VALDOSTA —
Tasked with discussing education funding, District 175 Rep. Amy Carter escorted a panel of financial experts — state representative Tom Dickson, director of the House Budget and Research Office Martha Wigton and director of financial review for the Georgia Department of Education Louis Byars — to an open discussion with the Lowndes County and Valdosta City School systems on Tuesday night at the Lowndes High School Lecture Hall.
In attendance from city schools was superintendent Dr. Bill Cason, assistant superintendent of finance Marty Roesch, and board members Bill Love, Trey Sherwood and Dean Rexroth. In attendance from the county schools was superintendent Wes Taylor, assistant superintendent of finance Dr. Troy Davis, and board members Fred Davis, and Dave Clark. Former Lowndes County Schools superintendent Dr. Steve Smith was also present in the audience.
One of the concerns addressed pertained to classified insurance.
“I know that one of the biggest issues and shortfalls that we’re experiencing is due to a change in how we are billing for and paying for benefits,” said Wigton.
The state was experiencing such a short fall which caused benefits to go up that they were looking at multiple ways to keep the plan solvent. One of the things being looked at now is connecting years worked in the school system to insurance coverage.
“The longer that you work with the state . . . the greater your benefit,” said Wigton.
Davis expressed his concerns on the healthcare costs.
“I’m a little concerned about the health costs . . . because it looks like we’ve gone way up as far as cost is concerned from where it used to be,” said Davis.
Wigton stated that they are still fighting to keep the plan afloat at a rate that teachers can afford. Concerns with retiree benefits were also raised as Wigton stated that retirees are a significant portion of the cost.
“Clearly we’ve got to do something with the retirement side of it,” said Sherwood. “It broke General Motors.”
Davis tried to get answers and solutions from the panel in regards to health and benefits. He stated that school teachers are required to have a college degree to teach and in addition to having cuts and school days cut back, the same outcome is still expected of them.
“We still want them to do the very same thing,” said Davis. “One of the benefits they have is retirement and benefits, that’s all they have to take with them.”
As local teachers are not necessarily being paid at “market value”, benefits and retirement are supposed to make up for that. According to Davis, that’s something that has been forgotten. Love chimed it.
“I want to look at the big budget,” said Love. “The entire budget for the state of Georgia.”
The state budget is $19.3 billion. Love asked for the education portion of that budget.
“$7.168 billion,” said Wigton.
“And what was the total amount of austerity taken . . . for the whole year last year?” Love asked
“It was one billion dollars,” Love answered.
“You’re absolutely correct,” said Wigton.
Taylor stated that while he understands the predicament the state is in, they struggle to explain and answer the questions of their teachers
and staff members.
“Month after month we continue to see state revenue numbers increasing and yet we continue to see an increased percentage, an increased amount of expenses shifted to the local school systems,” said Taylor. “We don’t know what else to cut.”
Taylor stated that they are trying to build a budget on the backs of school children and that’s the struggle they as a public school system have.
“Part of that dilemma for us . . . is that if we have 5 percent growth . . . that 5 percent growth is eaten up,” said Dickson. “We don’t have any money until we get above 5 percent of state revenues.”
Cason questioned how hard the budget has been looked at.
“I know for a fact that there are items out there that aren’t working that are still being funded,” said Cason.
Wigton stated that they picked 50 programs that they went through but finding significant savings is difficult.
“Finding these kind of savings . . . you have to cobble together an awful lot of that and there’s not a whole lot left.”
Love pointed out that there are obvious solutions to cut costs, starting with the audited reports that are sent to each and every board member.
“I get 250 pages mailed to my house,” said Love. “That’s a whole lot of waste.”
Love stated that aside from upsetting the “green people” who want to save trees, that 250 page document is huge considering there are teachers in the school system who don’t make copies in an effort to conserve and save money.
“Those are just the sort of things that drive me crazy,” said Love.
Sherwood agreed that those are the sort of things that they need to take a hard look at.
“We’re in desperate times and we’re going to have to take desperate measures,” said Sherwood.
A hot topic in public education, the charter school amendment, was also mentioned at this gathering.
“We’re talking about money going to private schools,” said Davis. “That’s money we’re throwing away.”
Davis stated that it hasn’t even been proven that charter schools statistically do better than public schools. After state superintendent Dr. John Barge openly opposed the amendment on Monday, some board members were adamant at getting their point across to Carter, who voted for the amendment.
Roesch was also quick to get his two cents into the discussion.
“Valdosta City Schools had to furlough our teachers this year and I’ve never seen our teachers work harder . . . one of the things that I would like to ask is that until we fully restore funding to our public schools and austerity is gone, that our legislators please not pass anymore unfunded legislation,” said Roesch. “It builds our teachers up, just to tear them down again.”
Roesch cited several instances such as young math and science teachers who came to work in the system because they were promised pay incentives that were never made good.
“Because now the money’s not there,” said Roesch.
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