How did they do it? Oak Ridge High has $61 million Renovation

[Pamela Treacy]

Today I read about the dedication of a "revamped" school in Oak Ridge. This was not built from the ground up -- it was retooling of the old school. They spent more than we did to build a new school. How does a community with less than 30,000 residents make this happen?

According to the article, the community supported the effort through a sales tax increase as well as $8 million from private donors.

When you mention the new high school here, you hear everything from the wheel tax compliants, bashing neighborhoods, pitting "rich" against "poor", and rezoning that split communities.

So opposite of this small community of Oak Ridge where the entire community celebrates.

[Vic Spencer]

Oak Ridge has a school system that is independent from the county. They spend about 20-25% per student more than Knox County does. Oak Ridge probably has a good enough credit rating to get a mortgage for its high school, and the mortgage payments are handled probably outside of the education budget, just like in other counties or communities.

$61 million is a hell of a large renovation investment and it probably includes everything including any high tech equipment needed to boost education.

What pays for it is taxes. It does not come free. I personally feel that it was a big mistake to actually not raise Knox County taxes for more than a decade - if I remember correctly. Since approximately 75-80% of the county taxes go to education, by keeping taxes the same for such a long period, one is actually screwing the education system. Pardon my descriptives, but that is how it is. You cannot improve the system for nothing, when inflation, however small, is eating away at your money. Now multiply that by the years of no increase, and you can see how much less actual spending power the school system has, when its largest component, salaries and benefits increase. At minimum, such a budget system should have an "inflation plus one percent" increase per annum. I am guessing mostly, but I think I would be close.

A major issue with such an unwise move is that it forces the education system to push out the more experienced teachers with early retirement, and pay for things by hiring much less experienced young replacements. Assuming that within the system salaries go up only in accordance with performance (I have no idea of what effect union rules have), and teachers who are not acceptable go into other professions or elsewhere, the move I am describing here hurts the QUALITY of the education. But with no tax increase how else can the system generate some needed cash?

So the financial management side of the system, as complicated by a foolish "no tax increase" policy for the purpose of education benefiting, seems to be extremely poor. The "no tax increase" promise is one that is very foolish in the case of public schools, although politicians use it instead of explaining the need for the taxes to support education.

Privatization of education would solve that, and could improve the education immensely, if the government gave back to parents with children a cash voucher, that then the parents could give to the best school, into which their children are accepted. I believe Singapore uses something similar or they cut taxes and require a tuition to be paid. I am not sure but could look into it if anyone needs it. Whatever approach would make primary and secondary education systems compete for your money, while the government could still make education mandatory through high school, which they should. In such a competitive world, you would see a lot more innovation in education with fabulous results. It is quite possible that both federal and state laws would need a change to do such a thing, but I don't know. Maybe not.

Man, I am so smart, I can hardly stand it. Hehehe... Please, anyone, especially from KCS, just jump in and critique my comment.

Vic

[Ginevra]

Vic, please look up any information about this that you can find, and post it.

Falling values of homes is likely to translate to falling property tax values, isn't it?

You'd think that good infrastructure in terms of buildings would be something that would last and result in lower building expenditures for future years.

In Knoxville, though, the continual population shift westward (encouraged by the linkage of schools to property values) means that some schools have much lower student populations than others.

So what would privatization mean, and how would it affect different people?

[Vic Spencer]

Ginevra, property taxes are not expected to change downward, unless you are in an area that may see a multi-year devaluation that is larger than 20%. There may be some pockets like that in Knoxville, but I doubt it.

All buildings require maintenance, and it can be expensive especially for older buildings.

With privatization the quality of education would go up (meaning a rise in ACT scores), provided that people want to go to that school. If parents do not want to send children to a particular school, than that school could close. With this kind of system, probably all schools would have some admission criteria, like past report cards, criminal record check, behavior from last schools. The good schools would get more applicants and would fill up faster with the better students. The schools that are not as good would have to improve the way they teach to create students with better motivation and better grades. The good schools would make more money. The average schools would do fine financially, and these two types would compete like hell. The schools that are poor would probably remain public schools, but as soon as a student qualifies, he/she could enter any of the better schools.

I know that this could be argued a lot about what happens to low performing schools. The answer is: they stay the same as today. We will keep solving most of the inner city problems the same way as today, unless they turn into a boot camp style boarding school with substantial medical and psychological help. The system to look at is the one in Finland. Contrary to what a gentleman said here who came from Finland, they are having a substantial problem with gypsies, a problem in several European nations, quite a bit similar to inner city issues we have. Finland has a program in this area that would be useful to look at because they have a high grad rate with a tough curriculum and the best OECD-PISA test rates. What I am suggesting is that although their gypsy problems are probably not the same as our inner city problems, I lived in an area like this in Europe, and it was similar. Their solution and progress would be useful for us to study in my opinion, along with their entire education system.

I found an excellent article about Finland that I hope all of you and all of the Board of Education and KCS people read. This is not a country, no country is, that we should copy. But the education system, and some other practices are absolutely brilliant, with outstanding results. Dr. MacIntyre, a one week trip to meet with education experts in Finland and a first-hand feel for their system with school visits would be very useful for the future of Knox County Education - money very well spent. Folks, I met Dr. MacIntyre yesterday at a Board of Education meeting. His comments and interactions reveal a man with excellent people skills, and an outstanding grasp of our situation in education. I was really happy to see him in the position of superintendent. He may indeed be the one who can tackle our huge problem in education, and make Knox County a national example in scholastic achievement.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/05/AR2... Sorry Pam for tracking away from your main topic.

Vic

[Debi]

The entire community does not celebrate. There are many residents in Oak Ridge who are very unhappy with the tax situation, as well as the lack of business being able to afford to locate in Oak Ridge. I don't know the statistics there, but when I lived there it felt an unusually high number of college graduates of scientific backgrounds. If this is the case and as long as their jobs hold out, they naturally can afford more than the Knox County population. Some of the older Oak Ridge citizens who earn a high income are deeply troubled by the shift from fewer high paying jobs to more service industry, middle-low paying jobs. As one explained to me, if you have 4 $50k jobs instead of 2 $100k jobs, then your police, fire, and civic requirements doubled with half the income.

Oak Ridge City Schools are not judged by their entire school system, but by their general education program, which is very, very good. But general ed is not the only part of a school system, if special ed were included, they would likely not be an A school.

Yes, I celebrate what they are able to do as far as paying their teachers far more, have better facilities, and have more community support for their schools. But every thing in life comes with a cost, very high taxes (seems I heard they have the highest property taxes in the state?) and I'm venturing to guess off the population differences that OR is able to fund something our residents just cannot.

[Vic Spencer]

Dear calico pussicat!You are right, we probably could not afford as high taxes as OR. But similarly we cannot afford the no tax situation-created-pressure on our schools either. I think that some reasonable catchup tax would be in order, and I wonder if it could be applied based on income, or at least above and below some limit, different rates.

Vic

[Debi]

Yes, and it's how to increase that scares me. Living in the city, would property taxes go up on both or one? Let's not forget utilities are scheduled to increase 25% in October. For some of us, that's nearly $100/mo. For those of us living in the city, say they did double. That's another roughly $170/mo for a city resident. Add to that increased fuel costs over the past year, another $300/mo, followed by increased health insurance, another $50, followed by unpaid doctor/medicine of a child amounting to $400/mo.

What I just listed is why so many families just cannot take on increased taxes, we're already robbing Peter to pay Paul.

[Neil Thompson]

I would disagree some. From what I have heard, just about everyone here is proud of the new school. The school was financed with a combination of bonds and business donations to the school. The donations totaled $8 million dollars. We had a vote that garnered 75% support for the new school. As for high taxes, I have lived in Illinois, Georgia and Florida and my taxes have never been lower than what I pay in Oak Ridge.

[lindaps]

This link should help explain "How did they do it"? http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=62127