At many an EMID Board meeting I’ve heard the words “Steering Committee recommends” or “Steering Committee discussed the options.” This month I decided I wanted to see this “Steering Committee” in action. On 12/2 wrote an email to board chair Christina Gillette and my board member, John Brodrick, who I thought was on the Steering Committee. I told them I’d heard the Steering Committee would be discussing Dr. Robicheau’s contract extension and I was wondering if Steering Committee was a public meeting. I got no response until 12/10 when Ms. Gillette called to tell me that yes, Steering Committee was a public meeting, but sadly it had met on 12/5, so I’d missed the meeting.
To make a long story just a bit shorter, EMID has never issued any kind of public notice of Steering Committee meetings, even though four board members sit on Steering Committee and by Minnesota Statute meetings of elected officials are (generally) public meetings. I learned that EMID considers the Saint Paul Legal Ledger its site of official notice, but had never placed notices of Steering Committee or any other committee of the board there. In fact, a search of Legal Ledger on 12/12 showed that EMID seems to have stopped even posting notices of board meetings there after June 2011.
What happens at Steering Committee? Why is it important that the EMID Board conduct a public meeting behind closed doors? Let’s use the December meeting I missed as an example. The board at it’s meeting this month considered three “recommendations” by the Steering Committee: (1) extending Dr. Robicheau’s contract as interim superintendent, (2) eliminating parent involvement from the strategic planning “Design Team” and replacing that Design Team with a “Community Council” and “Administrative Team” to divide duties of planning, and (3) reducing the integration funds contribution of EMID member districts from $52 to $30 and cutting the EMID schools budgets by 10% in the 2012/13 school year.
Because the community was excluded from Steering Committee and because no notes or minutes ever emanate from the committee, we have no idea how these recommendations were made. Was any other option than an extension for Dr. Robicheau ever seriously considered? We cannot know. What were the concerns about parents on the Design Team? It is a mystery. Why is only the school budget being cut? We have no idea. The fact that the EMID Board allows the Steering Committee to do its thinking in secret is a serious problem for what is supposed to be a publicly accountable board.
Does it matter? Last night the EMID Board agreed to every single recommendation of the Steering Committee. I think it matters a great deal that the community is not allowed to see the venue where real discussion happens and real decisions are made. Below are some deeper questions about two of these December decisions.
The Robicheau Extension.
The EMID Board approved a contract that makes Dr. Robicheau the highest salaried superintendent in the state of Minnesota. The contract is for 0.6 time (three days a week) at a rate of $10,000 per month. This is a full-time-equivalent salary of $200,000 per year. This salary is higher than that of the superintendents in Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and every other district in the state. If we calculate the other benefits given to full-time superintendents, they do cost more than Dr. Robicheau’s contract. But in salary terms, Dr. Robicheau beats them all.
In fact, Dr. Robicheau’s contract is pretty much the equivalent cost to that of our last full-time superintendent. But at least she could spell our schools’ names correctly. She got our performance data reported to the state on time. She met with teachers, came to every site council meeting, and understood our budget.
Dr. Robicheau during his first and only visit to Crosswinds Community Council (site council) during his tenure, told us that he didn’t even realize the district was deficit spending until last month! He presented a budget to the board in April 2011 that had a budget deficit of over a million dollars covered only by our deep reserves and didn’t realize what he was doing until November?
What kind of review of Dr. Robicheau’s performance did the Steering Committee engage in? How did they determine that his performance deserved the reward of the highest direct payment of any superintendent in the state, for one of its smallest districts? I’d like to know what the Steering Committee discussed, but I can’t because it’s doors were closed.
The Budget.
The EMID Board heard plans of a budget that reduces member contributions from $52 of integration funding per pupil to $30 of integration funding per pupil. This is recommended despite the fact that the EMID budget is already running in the red. Furthermore, the budget presented recommends that the EMID schools bear the brunt of this cut in funding.
The budget presented recommends that the EMID schools be funded only by so-called “backpack” dollars, that is the state funding allocated per pupil and sent along with each EMID student to EMID for their expenses. These “backpack” dollars, sometimes also called “foundation” dollars, are what the state gives school districts to help fund public education. No member district can afford to run its schools this way, they all raise levies or other local, state, and federal funds to supplement these state dollars. In fact, when EMID was founded, the member districts passed along not only the “backpack” money for each student, but also the local levy money for each student. In other words, they gave EMID the money they would have spent on that student when that student decided to attend an EMID school. In 2007 the EMID Board approved a new budget model that replaced that levy funding with an increased portion of the per-pupil integration funds. Now the board is deciding to remove all integration funding from our schools and replace it with… well… nothing.
Meanwhile the board added $700,000 to EMID’s expenses last year for shared services. They did this without creating any new revenue stream. How did they accomplish this? By dipping into our “reserves.” By their own policy (see EMID Board Policy 710) the board is required to “strive to maintain a balanced budget”. They didn’t strive last year, they just spent. By the same policy they are required to maintain the reserves for “payroll obligations…, changes in EMID membership, student enrollment, and State funding.” Digging into the reserves for “shared services” is none of these things. In fact, board policy makes it clear that the reserves are primarily for “capital” expenses (for the school facilities). Instead of rectifying this mistake, the Steering Committee now recommends that this $700,000 expense continue as well as as continuing the FY2012 increase in our Office of Equity and Integration budget that funds other services for all member districts. The only significant cuts in the proposed budget are to the schools.
In order to keep this cut to the schools to a barely tolerable 10%, the Steering Committee recommends that EMID dig dangerously deep into our reserves. Given that EMID needs almost $2 million of reserves just to stay afloat in any given year (given how state money comes in and goes out), what the Steering Committee suggests will virtually bankrupt the district by the end of FY2013.
To summarize, the Steering Committee recommends reducing our revenue stream by reducing district integration contributions without replacing this with levy funding, it recommending cutting the school budgets by 10% but keeping all shared services fully funded, it recommends reducing EMID reserves to a dangerously low level, and it makes all these recommendations behind closed doors without letting the community see any of the alternatives being considered. In 2007 the board struggled with 17 alternatives in the open where the whole community could see the issues clearly, today’s board seems to feel that community understanding and input are not necessary.
Accountability.
Not only is the EMID board operating behind closed doors, this month the board decided that it would revise the EMID Joint Powers Agreement so that EMID board members do not have to be elected public officials. EMID governance has always been complex, with one school board member from each district sitting on the EMID Joint Powers Board. But at least the EMID community could go to those elected officials as their constituents when they had questions or concerns. My own board member has not answered an email from me in the past month, so I will admit that this is a flimsy arrangement, but at least it is a bit of accountability and it demonstrates the commitment of each participating school board to the EMID collaborative. Now the board asks member districts to accept a revised Joint Powers Agreement that allows “former board members” to serve on the EMID board. In other words, if you successfully defeat a school board member in your district, perhaps because you were upset about their lack of support for EMID, that former school board member could still serve on the EMID board. Where is the accountability in that?
The excuse used by EMID board members was that a sitting, elected, board member might not always be available. What does that say about member commitment to the EMID collaborative? They can’t even find one elected board member to take on this duty? They will press former board members to do this? Will they be paying these former board members for their time? Who will these former board members feel is their employer? Who will they be listening to?
Minnesota statute requires that at least six school board members be elected in each district. The EMID board can sneak out of this requirement by claiming that it is a Joint Powers Board and not an actual school board. But should it? Is this a proper way for a publicly accountable board to behave?
I am deeply concerned about the EMID board’s deliberations behind closed doors, its violation of its own policies regarding reserve funds, and its moves to make itself even less accountable to the public. EMID has gone seriously off the rails this past year, and the board’s actions at the December 2011 board meeting show that it is nowhere near getting back on track.
…Eric