Category: Uncategorized

My friend Peggy, retired educator of many including a child of mine, invited me to talk with a group about Oklahoma school finance.  I agreed and decided to incorporate my preparation into three posts leading up to that discussion.  Hopefully this information will guide a patient reader, with further study, to more fully comprehend Oklahoma school finance.  Sadly, such a reader would be well ahead of the fellows at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs who seem destined to uselessly flail away without real progress toward understanding and being baffled by what is a pretty straightforward regime.

The first step, and the focus of this post, is to learn how the Oklahoma Cost Accounting System (OCAS) works.  The manual is available on the State Department of Education website here.  The system uses understandable codes to classify all school district revenues and expenditures.  Every school district is required to report its revenues and expenditures, properly coded, to SDE within two months after the end of each fiscal year.  You can find abbreviated versions here on the SDE site.  School districts are also required to have their revenues and expenditures, properly coded, audited by an outside auditor.  School district audits are posted online by the State Auditor and Inspector’s office.  Audits have their purpose and place but I recommend the OCAS data as the place to begin.

Initially I’m going to use statewide data, however even though complete summary data is presented for individual districts, SDE does not provide complete statewide summary data for FY 2017 expenditures (capital expenditures are excluded) so I’m going to use FY 2016 tables as examples for both revenues and expenditures.   Here’s the first of three pages for FY 2016 statewide revenue.

Across the top are separate funds, namely General, Co-op, Building, Child Nutrition and Maps, which organize revenues and expenditures for particular purposes.  General fund moneys can be used for most everything except capital expenditures.  Co-op funds account for activities jointly financed by more than one district.  The Building fund collects part of the district’s local property taxes and must be used for the construction, operation, repair and maintenance of facilities.  The Child Nutrition fund accounts for school lunch and breakfast operations.  Maps is one of five funds that are tiny, about 1% of the total, and can be ignored to keep our review simple.

On the left side are revenue sources listed with OCAS codes in the thousands.  The codes organize revenues broadly by the level of government from which they come.  1000s are Local District Revenues, 1100 is property tax collections; 2000s are Intermediate, usually through the County Treasurer; 3000s are State Revenue with three subgroupings:  3100s are state dedicated revenues that are paid directly to districts, 3200s are State Aid and direct payment for employee insurance, and 3300 and above are other state grants and revenues; 4000s are Federal Revenue; 5000s are “nonrevenue” flows, primarily transfers from other funds where the revenue is already accounted for; and 6000s are fund balances.

Look at the remaining two pages and then I’ll suggest how to greatly simplify the revenue summary.

The General (11) and Co-op (12) funds for school districts are available for general operations, i.e. teachers, principals, counselors, teacher assistants, custodians, bus drivers, maintenance workers, utilities, gas and diesel fuels, insurance, etc., but not construction of facilities.  So we can simplify by combining General and Co-op.  The Building Fund can also pay for operations, but we’ll leave it separate for now.

As I said above several funds are specific to only a few districts and are insignificant in amounts so we can set them aside for now, namely 24, 25, 26, 50 and 81-86; these are just 1.1% of total revenues.  Also the Student Activity Fund (60) is easily distinguished because it does not receive tax revenue and is limited to the activities that generated the revenue; it is 4.1% of total expenditures.  Removal of these funds decreases the total FY16 revenues by $419,078,744 to $7,642,007,347 including the fund balances. 

Another adjustment that makes sense is to move Child Nutrition revenues, namely 1700, 3700 and 4700, from the General and Co-op funds and add to the same sources in the Child Nutrition fund.  Districts have the choice to record child nutrition revenues and expenditures in the General/Co-op or Child Nutrition Fund.  There is no significant policy decision involved so we can simplify the overall picture by having all Child Nutrition financial activity in the same fund.  What is there are revenue sources 1700 for local (family payments for lunches), 3700 for state (the small state match that is required) and 4700 for federal (the federal funds that drive the school lunch and breakfast programs).

Next we can consolidate similar and/or minor revenue sources to further simplify our revenue summary.  Local, 1000, can be just property taxes (1100) and everything else (1200-1600); remember 1700 has been moved to Child Nutrition and 1800 and 1900 are removed with the Student Activity fund.  Minor County sources, 2300, 2400 and 2900, can be consolidated as can minor dedicated State sources 3111, 3150, 3160 and 3190.  Similar sources for Alternative Education 3310 and ICTE 3360 can be combined; remember 3700 amounts are in Child Nutrition now.  Lastly federal minor sources 4400, 4500, 4600 and 4800 can be consolidated, while 4700 also is now all in Child Nutrition. 

The result is a statewide school district revenue summary that fits neatly on one page and captures all revenue sources that should arguably be part of policy discussions.

I’ve included a few percentage calculations for each fund of its total new revenue.  Here are the essential take-aways:

Operational expenditures, such as paying for teachers, principals, bus drivers and diesel/gasoline, are supported from the General and Co-op funds primarily with State tax revenue (60%) and Local property taxes (26%).  The largest single entry is almost $2 billion for State Aid which will be the topic of my next post.

Additional local property tax revenues are available in the Building fund (92%) for operation, maintenance and acquisition of school facilities and equipment.

Child Nutrition (school breakfast and lunch) services are paid for with special Federal (75%) revenue and local charges (19%).

The Bond funds work in tandem with the Sinking fund.  Expenditures, as we will see, are recorded as Bond projects which are paid for with local property tax collections through the Sinking fund.

We can now turn to the expenditure side.  Here are the broad OCAS “Function” categories used along the left side of the following statewide FY 2016 expenditure tables for certain funds:

 1. Function 1000 Series – Instruction (teachers, teacher assistants, textbooks, etc.)

 2. Function 2100 Series – Support Service/Students (attendance clerks, counselors, nurses, OTs & PTs, speech path, etc.)

 3. Function 2200 Series – Support Service/Instruction Staff (library & staff, training, instructional labs and software, etc.)

 4. Function 2300 Series – Support Services/General Administration (superintendent & assistants, board, legal, audit, etc.)

 5. Function 2400 Series – Support Services/School Administration (building principals & assistants, school secretaries, etc.)

 6. Function 2500 Series – Central Services (financial and technology operations, insurance, etc.)

 7. Function 2600 Series – Operation and Maintenance of Plant Services (custodians, maintenance staff, utilities, etc.)

 8. Function 2700 Series – Student Transportation (school buses, drivers, mechanics, fuel, etc.)

 9. Function 3100 Series – Child Nutrition Program Operations (cooks, servers, food, kitchen equipment, etc.)

 10. Function 3200 Series – Enterprise Operations

 11. Function 4000 Series – Facilities Acquisition and Construction Services

 12. Function 5000-8000 Series – Other Uses and Repayments

Across the top are broad Object series codes; 100 is for employee compensation and 200 is for benefits like health insurance and Social Security.  100 and 200 added together are the cost of personnel. 

Let’s look for the largest dollar amounts in each of the major funds.

The largest function total for the General fund is upper right, $2.8 billion for Instruction.  Scan clear to the left and you see the 100 and 200 personnel costs, i.e. classroom teachers, account for almost all of the total.

The largest function total for the Building fund is toward the upper right, $140.8 million in 2600 Operation and Maintenance of facilities.  The largest Object column totals are 300-500 which include water/sewer/refuse utilities and contracting for custodial and maintenance work, 600 which includes electricity and natural gas utilities, and 100 & 200 personnel costs for custodians and maintenance employees.  All of these expenditures could, if there was enough revenue, instead be paid for in the General fund.  Note how little is actually used for construction, Function 4000.

Child Nutrition, as you would expect, is about Supplies, i.e. food, in Object 600 and the workers who prepare and serve the meals, again Objects 100 and 200.

Bond fund expenditures are dominated by Function 4000, construction and acquisition of facilities and building improvements, with most of that being paid to outside contractors as recorded in Object 300-500.  These expenditures are made with the proceeds from selling general obligation bonds, i.e. borrowing money.  The borrowed funds, plus interest, are paid back from Sinking Fund revenues.  Because the actual expenditures have already been recorded in the Bond funds, in the Sinking fund the bond payments are recorded as Function 5100 Debt Service and are NOT included in any traditional totaling of school district expenditures.  The value received by the district is through the expenditure of the bond funds; to include the bond payments, other than the interest cost, counts the same spending twice and exaggerates the overall total.

Next time we’ll see how the State Aid Formula affects the major funds.

As always lunch is on me to the first to ID the photo location (sorry about the graffiti, not). 

 

 

In my last post I took Joel Griffith with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to task because I convinced myself he was doctoring his “research” by including spending with federal funds to show how Oklahoma “taxpayers” would have saved billions if only TABOR had been in place.  His totals were like Oklahoma government expenditures, including federal funds, that I’m used to seeing (which I showed using a table from the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for 2017) for recent years, about $16 billion, with the two largest parts being state tax revenue and federal transfers/grants to Oklahoma.  I am so used to the fellows at the OCPA doing sloppy work that I just stopped there thinking I got them again and didn’t even look at his source to double check my conclusion.   Confidently I included Mr. Griffith’s email address on my distribution list and suggested he make a correction to his article.

As he pointed out in his reply, which was respectful of his elder (haven’t verified that but very safe assumption) his numbers did NOT include spending with federal dollars.  I was wrong.  He uses data from the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) which is reasonable to do.  Comparisons among states, like comparisons among school districts I’ve submitted data for, can never really be apples to apples but using a consistent methodology over time is about as good as you can do—though you should try to get the right numbers.   Here’s what one of the pages he used looks like:

Oklahoma is down toward the bottom in the Southwest, just above Texas.  The most recent report does not have actual data for 2017, only “estimated”.  So when he whined about the growth in state expenditures from $11.5 billion in 2011 to $16.5 billion in 2017 he was comparing actual to estimated, presumably.  Of course I have now checked his source and transcribed the data from all the NASBO reports going back to 2000.  I put the estimated numbers for 2017 and 2011 in italics so there are two entries for 2011, actual and estimated.  Here’s my table:

The first five data columns mirror the NASBO reports; the last two are my calculations, first removing the federal amount from the total and then also removing bond amounts.  Notice that the $16.1 billion for 2017 (estimated) shows up as $16,134 million.  That’s the number he used.  But notice that nowhere for either 2011 actual or 2011 estimated does $11.5 billion show up, the closest being $11,596 million by also subtracting the bond amount, but that wouldn’t be apples to apples.  So on this alone I think Mr. Griffith owes a correction.

What else, besides just using the wrong amount, about his numbers fits with my experience reviewing the work by Stink Tanks like OCPA and ALEC is how they are oh so clever in selecting a base year from which to describe a change.   He says “total state funds expenditures are expected to smash records in fiscal year (FY) 2018 for the seventh consecutive year, after rising from $11.5 billion in FY 2011 to $16.1 billion in FY 2017.”  Not only, as I’ve shown, is the $11.5 billion $600 million less than the number from the NASBO data and we don’t know if the $16.1 billion estimated actually happened, but you could also describe the data this way:

Total state funds expenditures, after taking five years to catch back up to the 2007 pre-recession total of $13.6 billion, was at $15.1 billion for 2016, being a paltry 10.5% increase over that decade and well below the combined increases in population and inflation.

His other big revelation from his look at the data was telling us that total state funds expenditures, since 2000, blew right through the cap of 56% (42% inflation plus 14% population growth) that having TABOR in place would have imposed.  He could have saved us over $3 billion.  But look at the data table.  Here are the percentage increases from 2000 to 2017 (estimated) for three columns:  “less fed” (which is total state spending) is 107.6% which clearly does blow the top off the 56% TABOR cap (his calculation, not mine); “general” is 35.7% which is way less than his cap; and “other” is 213.1%.  Even a limited thinker can see that his heartburn can’t be for our general fund state spending, but rather should be focused on our “other state funds”.  Figuring out what those are led me to Oklahoma’s deep state.

Here’s the NASBO definitions and a great national chart:

Remember I got off on the wrong track because I was used to data sets where federal funding was close to half of our state spending.  But now I’m seeing a data set where the total is much larger, $23.3 billion for 2017 estimated, and has this “other state funds” category being a big hunk as well.  So what is it?

Read the definitions above.  Right off the bat, if I’m concerned about taxes, it seems I should be more focused on the “general fund” totals that are paid for mostly with taxes—and TABOR wouldn’t have limited Oklahoma’s growth (except it can ratchet you down in a pretty stupid way) as Griffith calculates it, because 36% is well under 56%.  On the other hand, “other state funds” include tuition, fees, donations, assessments, provider taxes, etc.–provider taxes appear to be a way states can game the Medicaid system to have the federal government and patients pay some of the state’s match and Oklahoma plays in that game so they are not what most think of as taxes.  I’m very skeptical that Colorado’s TABOR includes most of these revenue streams.

Still I went looking for Oklahoma’s “other state funds” and here’s what I think is the best representation from Page 48 (cafr16 p48) of the 2016 (so can be compared to the most recent actual NASBO data) Oklahoma Comprehensive Annual Financial Report:

I think it’s obvious that the general fund and federal funds shown in the NASBO data are within the $17 billion for “Primary Government” above, though removing the $900 million for higher education makes sense because it is used to cover the $867 million Higher Ed deficiency below and we shouldn’t double count (though stink tanks like to).  So that brings us to $16 billion or so with, see at the bottom, $8 billion from taxes and, second and third columns at the top, the rest from charges ($1.7 billion) and grants, $7.8 billion, virtually all federal I bet.

What I conclude from this exercise is our “other state funds” (Oklahoma’s Deep State) will be found almost entirely in the “Component Units” described in the middle of the Table, of which Higher Education is the largest, but notice it (tuition and fees) and the others are very dependent, not on tax revenues, but on user charges.  Perhaps some also comes from the list of “Business Type Activities”.  The largest of these is the state’s health insurance program for state and education workers.  And that’s another story—one that also doesn’t involve taxes unless you want to double count.

For my money, and thinking, if we want to use the broad NASBO data and if we’re interested in arbitrarily constraining state spending to keep taxes low, which is Mr. Griffith’s mission, then I don’t think you use “other state funds” in your argument.  But if you don’t, then your argument goes away for Oklahoma and you don’t get to publish your drivel on the OCPA’s site.  However at least you wouldn’t be adding to everyone’s confusion about how state services are financed and what they cost.  Still I enjoyed learning more about our state’s deep state.

As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the location of this photo (selected in recognition of the recent passing of a true American hero and statesman).     

Bison sculpture at Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, Osage County, ID’d by Peg Gotthold.

(Note:  Have had correspondence with Mr. Griffith and likely I will be following up with a significant correction; appears he did NOT include federal funds.  So now I need to find another $8 billion our state expends according to NASBO, and will comment on other aspects.  Enjoy.)

The Latin phrase Labor Omnia Vincit is Oklahoma’s state motto—“Work conquers all”.  TABOR is an acronym for Taxpayer Bill of Rights, a legislative proposal pushed by Stink Tanks that would limit increases in state and local government spending to no more than the rate of inflation plus the rate of population growth.  Colorado enacted this as an amendment to its state constitution in 1992.  So when I read “Spending restraint would save Oklahoma taxpayers billions” now posted on the website of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs I had to learn more, very little more, about Colorado’s TABOR to check this claim by author Joel Griffith, supposedly a TABOR expert for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a national stink tank, and a lawyer.  I also exhausted my Latin vocabulary from two years’ high school study so had to finish the title by exhausting my French vocabulary (sadly had to use Google).

Mr. Griffith leads off with this claim about Oklahoma:

According to the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO), total state funds expenditures are expected to smash records in fiscal year (FY) 2018 for the seventh consecutive year, after rising from $11.5 billion in FY 2011 to $16.1 billion in FY 2017.

Right off the bat I knew this would be an easy one.  I lived through FY 2011 to FY 2017 budget preparations with an Oklahoma school district and immediately suspected two problems with his numbers.  First, to get to $16.1 billion that would include federal funds flowing through the state and I doubted that TABOR would restrict federal spending since it is a state measure.  Also I was pretty sure that Colorado, unlike Oklahoma, had accepted Medicaid expansion under Obamacare demonstrating their common sense that you don’t deny your citizens a federal benefit they are paying for.  And second, the increase from $11.5 to $16.1 billion simply didn’t jive with the state aid cutbacks school districts had experienced during that time.

I easily confirmed my suspicions by viewing the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report issued by the State of Oklahoma for both FY 2011 and FY 2017.  This is from page 54 from CAFR FY 2017:

I’ve been around our state numbers and other financial reports enough to know that, with some effort, we could probably tie into his $16.1 billion with the numbers on this page.  Regardless of how close we could get I’m very confident that his $16.1 billion must include federal funds passing through the state because that $6.7 billion in federal grants is over 40% of the total—the very thing that had an OCPA fellow in a tizzy about which I commented in my last post.

Now that I have a credible source for FY 2017 let’s look at the same report from page 52 of CAFR FY 2011:

These numbers don’t even begin to support his assertion that Oklahoma’s state expenditures were $11.5 billion in FY 2011.  He is simply wrong, wrong, wrong—and shame on the fellows at the OCPA for publishing this slop.  Later I will reveal what I think this new Limited Thinker has done, though I’m not going to prove it in this post.

For FY 2011 you see that federal grants made up an even larger share of the state’s revenues, probably the result of the ARRA stimulus that helped move our economy out of the Great Recession of 2008 and set us on the path to a steady expansion that continues today.  This brings us to the second reason Mr. Griffith is a Limited Thinker—he’s including federal funds in his calculations. Here’s his “billions” conclusion:

What would TABOR have meant for Oklahoma? Since 2000, total state funds spending would have increased just 56 percent rather than 108 percent if limited to just the combined growth in inflation (42 percent) and population growth (14 percent.) Failure to adhere to such basic constraints created a budget blowout of $16.1 billion in FY 2017, a whopping $3.6 billion higher than the $12.7 billion in spending the state would have had with TABOR-constrained growth.

Even though Mr. Griffith purports to being an attorney, apparently he has not read TABOR in the Colorado Constitution.  If he had he would find this language at Article X, Section 20, subsection (2):

(e)  “Fiscal year spending” means all district expenditures and reserve increases except, as to both, those for refunds made in the current or next fiscal year or those from gifts, federal funds, collections for another government, pension contributions by employees and pension fund earnings, reserve transfers or expenditures, damage awards, or property sales.

This language defines the spending limitations imposed at subsection (7) of Colorado’s TABOR.  It clearly does not limit Colorado in any way from expending whatever amount of federal grants or funds come its way.  A proper analysis, performed by a true researcher who is able to think clearly and has the necessary reading, writing and arithmetic skills, of TABOR’s impact on Oklahoma state expenditures would begin by subtracting from its total spending all “gifts, federal funds, etc.” as defined above.  No way would the resulting numbers for FY 2011 or FY 2017 be the silliness used by Mr. Griffith.  Based on the numbers above FY 2011 will be less than $9 billion and FY 2017 less than $10 billion.   So between the two he is only off a whopping $8.5 billion or so.

I won’t take up my space with his silly chart that displays his foolishness, except to quote the legend:

Source:  Author’s calculations based on data from NASBO, Federal Reserve, Census Bureau.

To apply TABOR you need to make calculations using three data sets:  population growth for which the Census Bureau is the best source; the Consumer Price Index for the state for which the Commerce Department is the source, but possibly the Federal Reserve republishes the numbers; and accurate amounts, as defined in TABOR, for expenditures and revenues in actual dollars, i.e. no adjustment for inflation, for which I would go to that state’s official records for the data.   But note that he uses NASBO, a source I’ve not explored, but my hunch is that the data he pulled for Oklahoma, in addition to making no effort to adjust for federal funding, probably is adjusted for inflation, which would explain some of the huge difference for FY 2011.  Just a hunch, but I have already demonstrated that my hunches are better informed than his “research.”

Finally, what about his calculations.  Maybe he knows how to, maybe he doesn’t.  I can’t tell because “garbage in, garbage out” defines his work.  Until Mr. Griffith takes the time to understand what TABOR provides and to understand a state’s financial reporting he has no business alleging “billions” would have been saved.  Again shame on the fellows at the OCPA for publishing such rank garbage.

As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the photo location.

Central High School in Topeka, KS, which the Thinker wrongly thought was the school involved in Brown v. Board of Education; ID’d by Clark Frailey.

I’ve been commenting on gubernatorial candidate platforms and other matters of interest to me which has taken me away from my usual foils, the good fellows at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, for over two months.  So it’s past time to see what silliness they have been up to.  Three articles caught my attention.

The first by Mike Brake, Official Says Some Assessors Shortchange Schools, Counties, reports on a study done by the Oklahoma County Assessor’s office that looked at valuation practices in 12 of Oklahoma’s 77 counties.    The study finds wide variations in assessment practices that are consistent with the 2013 Equalization Performance Audit commissioned by the State Board of Equalization which found 35 counties out of compliance.  Since the OCPA seems otherwise to be on a tear to greatly increase property tax revenues in Oklahoma as a way to fund public education, a state responsibility, it is a good thing that they take an interest in making sure assessment practices are consistent across all 77 counties.  Simply stated, if assessment practices are allowed to vary widely then the whim of individual assessors will thwart efforts to achieve fairness among taxpayers and adequate funding for schools statewide.  I’ve requested a copy of the Oklahoma County Assessor’s study and may have more to say later.

The second, Distorting Facts To Fit A Narrative, by Jonathan Small could be funny if it weren’t so disingenuous.  Mr. Small is annoyed by a politician half a continent away who probably did distort facts and misuse terminology, but Small, who lives in a house made of glass, should not talk like a kettle because he need only look down the hall, or in a mirror, to find examples of authors “distorting fact to fit a narrative”.  As I’ve repeatedly documented in this blog, he and his colleagues so consistently distort facts and misuse terminology that it is notable only when they don’t.  In the recent two-year run up to the teacher pay raise this spring the fellows at the OCPA, and sister Stink Tank the 1889 Institute, consistently pushed the narrative that there was plenty of funding available for raises by distorting the facts in a variety of ways, including counting the same revenue twice, referring to teacher aides and cafeteria workers as “administrators”, implying that fund balances are recurring revenue, inflating numbers without disclosure and, my favorite, just making stuff up.

The third, Flood Of Federal Dollars Damages Accountability, by Trent England is arguably another example Mr. Small could use of distorting facts (“Nobody is ever on the hook”) to fit a narrative (Government wastes the money it spends), but it’s hard to argue he is distorting facts when he presents little of them.  He includes the State Department of Education as one of those agencies receiving the corrupting hundreds of millions of dollars so let’s look at some facts about those programs.

Here’s the total federal revenue, $693 million (out of the total $6.091 billion from all sources–local, county, state and private) flowing through SDE to Oklahoma school districts for the 2016-2017 fiscal year.

Three programs clearly dominate and fit the “hundreds of millions of dollars” that concern Mr. England.  The largest is $239 million for breakfast and lunch programs in school cafeterias statewide; the mandatory state match for this program was $3.1 million that year.  Our poor legislators were bullied by the U. S. Department of Agriculture into spending almost a penny and a half for every dollar of food Oklahoma’s neediest children consumed.  To quote a most compassionate commentator, “womp, womp”.  Mr. England, the accountability here is pretty simple, if you don’t like how the school lunch programs is run at your school, take it up with your school district, or if you don’t think there should be a school lunch program, take it up with your elected representatives in Congress.

The next largest is $191.7 million for “disadvantaged students”, a program which began as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 as part of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.  The funding is allocated to school districts nationwide primarily based on the incidence of poverty as measured by U. S. Census Bureau, specifically their Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates.  To my knowledge there is no significant financial match, or distortion of priorities, caused by this funding at either the state or local level.

I taught remedial mathematics for two years during the early 70s in a Tulsa junior high school program that was funded with these dollars.  With my faithful assistant Alice (who humiliated me on the tennis court) and a class size of twelve we were able to teach students, often one on one, who otherwise would have been buried in a classroom with over thirty other students.  It seemed to work well with many returning to the “regular” classes the next semester.  Mr. England, the accountability here is pretty simple, if you don’t like how these programs are run at your school, take it up with your school district, or if you don’t think this federal program should exist, take it up with your elected representatives in Congress.

The third largest is $136.1 million to support compliance with the federal “Individuals with Disabilities Education Act” first enacted in 1975.  This is the law that requires school districts throughout the nation to serve students with disabilities according to federal standards.  Working at a public high school as I did in 2005 was in marked contrast with my experience as a student at Nathan Hale High School in 1965, my senior year.  I don’t recall interacting with any students with disabilities and don’t even know if they were allowed to attend.

I suspect that the educational services provided to students with disabilities across the country varied widely, with some states and districts working hard to educate all children while other states and districts were doing as little as they could get away with.  Regardless, for whatever reasons, Congress determined in 1975 that there should be a national standard for the educational services to be provided to students with disabilities at all public schools.  That is what Congress does, whether Mr. England likes it or not, it passes laws that it believes are necessary and proper for the good of the nation.

According to public school world which I’ve inhabited as a teacher, an administrator, a school board member and a lawyer for almost 50 years, part of the bargain in 1975 was that the federal government would help fund the costs of providing the additional services for students with disabilities mandated by the new law, and that it would do so at the approximate level of 40%.  According to the National School Board Association the actual level is now about 16%.

Let me translate that for Mr. England, who might go to the OCPA’s silly data tool and calculate the total of program 239 expenditures statewide in FY17 and subtract from that the $136.1 million in federal funding for education of Oklahoma students with disabilities to see how much Oklahoma school districts, with state and local funding, expended to meet this federal law mandate.  He might then search for a school board member, administrator, parent of a student with a disability, who thinks Oklahoma school districts receive too much from the federal government to help meet the mandate.

Mr. England, just like the other two programs that spend hundreds of millions of dollars, the accountability here is pretty simple, if you don’t like how educational services for students with disabilities are provided at your school, take it up with your school district, or if you don’t think educational services for students with disabilities should be a federal mandate, take it up with your elected representatives in Congress.

I hope I’ve provided some transparency about the education programs guilty of using federal funds.  I suspect it would be fairly easy to do the same for the other programs he mentions, those administered by the Department of Health and Health Care Authority, using hundreds of millions of dollars.  So I spent less than ten minutes perusing the Governor’s FY17 budget proposal and quickly found that the Health Care Authority is dominated by Medicaid programs, namely health insurance for low income families and the disabled, and long term (nursing home) care for the elderly.  It’s pretty damn transparent that Mr. England would rather whine about accountability than just simply state that he doesn’t think taxpayers should help finance health insurance for children or provide long term care for the elderly who can’t pay for it.  Let them beg in the streets.

The Department of Health operates a myriad of programs that readily appear to be efforts at prevention, like nutrition for infants, immunizations to prevent contagious diseases, medical services for pregnant women, and many more that doubtless help avoid much greater costs to us all in the future.  What is Mr. England’s vision–a return to a time not so long ago when infectious diseases killed more people than cancer, when a high percentage of children died before reaching adulthood (check your family history), when childbirth was a major cause of death for women?  These advances in public health we’ve accomplished, some of it even during my life time, are not without expense, without laws that restrict our “freedoms” or even without bureaucrats administering public health programs.

If your narrative is that federal funds corrupt state level decision-making, then be transparent (give us the facts) about the programs those federal funds pay for and tell us which ones you’d be willing to eliminate and how the state would pay for the ones you’d keep.  Now that would be accountability and transparency by example.  Otherwise you are just “distorting facts to fit a narrative.”

As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the photo location.

 

Bridge at about 86th and Lewis into now closed Southern Villa Trailer Park where relatives lived for over 40 years.  ID’d by Greg Morris, Robert Franklin and Nancy Oswald.  We’ll have a fun Sandite lunch.

Having spent ten years as the first city councilor from Tulsa’s District 4 I do try to stay informed and was pleasantly surprised to learn that four qualified candidates are seeking election for the open seat in the upcoming August 28 nonpartisan primary.  I found information about them and a link to each campaign website here on Sustainable Tulsa’s site.  After reading the information about each I became even more uncertain about who would earn my vote so a friend and I decided to take matters into our own hands and host sequential neighborhood gatherings for all four.

After contacting each candidate, by the end of the following day we had scheduled Juan Miret followed by Kara Joy McKee on Thursday, July 19 and Daniel Regan followed by Barbra Kingsley on Wednesday, July 26, allowing each an hour to make their pitch and answer questions.  I learned later that there were candidate forum opportunities that I could have attended, but as a frequent candidate myself I was never fond of those events because you spent most of your time listening to the other candidates and thought each would appreciate having quality time to interact with several voters.  We had about fifteen voters each night with half that number attending both nights.

The four hours of local democracy at its best made it no easier for me to choose a candidate to support, EXCEPT I told myself in advance that, barring a clear favorite emerging, I would vote for the one who, without prompting, volunteered the most passion for improving public transportation in Tulsa.  Let me explain why.

Mayors everywhere are expected to fix most everything that is wrong, but what is actually within their responsibility is determined by the laws of their state and city.  Based on my fourteen years as an elected official with the City of Tulsa here are the primary functions of our city government and my brief evaluation of how well they work in Tulsa:

Airport:  we have one and you can fly lots of places on several airlines.

Cultural, Athletic, Convention and Entertainment Facilities:  we have the BOK, OneOk Stadium, the PAC, our convention center and Gilcrease Museum, pretty nice for our size city.

Police, Fire and Emergency Medical:  call 911 and well-trained professionals respond.

Floodplain and Stormwater Management:  we have a model system that was established after the 1984 flood and functions to prevent flooding like that which devastated our city in the 70s and 80s (knock on wood).

Land Use Development and Zoning:  we got it and it’s the rare homeowner who has to worry about a Sonic going in next door.

Municipal Court:  I’ve paid my share of tickets there and our judges are competent and honest.

Parks and Recreation:  forget the TV series, I love Woodward, Mohawk, River Parks and can’t wait for the Gathering Place.

Refuse Disposal:  it gets picked up on the appointed day with recycling to boot.

Water and Sewer:  turn on the tap and there it is, likely better for you than the bottled stuff you choose to pay for (so my dentist says); then you flush and it’s gone.

Streets, Expressways and Traffic Engineering:  I don’t like orange barrels either, but asphalt and pavement beat the gravel and dirt roads that still serve cities elsewhere on our planet, plus in midtown we’re 15 minutes from everywhere.

My point is we may have our gripes here and there and concerns with costs and choices for some of them, but fairly rated all of the above deserve at least passing grades and most much better than that.  The one exception for Tulsa city services, fairly rated, is our public transportation system.  I intend no disrespect for or disparagement of the work done by the good people employed by Tulsa Transit.  The reality is that Tulsa, for decades, has grossly under-funded public transportation and the result is it just doesn’t work well by any reasonable measure.

Linda and I lived four years in Philadelphia without a car and became very familiar with its transit system.  It had its problems and still does, but we were able to lead a pretty normal life, getting to work, school, shopping and entertainment seven days a week.  Just like turning on the tap, flushing the toilet, or dialing 911, the buses, trolleys and subway cars kept coming and got us where we needed and wanted to be; I don’t recall ever having to check a schedule.

Try to do that here in Tulsa; seriously, put your car keys away for a day or two and you will see what I mean.  Here’s how Linda and I would have managed our day on Friday, and we’re retired.

1. Walk a block from our house to catch the 112 northbound at Lewis and 17^th at 6:24 am. Get off at Freeway Café at 3^rd and Rockford about 6:34 am to meet friends for breakfast at 7.
2. Breakfast ends at 8 so hopefully catch the 112 northbound at 8:04, if missed catch it at 8:49. Arrive at 3^rd and Boulder to collect granddaughter from her mother’s work a few minutes later.
3. Walk a block to downtown transit station and catch the 112 south bound at 8:25 am arriving back at 17^th and Lewis about 8:45 am.
4. Decide to see movie at Circle Cinema at 2:20 pm so catch 112 northbound again at 1:54 pm getting off at 3^rd and Lewis where it heads downtown, then walk a block to the Circle. Movie ends two hours later so catch the 112 southbound at 4:54 pm back at 3^rd and Lewis arriving about 5:08 at 17^th Street.

Not too shabby, but very fortunate the 112 uses 3^rd Street to access downtown.  Now let’s pretend I work a 7-3 shift at St. Francis hospital.

I catch the 112 southbound about 6:25 am, a block from my house and get off at 51^st and Harvard about 6:38 am, hoping we arrive before the 210 southbound connects at 6:46 am, which gets me to St. Francis at 6:56 am, not too bad if I can clock in by 7 am.  If I don’t have any margin for error, then I start my trip 45 minutes earlier because these buses run 45 minutes apart.

To get home I catch a 3:13 pm bus easily connecting with the 112 by 3:54 pm and get home an hour after I began.   If my shift changes to a 3-11, I can make the 3 pm start by catching the 112 before 2 pm, but the last bus home that night leaves St. Francis at 11:05 pm and I get to walk the last half mile home.   I live close to several routes; try it where you live.

There’s another aspect to this—family economics.  Read Sunday’s article in the World about Tulsa’s high eviction rate.   An attorney handling evictions for landlords is quoted saying, “Nobody making $11 an hour can afford an apartment in Tulsa. Not on their own, anyway. They just can’t afford it.”

What does an article about evictions have to do with public transit?  These same individuals and families being evicted must also struggle with affording transportation, i.e. car payments and insurance and repairs.  This harsh reality, in my opinion, explains why around 25% of Oklahoma’s drivers are uninsured.  Imagine what a difference it would make in many families’ lives if they could get by with one less car or no car at all.  We did that for many years and the money we would have spent on operating a car went to purchasing a house.

Also a large percentage of Tulsans cannot physically operate a car—yet they get to pay sales and property taxes to maintain the streets we car owners drive and park on.  In cities where public transit works a huge financial burden is lifted from many and their lives are greatly enhanced.   I made these arguments repeatedly in many settings with Tulsa policy-makers during my fourteen years at City Hall, mostly falling on deaf ears because, I think without exception, none of my colleagues had ever been transportation dependent, as I had chosen to be earlier in my life, and just couldn’t get it.

I suspect all four Council District 4 candidates actually do get it, or readily would if challenged to, but the one who volunteered his experience and passion with improving public transportation in Tulsa was Daniel Regan.  He’s getting my vote.

As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the photo location, which is somewhere along the 112 route.

After proudly critiquing Kevin Stitt’s education platform in my last post cleverly titled “Stitt Strikes Out” I looked forward to more of the same reviewing the platform of his run-off opponent Mick Cornett.  While I don’t feel defeated by any means, this exercise has not been nearly as much fun.  First I struggled to come up with a clever name, trying hard for a meaningful alliteration playing off the musical instrument but finally settled on imagery that captures my more substantive frustration, namely that his website really says very little about his plans for education.  Here are his statements with each followed by my comments:

“Mick’s mother was a teacher and he understands the importance education plays in growing our economy, promoting a stronger workforce and creating better jobs that keep our kids and grandkids here.”  I can’t argue with a nicely stated platitude that invokes a mother for authority.

“Mick believes teachers deserve a raise. He would like to see salaries increased to the regional average with competitive pay increases for STEM teachers.”  Unlike Stitt who said he supports a raise for teachers but didn’t support the funding, Cornett remained initially noncommittal on the raise and funding package but in the end spoke out against the referendum veto effort.  He recognizes that the raise is a big deal and new revenue is needed to fund it.  But what’s this about singling out STEM teachers?  As a former math teacher I appreciate the thought; as a student of economics I understand the logic; but as a lawyer I don’t know that the facts are in evidence; and as one who appreciates the importance of well-rounded education including languages, humanities, the social sciences and fine arts, I question the wisdom of what this implies. 

“With advances in technology, education is a lifelong endeavor. Mick wants to raise the expectations for education in our state and create a culture that empowers families and individuals—regardless of age or income— to seek the best educational outcomes.”  Is this more platitudes or some code words for school choice?  Or maybe the “income” reference means he’s a fellow traveler with me wanting to assure equality of educational resources available to students in all districts.

To his credit Cornett has served as mayor of Oklahoma City for 14 years and has faced the reality of balancing budgets, assuring adequate revenues and making tough choices in a political environment.  Perhaps it is that experience that has taught him to keep his positions on issues, if he has them, “close to his vest” until absolutely necessary because there is somewhat less substance in his education platform than in Stitt’s.

As a side note, showing my turnpike rivalry mentality from 20 years of service as an elected official in Tulsa, I do want to point out that Oklahoma City’s MAPS for Kids funding, while certainly laudable, does not indicate greater support for education by the city’s political leadership in Oklahoma City than in Tulsa.  The Tulsa County Vision 2020 program that build the BOK Center included funding for area schools, and, more importantly, the Tulsa Public Schools have enjoyed a facilities construction and renovation renaissance since the mid-1990s when Tulsa’s Mayor Susan Savage led the campaign for the first major bond issue in over 20 years.  By contrast MAPS for Kids, as I recall, was conceived after Oklahoma City voters had rejected school district bond issue efforts.  The legacy of that success continues today as shown by comparing Tulsa’s sinking fund revenue, $69 million for FY 2017, which is almost double Oklahoma City’s $37 million despite Tulsa being the slightly smaller district in student population.

Because Cornett says little about education policy, let’s look at another area:  “Our Health” as he calls it.  Here’s his statement:

“Mick believes we must prioritize health and wellness to reduce medical costs and live up to our full potential as a state. Mick led Oklahoma City through a transformational shift in its approach to obesity. Relying on individual responsibility and improving the built environment, Oklahoma City’s health statistics have improved in nearly every measurement.  Mick wants to create a state that will attract the top doctors and medical care, and he wants all Oklahomans to have access to quality emergency care and hospitals… including rural areas.”

Nice aspirations and vague statements but, like his education platform, short on specifics.  Also he cleanly omits the most significant state issue that affects Oklahomans’ health, namely Medicaid expansion.  You see there’s evidence that the health of Oklahomans is getting worse, specifically that life expectancy for women is now falling.  There is also evidence that fewer people will die when more are covered with health insurance, a result that will increase life expectancy and means better health for those covered.

So how is Oklahoma City doing in achieving a high rate of its people being covered by health insurance?  Apparently not so well because the most recent (2014) State of the State’s Health publication by the Oklahoma Department of Health lists Oklahoma County as having a 22.3% rate of uninsured, making it the second worst of Oklahoma’s 77 counties.  We can conclude then that accepting Medicaid expansion is one concrete step that would improve the health of people in Oklahoma County and the rest of the state.

Where does Cornett stand on Medicaid expansion?  Predictably he’s against it.  But who needs health insurance when you can live in Oklahoma City and enjoy a “transformational approach to obesity” and “improvement in the built environment”, both sure to stop that cancer and reverse your heart disease.

As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the photo location.

Surprise, AZ, Cactus League home field for the Royals and Rangers, ID by Mitchell Kelough.

Having missed seeing the Yankees play the Blue Jays due to a dental malfunction while on vacation, I have baseball on my mind.  Oklahoma primary races decided last month included contests involving the subjects of two of my recent posts, Todd Lamb and Chuck Strohm, and each lost in primaries for governor and state representative respectively.  The losses were a surprise since Lamb is the sitting Lieutenant Governor and Strohm was the incumbent.  It motivates me to do more posts about positions advocated by some running for office this election cycle.  I’ll begin with the Republicans still in the running for governor, the position that proposes our state’s budget within which K-12 education is the largest expense.

Having done the campaign and election thing several times myself, I appreciate those who are willing to stand for election when their primary motivation is to improve our society and I believe Kevin Stitt falls in that category.  I also admire Mr. Stitt’s business success as it has been reported to us.  I suspect he worked very hard to learn what was needed to be successful in servicing mortgages, the area of business in which he chose to compete.  He must have learned it well since he was and is successful.  It is puzzling then to see that his position statements about education are shallow and disingenuous.  Here is what he says on his campaign website interspersed with my commentary.

 

Reforming Our Education System

Oklahoma leads the nation in cuts to education funding. Our teachers are underpaid and leaving the state in droves. Too much money fails to reach the classrooms and some school districts have resorted to four-day school weeks. Our leaders are failing our students, our families, and jeopardizing our future. Enough is enough. I will prioritize students and funding for the classroom and invest in the teachers that make a difference every day. It’s time to restore respect to teachers!

His generalities overwhelm me; I await the specifics.

1. Raise teacher pay so that it matches the pay of teachers in our six-state footprint.With 95 percent of Oklahoma children attending public schools, we must ensure those on the front lines of teaching our children receive the support they need to succeed.

Let’s get this straight.  Stitt’s lead off issue is that he wants to raise teacher pay, which is exactly what the 2018 legislature and Governor Fallin did, including stepping up to fund the cost.  Where was Stitt when the going was tough?  Just like now defeated Representative Strohm, he wanted to have his cake and eat it too.  He was for the raises but against the funding—now that’s visionary leadership.  STRIKE ONE.

 

2. Require line item budgeting for the Education Department.With added transparency and accountability, we will be able to better force more education dollars into the classroom room from the $2.5 billion that goes to the Department of Education.  

For “transparency” to be helpful the user must know how to read the state’s education budget, which apparently Mr. Stitt does not—or he hasn’t bothered to do so.  As required by Senate Bill 1600 here is the Oklahoma State Board of Education’s FY 2019 Budget:

That $2.278 billion under FY19 at the top is what goes directly into the state aid formula and then is budgeted by Oklahoma’s 500+ school districts.  Every one of those districts has a line item budget and their finances are fully transparent and audited annually.  Does Mr. Stitt plan to insert himself in 500 separate budgeting processes to “force” more dollars into the classroom.  By the way, note the $400 million increase in this amount over FY18—that’s the funding, which Mr. Stitt opposed, for the teacher pay raise which goes “into the classroom room”.

Then there are the line items of $33 million for textbooks, which I’m pretty sure are headed for classrooms, and $487 million for teacher and support employee health insurance—part of school employee compensation that Mr. Stitt says he favors but doesn’t want to fund, which also are budgeted by school districts, not the State Department of Education.  Those amounts are followed by $95 million for “School Activities”, a hodge-podge of various mostly state or federal mandated expenditures, the largest of which is $32 million for the Teacher Retirement System that is actually part of teacher compensation; here is the detail with citations to the mandates:

The two $3.5 million line items at the bottom are each legislative mandates, one for the retirement system which is effectively compensation and the other an incentive fund to reduce the number of school districts.  That leaves the $16 million for operation of the State Department of Education itself that Mr. Stitt might play with—a whopping one half of one percent of the almost $3 billion OSBE budget.  The line items are there and they are mandated; and they are managed by elected school boards across this state.  Mr. Stitt’s proposed “line item budgeting” and “transparency” are just cover-ups for the fact that he hasn’t done the hard work to understand what’s going on.

STRIKE TWO

 

3. Review ways to empower local communities to best fund the needs of their local schools. I love what we are seeing in Western Oklahoma where energy development is taking schools off the state funding formula and allowing for higher teacher pay. But we still have many counties without these commodities. I like the policy proposed by a conservative group of House legislators to give schools the flexibility to use part of their current property tax revenue on teacher pay instead of being restricted to buildings and infrastructure.

I’ve written repeatedly about this, first showing that the well-intentioned state question to allow school districts flexibility with their building funds is much ado about nothing, and most recently critiquing Todd Lamb’s proposal to require all districts to expend at least 65% on instruction.  Many school districts in Oklahoma, whether because they are off the state aid formula due to their “commodities” income (gross production tax) or because they enjoy a property tax base valuation per student that is well above the state average (like Pryor at three times the average due to Google’s investments), already have the ability to use their good fortune to enhance teacher pay and put more resources into the classroom.  Apparently Mr. Stitt is aware of several that are doing so.

What Mr. Stitt apparently is not aware of is that for the vast majority of Oklahoma school districts whose valuations per student are near or below the state average, his proposal does nothing, nil, nada.  His proposal essentially tells local school boards that they would have plenty of funding for their classrooms if they would just buckle down and make their communities a lot richer.  In fact, in FY2019 those school districts will have more funding for teacher pay raises through the state aid formula, thanks to Governor Fallin and the 2018 Legislature, but no thanks to Mr. Stitt.

STRIKE THREE

His website has two remaining education policy proposals, but in baseball you only get three strikes—I’m done.

As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the photo location AND its relation to baseball.

My inspiration for starting this blog two years ago came from my earlier review of the sloppy work done by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs when they were leading the charge to eliminate all of Oklahoma’s public employee pensions so I like to update how the largest plan, Oklahoma Teachers Retirement, is doing from time to time.  Last year I wrote in opposition to efforts by legislators to greatly diminish the benefits for new teachers as a cynical way to push them into less efficient individual retirement accounts.  Fortunately, that effort failed and was not revived this year.

The pleasant reality is that recent changes to OTRS have placed it on a clear path to being mostly, if not fully, funded by 2034.   That is in dramatic contrast to the federal Social Security retirement plan which the recently released 2017 Trustees’ report projects will exhaust its trust fund resulting in reduced benefit payments as early as 2034.  In recognition of this dramatic divergence of the two pensions I am grateful to receive, I wrote a post that was picked up by the online newspaper NonDoc.com which you can read here.

This is something Oklahomans can be proud of and teachers thankful for—our legislature has set in place a combination of benefits moderation, namely making it difficult for unfunded COLA’s to be approved, and dedicated funding supplements, namely 5% of some major revenue sources, that assure the state will keep its promises to current retirees and teachers and maintain a competitive retirement plan that will help recruit and retain teachers in the future.  This is worth both thanking legislators and encouraging them to stay the course.

By contrast Oklahoma’s Congressional delegation, led by supposed fiscal conservative James Inhofe, have known as long as each have been in office that Social Security is on a collision course that, the longer ignored, will inflict much pain on either or both of workers who will be asked to pay more and retirees who will see benefits slashed.  There have been several “commissions”, dating back to 1981, that have made thoughtful recommendations, always advising that acting sooner than later will lessen the pain.  Yet Inhofe and the rest have managed to do nothing about this greatest fiscal challenge facing our nation.

So I conclude:  It was the best of pensions, it was the worst of pensions, it was born in the age of wisdom, it was buried in the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, our grandchildren had nothing before them, we were all going to retire happily, we were all going to work till we die – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities (think Inhofe) insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of hypocrisy only.

As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the photo (a bust of FDR whose vision brought financial security to millions in their old age) location. 

 

 

 

 

Hardesty Regional Library, Tulsa  ID by Vince Taylor

First published at Nondoc.com

Because I know an article written by a geezer about zippers could be scary for some let me assure you this has nothing to do with clothing malfunctions.  As a 45-year Tulsa mid-towner my usual city driving is all about four or six lane arterials and expressways.  Then two summers ago, as Uber driver for my grandchildren, I began negotiating South Tulsa’s many two lane streets feeding into six lane intersections and back again to a two lane street.

Having served as an elected City of Tulsa Commissioner and Councilor for fourteen years and having listened to many presentations by city engineers about street construction projects, this seeming incongruity did not surprise me.  The City simply did not have the financial resources to expand city services at the same pace as commercial and residential development was occurring.  Other than required right-of-way donations there was no favored mechanism in place to secure funding for the expansion of streets and intersections.  Water, sewer, storm-water and refuse disposal were better positioned so most public concern seemed to be about the traffic congestion resulting from Tulsa’s southward growth.

Most of those years I represented downtown and midtown areas so mostly I just listened to South Tulsa woes while privately thinking “it was your choice to move there” and that we “established” neighborhoods would also have to pay for the costly street-widening that was demanded.  I remember clearly in those meetings hearing city engineers emphasize that intersection improvements were the logical priority which made perfect sense to me since intersections are more likely to be a bottleneck than the streets leading to and from.  But I gave little thought to how one moves from a two-lane street through a six-lane intersection back to a two-lane street because where I mostly drove were four and six-lane streets.

My primary driving experience with losing a lane, until recently, involved highway and expressway driving, often related to closures due to construction.  I confess that I always opted for the “polite” approach, and still do, choosing to merge out of the lane to be closed sooner than later.  In addition to being rude when traffic is slowing down, it also seemed potentially reckless to continue on at a high speed not knowing whether a safe opportunity to merge would occur at the point of road closure that was not always clear.

Then I read about “zipper” merging, I think based on the practice being encouraged by the Minnesota highway department.  The main focus, as is much of what pops up in a Google search, is on improving traffic flow when a highway/expressway lane is closed due to construction.  Engineers argue that flow can be improved as much as 40% if drivers continue in both lanes, at reasonable speed, to the point of closure and then merge every other car in a zipper like move.  I still struggle with that, especially when the line has already formed.  Here’s a sign:

But it did come to mind two years ago when I began driving daily on far south Tulsa streets.  After weeks of following my polite instincts and sitting through sluggish signal cycles, I consulted my engineer daughter whose children I was transporting and we agreed that using both lanes to clear the intersection, followed by zipper merging, was the right and efficient action to take.  Hence she and I, and a few others, regularly drive “rudely” but in a way that moves traffic more efficiently and helps everyone.

So I perked up when this letter to the editor appeared in the Tulsa World, May 31, 2018:

Anyone who regularly drives on area streets plays the two-lane squeeze all too often. Intersections widening from two to four lanes only provide passing lanes for those who never learned to wait their turn or want to show how their fast car can dart in front of you. It’s only slightly better going from six to four lanes.  These situations are road rage incubators. Then again, to paraphrase one local councilor, “We knew the poor shape our roads were in when we moved here.”  It is apparent that it is more important to develop our cities in ways to attract and please strangers and visitors than to make the quality of our neighborhoods better through carefully planned road construction and traffic control.  These are thoughts developed while sitting through lengthy signal cycles at numerous locations in Tulsa and Broken Arrow. I can and do avoid those streets and intersections whenever possible as well as the businesses on those streets and intersections.  It seems the avenue for growing a strong economy and investing residents with pride and confidence in their city and neighborhood is to develop better streets.

Here is the letter it inspired me to submit in response:

As a mid-towner rarely driving anywhere with less than four lanes I had a rude awakening when I began Ubering my grandchildren around far south Tulsa and encountered the plethora of fully developed intersections fed by two-lane roads about which John Paul Day wrote in “Develop Better Streets”.  I first followed the “polite” protocol lining up in one lane awaiting my turn wondering why traffic engineers insist that intersections be developed first when the two-lane bottleneck remains.  Then I read in the World about “zipper” merging and realized, as a Google search confirms, that the intersection, not the two lane road, is the greater bottleneck so clearing the most cars during a signal cycle works best.  Since then I move to the lane with fewer cars knowing I am less likely to impede a car behind me from getting through the next cycle.  Usually the natural spacing that occurs when cars accelerate from a stop allows me to easily zipper in; occasionally I encounter a driver outraged that I broke the “polite” protocol.  By being “rude” I help move traffic; “polite” drivers are preventing cars behind them from clearing the intersection.  The City should erect signage that will guide drivers to zipper and reduce congestion.

I also reached out to the City of Tulsa engineers to see if there is an official position on zippering after moving through an intersection but got no response.  We did encounter zipper, or alternate merging, instructions heading south on I-49 from Kansas City this week where bridge work takes it from two to one lane–it didn’t help since the heavy traffic backed us up to a complete stop.  Meanwhile I’m getting a bumper sticker that says “Zipper Is Quicker”.

As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the photo location.

Washington Irving monument on Edison in Tulsa, ID’d by Jim Campbell.

When Governor Fallin issued an executive order in January directing the State Board of Education to compile a list of every public school district “that spends less than sixty percent (60%) of their budget on instructional expenditures” I wrote a post showing that, using statewide data, the percentage spent on instruction could be as low as 36.4% or as high as 68.6% depending on the definitions of “instructional expenditures” (the dividend) and “their budget” (the divisor).  So naturally I was amused to see a political ad for Todd Lamb, candidate for governor, touting his plan to “maintain a focus on improving academic achievement, and reduce administrative costs so we get a minimum of 65% of every education dollar spent directly with teachers in the classroom.”

His website goes on to say:

Based on reports from the State Department of Education, currently fewer than ten of Oklahoma’s more than 500 school districts are spending at least 65% of their education dollars in the classroom. The low number of districts reaching even that modest threshold potentially understates how inefficiently our schools’ finances are being spent. One study shows that on a statewide basis, less than 45% of total education expenses went to instruction in 2016. For this reason, Todd Lamb will work to create a more transparent and accountable system for our schools so we will know we are getting the appropriate funds directed to the classroom. In-classroom expenditures include teacher salaries, textbooks and smartboards.

What candidate Lamb seems to believe is that a very few “districts are spending at least 65% of their education dollars in the classroom”, while statewide, according to “one study” less than 45% went to instruction.  That means there are just a handful of superstar districts making the right choices while the vast majority are wasting our education dollars on stuff that doesn’t benefit kids or teachers or classrooms.  I suspect the “fewer than ten” count came from the State Board of Education’s response to the executive order but I have not seen the list and don’t have access to the data in an easy to compute format (Excel), so I went in search of the few superstar districts by hand calculating the percentage for some districts from a list of those that do not receive state aid.   I think those 39 districts are on the list because they receive enough local property taxes that they don’t qualify for state aid, meaning these are property tax wealthy districts.  That also means they have a robust building fund that can be used for many non-instructional expenditures, like insurance, utilities and custodians, that poorer districts must pay from their general funds.  I’ve written about this in several posts.  When non-instructional expenditures are off-loaded from the general fund to the building fund then the instructional percentage increases in the general fund.  After checking fewer than ten of the 39 I found two of the superstars, independent district Pryor in Mayes County and dependent district Banner in Canadian County.

What is it about these two districts that distinguishes them from the 500 others that expend less than 65% on instruction?  Is it their local school board’s commitment to following Todd Lamb’s goal of putting more resources in classrooms, a commitment the other 500 don’t share?  Or maybe, just maybe, it has to do, as I suspected, with their property tax wealth.  Pryor, which serves about 2700 students, has benefitted greatly from the 2007 decision by Google to construct a data center there.  Since then Google reports having invested $2.5 billion in the facility.  No wonder then that its property tax valuation per student is $160,545, more than three times the statewide average of $49,471.  Banner serves about 230 students and enjoys a property tax valuation per student of $246,403, five times the state average.  The school facility appears to be located near several major industrial and supply firms with access to I-40 between Yukon and El Reno; it only takes a little good luck to skew Oklahoma property tax wealth for a very small district.

The specifics of why these two outlier districts are so property tax rich doesn’t matter.  What does matter is having a governor who has some basic understanding of school finance since he or she should drive the policy discussions about how to fund and improve Oklahoma’s public schools which are our largest state service.  If Todd Lamb wants every school district in Oklahoma to be like Pryor and Banner he should explain how he is going to multiply our state’s property tax wealth so every district can be that far above average.

What is also notable about Lamb’s “plan” is that while he pays lip service to the goal of having competitive salaries for Oklahoma’s teachers, nowhere does he take a position on whether voters should sign and/or vote for or against Dr. No’s referendum veto petition that would strip away the revenues passed by three-fourths of our 2018 legislature to fund teacher pay increases that will truly move us toward competitive salaries.  He also wants a “transparent and accountable system for our schools so we will know we are getting the appropriate funds directed to the classroom.”  We already have transparency through financial reports that are regularly published online and are open records available to all citizens; we have accountability through locally elected school boards, State Department of Education financial reporting requirements and annual financial audits.  The information is there but shallow politicians like Todd Lamb will never take the time to “know” much at all about how school funds are used because facts get in the way of the agenda handed to them by their puppeteers who write the checks for their campaigns.

The fact is that if the funding for the teacher pay raise survives the veto referendum then the percentage expended on instruction in every school district will increase because teacher salaries are the largest component (In my post I show how the statewide percentage arguably will be 70%).  Another fact is that if the funding does not survive, then the percentage expended will increase for “non-instructional” purposes, like utilities to light, heat and cool classrooms, like insurance to enable school districts to rebuild classrooms destroyed by fire, flood and windstorms, like motor fuel and parts to assure students get to the classroom, and many more essentials that will increase in cost with or without a teacher pay increase.  Still another fact is that Lamb’s precious 65% does not include the services for students performed by librarians, speech pathologists, counselors, nurses, school secretaries and principals, custodians, bus drivers and the list goes on for both mandated and necessary support provided at the classroom and school levels.

If you are interested in the future of public education in this state and want the next governor to lead the discussion about how to best educate our state’s children for their, and our, future, you should not be interested in the shallow Lamb “plan” that only shows his failure to grasp how school funding in Oklahoma works and to do his homework with the transparent resources available to us all.   He needs to get the wool out of his eyes and start reading.

As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the photo location.