcglobal.net

San Diego Mission

This Is Too Much Fun

Been enjoying visits with family on the west coast and then in the great middle of this land made for you and me the last couple of weeks so haven’t taken the time to post again.  However seems fitting to compose one on July 4 in celebration of the liberties our founders aspired to 240 years earlier—especially the freedom of speech.  It didn’t take long to notice a couple of jewels posted on the OCPA site, one by Greg Forster:  The Oklahoma Blob Votes Itself Largesse; and another by Brandon Dutcher:  Oklahoma’s Budget Hole Could Be Much Deeper.  I’ve only skimmed these but here’s three thoughts:

1. I refer to OCPA in my first blog post as “limited thinkers” and provide a definition.  Any hesitation that I had that using such a term would diminish my commentary about OCPA’s publications was relieved when I read Forster’s clever use of “Blob” to describe the thousands of Oklahoma schoolteachers, custodians, bus drivers, teacher assistants and building administrators who daily care for Oklahoma’s children.  Really Mr. Forster, is the power of your analysis and soundness of your policy proposals so weak you have to resort to name calling in the title?
2. I’m likely misinformed but I thought OCPA is supposed to be a “think tank”, a source not only of policy proposals but also sound information upon which policy makers can rely. Dutcher cites the number $10,000 per student as the amount the state spends, yet Forster cites $8,813.  Come on OCPA, that’s a big difference, over $750 million.  Can’t you sit down for a discussion over coffee and come up with a consistent OCPA number?  When you do then I’ll take the time to fact check it.  Just remember not to double count, like including expenditures for both the sinking and bond funds; and if you are comparing to private schools be sure you are consistent about what parents pay for school lunches and student activities are apples to apples.  Even more fun will be checking how you account for the costs mandated for serving special education students—the ones private schools don’t/won’t take.
3. Really humorous is Dutcher using Shawn Hime of the OSSBA (and part of the Blob Forster would say) as a source for how many students are educated in Oklahoma outside of the public school system. Again if OCPA is a think tank, a place where supposedly smart people are paid money to provide information upon which policy makers can rely, then do your own work Dutcher—why rely on the Blob?  I suspect Dutcher thinks it’s clever to use an artificially high number because it enhances his claim that if Oklahoma had to educate all those students outside the system then that would be an even greater cost.

For policy makers though this is an important number to know.  In conversation with a state representative who authored voucher legislation this last session, I asked how many students are educated outside the public system and was quite surprised to learn he didn’t have a number.  It doesn’t take much analysis, though apparently beyond what the OCPA has done, to understand that any voucher funding proposal will eventually backfill to the pipeline of families already electing private schools for their students.  Policy makers need to know what the current private school enrollment is so this additional cost can at least be part of the discussion.

Here’s my quick and dirty shot at a number:

 

https://www.census.gov/popest/data/historical/2010s/vintage_2014/state.html

This is where I found U S Census estimate for Oklahoma’s population as of July 1, 2014 by age which is most recent year apparent.  I totaled the numbers for age cohorts 5 through 17 the 13 years for which school is mandatory and that number is 687,225.

Then here is the grade cohort enrollments for Oklahoma’s public schools first quarter FY 2015:

http://sde.ok.gov/sde/sites/ok.gov.sde/files/documents/files/FY2015%20revised%20FQSR.pdf

The total is 683,815 rounded.  Then back out the pre-school counts which are not mandatory, i.e. ages 3 & 4, leaves enrollment ages 5 through 17 at 642,619 which is three months after the Census estimate.   That leaves approximately 44,000 to 45,000 children not enrolled in Oklahoma’s public school system.  I bet that is closer to the actual private school enrollment of ages 5 – 17 than OCPA’s number of 100,000.

 

**Photo ID’d by Tresa Snow**

 

 

Synopsis of HB 2244 Impact on School Districts

Motor vehicle license fees are a major source of revenue for the state, counties and school districts in Oklahoma.  The Oklahoma Tax Commission by statute in Title 47 is charged with the responsibility of collecting the revenue and apportioning it among the recipients including the share that is divided among school districts.  The school district share before 2000 was apportioned based on first giving each district the same amount it received in the same month the preceding year or a proportionate amount thereof if that month’s collections were insufficient.  In 2000 the apportionment changed to assure sufficient funds available for full distribution of each month’s amount from the preceding year by reducing the state’s share and thus making unnecessary the prior provision for proportionate apportionments.

The school district share is a major revenue source that is considered part of the dedicated, local and state aid revenues that make up the foundation aid distributed equitably among school districts pursuant to statutes in Title 70.  The amount each school district is “charged” with, or expected to collect, each year for the foundation aid to be equitable is based on the preceding year’s total collections.  If school districts statewide collected approximately the same amount of motor vehicle revenues as they did the year before then the equitable, or balancing, purpose of state aid under Title 70 with respect to motor vehicle revenues is fulfilled; if instead the amounts school districts receive vary wildly from the preceding year’s collections the purpose of state aid is frustrated.

The 2015 legislature hastily amended Title 47 ostensibly to “cap” the amount of total revenue going to counties and school districts to allow the state to capture future growth revenue for its share.  The amendment left untouched the school district apportionment language but to fully enable the “cap” removed the authority for the Commission to reduce the state’s share in order to fully fund the school districts’ preceding year’s monthly amounts.  When confronted with the first “under collection” month the Commission construed the statute to say, which it does not, that if there were insufficient funds to fully apportion every school district the same amount as the same month the preceding year, then no funds could be distributed in furtherance of that priority under the statute.  Instead it concluded that all funds must be distributed by the method of last resort, ignoring that such method was only to be triggered after the first two priorities were satisfied, i.e. full distribution according to the amount the year before and filling in any shortage in that amount for earlier months of under collection.

As a result motor vehicle revenues have been incorrectly distributed based on average daily attendance for ten of the thirteen months since August 2015 instead of based on the preceding year’s collections.  This has caused school district receipts of this important revenue source to vary wildly from the amounts estimated and made a part of the calculations for each district’s state aid.   This in turn has greatly frustrated the equitable purposes of state aid in Title 70.

In effect the legislators who voted for HB 2244 in 2015 (http://www.oklegislature.gov/BillInfo.aspx?Bill=HB2244&Session=1500), through their failure to correct the Commission’s silly application of the amended law, have moved the amounts listed from the “losers” fund balances to the “winners” fund balances during fiscal 2016, a total of over $14 million shifted through no fault of any school district and for no good reason.  Another $7 million is at risk of being shifted the same way in FY 2017 or after if not corrected.

Here is a list of all 419 school districts impacted:

2016 Total loss final

Here is the same list sorted from greatest “losers” to greatest “winners” by dollar amount:

2016 Total loss final sort

Here is the list sorted by ratio of 2016 collections to 2015 collections, low to high:

2016 Ratio final Sort

There is litigation in Oklahoma County District Court to correct this travesty imposing more unnecessary expense and confusion on school districts due to the actions of the legislators who voted for HB 2244.  Here are the documents filed to date in that litigation.

Petition – 06-15-16 – OTC

160706 Answer

160825 Plaintiff’s MSJ – without exhibits

Exhibit Enevoldsen Affidavit

Exhibit 5

Exhibit 6.final

Exhibit 7.final

Exhibit 8.final

Exhibit 11 Final

160908-mtd-for-failure-to-join-interested-parties-1

160909-response-to-plaintiffs-msj

160926-response-to-def-s-mtd

 

 

  Pacific Beach, San Diego

My inspiration for this blog site began several years ago when a college roommate was the speaker at the annual fundraiser for the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.  I attended out of friendship and proceeded to endure the OCPA’s communications for several years thereafter, candidly not paying much attention until I went to work as CFO for the Sand Springs Public Schools.  That position led to my awareness of how the OCPA influenced the growing number of Republican legislators who were rapidly ascending to control of our state’s policies.  Their influence is in no small part responsible for the financial mess we are now in as a state.

My first detailed engagement was a review of the OCPA’s paper “Saving Workers’ Retirement” resulting in discovery of the group’s shallow analysis and ideologically driven conclusions.  Here is a summary of my study of Oklahoma’s public pensions I prepared in early 2015:

Ten Facts About Oklahoma.san

Now that I have retired on earned public pensions, both Social Security and Oklahoma Teachers Retirement, I have time to formally review and correct some of what OCPA produces.  Therefore I am an:

Oklahoma (born in Osage County in 1947, graduated Tulsa’s Nathan Hale High School 1965)

Councilor (my 15 minutes of fame was being Tulsa’s first Chair of its City Council in 1990) for

Public (OCPA and other Limited Thinkers Definition)

Accountability.

Gary Watts

**Photo ID’d by Terry Gammel**