Centerfield

All Politics is Local

Tip O'Neill famously said that all politics is local. That's not completely true, but close enough. The best way to change your immediate world for the better is to start where you live. What follows is a tale of local politics actually working as it should, and for once, delivering more than what was promised. It's about better schools, voluntarily higher taxes, accountability...and success.

Several years ago it became apparent that the Wichita public school district was in trouble. Kansas USD 259 is the largest district for hundreds of miles around, serving 50,000 children. A BIG school district by any standards. Test scores were stagnating, new teachers were getting very hard to come by, experienced teachers were leaving for greener pastures, and some of the buildings were literally falling apart. The average age of the school buildings was 50 years, and one building still in use had been constructed during the Spanish-American War. Only a third of the schools even had air conditioning. The "newest" high school or middle school was old enough to legally drink...system-wide, infrastructure was seriously and rapidly degrading. Over 280 "portable" classrooms were in use to handle overcrowding, and had been for decades. In tornado country.

Looming in the background was the (then recent) federal court decision that forced the Kansas City, Missouri school system to spend almost $2 billion to upgrade their schools, yet in the end helped their students little. The KCMO district serves only about half as many students as USD 259. If action were not taken, then USD 259 would almost certainly face a similar lawsuit, with similar results but a potentially larger price tag, one that the local taxpayers would have to pick up. One that had the potential to more than double local property taxes, or worse.

Something had to be done. The only feasible solution was to float a large bond issue to pay for modernization of school infrastructure, system-wide. Previous school boards had passed the buck on down the line. In the wake of a badly bungled new-construction bond issue in the 1970's there was little inclination on the part of the taxpayers to trust the district with a much larger amount, and all such bond issues had to be approved by the voters. It seemed hopeless.

How to gain the trust of the voters? How to assess what was actually needed? How to make sure that what was promised was delivered, if and when?

We started with the community. We went out and almost dragged citizens into the schools, showing them what the problems were. We established citizen's committees for each school, to assess the specific needs of each school. We set standards for "ed spec," the minimum specifications for making and keeping schools equitably even. And we formed a massive committee of over 150 volunteers from all walks of life to pull all this data together, sort out the core upgrades needed, equalize and prioritize them, and figure out how much they'd cost and where the money would come from. That Steering Committee spent every other weekend for several months constructing a proposal.

When all was said and done, almost $450 million in fairly urgent infrastructure needs had been identified. But under state law, any bond issue over $287 million would require the approval of the state legislature, which would (under state law at the time) be on the hook for roughly 20% of the overall cost of the bonds. There was no chance at all that the legislature would approve it. Under $287 million their approval was not required, and they would still have the obligation to pick up a share of the tab. So the Steering Committee started wading through the priorities...and came up with a package of $284.5 million that maintained equity across the system and covered all the urgent basics. The remaining projects weren't forgotten, but were placed on another list.

Then it had to be sold to the voters--a 20%+ property tax increase during a recession. After a two-month campaign, with every anti-tax group in creation weighing in against it, it went to the public on the April 2000 ballot. And passed by an almost 2 to 1 margin. We had our funding. Now we had to deliver.

What followed was almost six years covering 92 seperate MAJOR construction projects, bid out to dozens of local architects and contractors and sub-contractors, managed at the top by a local contracting and architectural firm as plan managers, by the District, and by a Citizen's Bond Oversight Committee of assorted professionals and district stakeholders. The BOC was composed entirely of unpaid volunteers, and met monthly as a whole to review all ongoing contracts and construction, and individually crawled through each of those projects (and their paperwork) on a constant basis. Two entirely new schools were built, a grade school and a middle school. Five other schools were so decrepit that they were torn down entirely, and new schools built to replace them. Rehab was considered for each of them, but rehab costs were more expensive than building new. And over 80 schools were modernized, expanded, and rehabbed.

As each and every school project came up for bid, the "left behind" projects for them not included in the bond issue funding were reviewed, and those that could be funded in any other way at all were dovetailed into the bond construction. It is cheaper and easier to do such things all at once, after all, rather than making them seperate projects.

From FEMA came money for several new storm-proof multi-purpose rooms in grade schools. From the state came facilities-weighting money for classroom fixtures and and supplies in new-construction schools. The district calculated the long-term system-wide maintenance savings from the upgrades, and dedicated that money as well to upgrades from the "left over" list. The interest earned on the bond monies between issue and disbursement also went into the pot, providing another $21 million.

And in the end, the bond projects came in on schedule and just a hair under budget. (OK, technically they came in exactly ON budget, as the law requires that all bond moneys be spent on the purpose for which they were appropriated.) The plan had worked. For $284.5 million in bond funding, the district delivered over $384 million in upgrades. Over 1.4 million square feet of new space. All the schools are now air-conditioned, wired for LAN/WAN, up to current safety code, equal (and modern) in lab facilities, libraries, etc. Promise kept. There is still some crowding, but the portables are almost all gone, and those few still in use are for storage or adult education only.

On the "back side" of the bond structure, careful re-financing during interest rate fluctuations led to an eventual savings to taxpayers of $49 million in taxes no longer required. Yep--almost $50 million less in future taxes than they originally voted to pay.

The KCMO federal cram-down overhaul was a miserable failure. Despite nearly $2 billion spent on a district half the size, test scores continued to decline, and the system stagnates today. They have some lovely amenities, beautiful buildings--and are still sinking into the urban-school failure swamps.

In USD 259, even as the projects were just getting going, test scores began to rise. Teacher retention increased, and the quality of applicants rose as well. Community involvement soared, as did trust levels between the district and the public. That trend continues today. The public schools have gotten good enough that the exodus of people fleeing to private schools has not just halted but reversed (why we still have crowding). Despite the extra burdens that public schools carry, the district is now quite competitive with the private schools in the area, and the trendline is still heading up.

The difference between the two systems is startling. The crucial factors were community involvement and oversight. At every single step in the USD 259 bond projects, the community was heavily involved, the stakeholders (parents, staff, teachers) were heavily involved, and the process completely transparent. It was clear to everyone that it wasn't lip service, that the district was dedicated, that the public was a partner and not just a paymaster, and that everyone had the exact same goal in mind--better schools for the children of the community. Not just better buildings, but better outcomes. And that in turn kept the community and the teachers and the students invested in the schools, with very positive ongoing results.

For the last few years the inquiries kept coming from other districts around the country. How did you do it? And the answer is always the same. The key is not in the statehouse. It's not on the school board podium. It's most certainly not in Washington. It's in the people most affected, the ones whose children attend those schools and their neighbors, the ones who pay for it all. Don't look elsewhere--look around you, and then look in the mirror. Engage your community.

All politics is local. Not always, but close enough.

Posted by Tully at January 24, 2006 12:13 PM