DPS61 just won the lottery! Or did they?
Education and DPS 61 were not immune from the COVID-19 pandemic that ravaged the globe in 2020. By mid-March, we found ourselves in uncharted waters. Staff and students were quarantined and the buildings all but shuttered except for essential workers. All of a sudden, remote learning, electronic devices, hot spots, Zoom and a Google account were the necessary back-to-school supplies. Fortunately, the federal government stepped up to the plate with relief funds to ensure every student had a learning device and was tethered to the world wide web.
Fast forward to late 2020 & early 2021 and the subsequent rounds of COVID relief. States across the country were awarded billions of dollars to use in supporting both public and private education (Yes – I said private education). Using formulas based on socio-economic data, Illinois began allocating funds throughout the state. Macon County was awarded $82.6 million with 85% of that (approximately $71 million) going to Decatur Public Schools. While the state of Illinois provides the usual level of minutia regarding accounting procedures, the school districts have free reign in spending these dollars provided at least 20% of it goes to addressing the “loss of learning” that resulted from COVID shut-downs. It should be noted here that what is considered “loss of learning” represents a collection of things that is a mile wide & a foot deep. Furthermore, this program is also temporary. Regardless of the programs implemented, school districts everywhere will face a funding cliff as they reach the 2024-25 school year. So, within that framework, Decatur Public Schools has the authority to direct nearly 14.2 million dollars to loss of learning over the next 3 school years with the remaining $56.8 million available for programs & projects of their own choosing.
One of the challenges for all school districts is how they present their needs to ISBE. The money is set to be rolled out in incremental phases. So as a specific phase becomes available, the school district must submit one (1) comprehensive plan that accounts for the total dollar amount available. Naturally, this large, over-arching plan will be made up of smaller, more-targeted plans. However, it can become more complicated as each individual plan has to be approved on its own merits. So, suppose DPS61 submits one large proposal made up of say 35 smaller project proposals. Each one of those will be reviewed as an individual project, so there is no guarantee that all of the funds requested will ever make it to the school district.
But wait, there’s more… and I have yet to see this mentioned in the local reporting anywhere in Central Illinois. When talking with DPS61 officials, I have learned that the funding program through the CARES Act is a reimbursable one. Local school districts are not receiving lump sum payments of cash for them to simply use. For any school district to actually receive CARES money they must spend THEIR OWN MONEY first.
Regardless of what a school district and their stakeholders want to do with their CARES money, they must have adequate cash available to cover the initial costs. And while there is a little “wiggle room” for a district to have a deficit, ISBE guidelines are quite clear as to how those imbalances must be treated. Per those guidelines, a school district’s Beginning and Ending Cash Balances can never be a negative number. You can start or end the year with zero dollars in the bank but you can never be upside-down. Further, while a district may have an operational deficit at the end of the year, that deficit cannot be more than one-third the value of the Ending Cash Balance. When a deficit exceeds that number, a deficit reduction plan using ISBE guidelines and formats must be implemented. So how does that impact District 61?
According to the budget information published by Decatur Public Schools, they are projected to have an operating deficit of $6.8 million with an Ending Cash Balance of $20.8 million. That is less than the 1/3 threshold, but not by much. As it stands now, DPS61 has $11.2 million of funds yet to be allocated in the current phase. To spend all of that money within the district’s budget framework, they would need to end the year with an additional $33.6 million in cash on hand meaning the Ending Cash Balance at June 30, 2022 would need to be in excess of $54.4 million! Not only would our community need ADM, Caterpillar, Mueller and Tate & Lyle running at full capacity, Firestone, Wagner Castings, GE, Cash Valve and Borg Warner would need to do the same. Oops, I forgot. Those last five don’t exist anymore.
So how do we move forward?
Now that we know the ground rules surrounding the use of these relief funds, and now that we realize the extremely narrow lane in which DPS61 must stay, the real challenge is this… how do we effectively allocate our resources in such a way that maximizes the educational outcomes for our students and our community?
Contrary to popular belief, the district is not in the position to go on a shopping spree and simply spend money on an “educator’s wish list”. Rather the school board and district leadership have a fiduciary – perhaps even an ethical – responsibility to focus resources in a manner that benefits the students, faculty and support-staff of the entire district. We should look for resources that directly impact improved academic performance and sustainability. We should look for capital projects that not only help facilitate learning, but ensures that the district’s physical plant is safe and can be easily maintained in the years to come. We need to remember that the availability of these dollars is short-lived and that we must be able to financially support any new initiative well beyond the 2024 school year. More importantly, the district must avoid the temptation of employing consultants and industry-experts that facilitate summer training sessions and then leave the school district holding a fancy PowerPoint deck or an instructional manual that’s as detailed as the one you receive with the build-it-yourself computer desk sold at the big-box office supply store. At the end of the day, we as a school district need to show that we realized tangible, measurable results from our expenditures. If Uncle Sam is going to ultimately foot the bill, then let us make it count!
We here at DPS Report Card recommend the district consider the following expenditures relative to the CARES funding available to them:
Hire an additional 200 new teachers
Create one (1) senior high school supported by two (2) separate campuses
Continue to upgrade Buildings & Grounds beyond the latest construction projects
Our plan is to address these three (3) suggestions separately in a subsequent article; however, we do want expand a bit more on the hiring of the additional teachers as this is the most important thing Decatur Public Schools can do over the life of this program.
Retention of full-time educators in the district has hovered around 70% each year for the past five (5) years. During that same time, retention stood at 85% for the state of Illinois as a whole. Here are the data for DPS 61 as listed on the Illinois Report Card (www.illinoisreportcard.com):
To do this, we estimate this would cost the district nearly $18 million - hiring approximately 200 additional teachers between December ’21 and June ’23 at the rate of 20 per month, plus two (2) HR consultants at $75K per year. The chart below shows how the natural attrition we have after each school year will bring the total number of teachers back to our baseline as we reach the “funding cliff” in 2024.
We recognize that this will be a daunting task. However, the availability of CARES funding makes this possible. Not only would this cover the cost of the teachers, there would be administrative costs needed to boost HR staffing to cover recruiting, vetting and on-boarding. By contracting with HR professionals to assist with this effort, the administrative costs would be temporary – once the funding runs dry, you simply end the contracts rather than leave a layer of additional staff in place at the Keil Building.
As new staff come on board, the district could obviously fill current vacancies, use staff to reduce class size in areas of the greatest need and perhaps, most importantly, utilize these new hires to firm up response-to-intervention (RTI) efforts in buildings throughout the entire district! Further, as these staff additions would be gradual, the new teachers could be less likely to feel overwhelmed which could help increase staff retention rates over the next few years.
It is also our belief that when you factor in current attrition rates due to retirement, voluntary separation and the non-tenure status of new teachers, as the funding cliff arrives in 2024
DPS 61 will likely have settled back to today’s staffing levels. As such, the costs associated with these additional teachers will have dissipated.
We need to keep in mind that schools are required to allocate a minimum of 20% of these funds to address the loss of learning due to the pandemic – the ultimate goal of this program. Our recommendation would account for nearly 33% of the total funds remaining. This effort is not flashy and it probably doesn’t match the latest fads coming from the hallowed halls of academia. However, it is time for the school district, the parents and even the community to understand that additional staff may be the only real chance we have to address the damage done by disrupting teaching & learning over the past two school years.
The ideas listed here are just that – ideas. There are myriad opportunities out there and this is merely a place to begin. In fact, the district is utilizing the website www.engage.dps61.org to elicit ideas from folks throughout the community. We need to remember that this funding source is not perpetual and the district will need to maintain funding well beyond the life span of the program. And while programs to paint murals on all of the buildings may sound nice, I encourage everyone to stay focused on the objective at hand – improving educational outcomes for the entire district. This just may be our once-in-a-lifetime chance for Decatur Public Schools to make a meaningful & lasting impact!
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