Peyton Wolcott - Conservative Commentary

P E Y T O N W O L C O T T

Conservative commentary - Edgewood ISD: How much money are our local school districts really taking in?

The chart above will give you an insight into how the public has been misled for years by both the education
establishment and its best friend, the liberal mainstream media, as to the true amount of public school districts'
spending. The main problem with the numbers reported by the San Antonio Express-News on September 11, 2006
on the front page of their Metro section in their chart of San Antonio-area school districts is that, kind of like the big
"TEA Recognized" sign on Edgewood's front door when it's actually bottom-ranked "academically unacceptable," the
average San Antonian picking up their paper that morning would have had to assume from the numbers posted by
reporter Michelle M. Martinez that, as one example, Northside's budget was $548.2 million when in fact they actually
received almost twice that number of dollars: $994.6 million. This means that Northside's supe, John Folks,
actually got to touch and control disbursement of almost a billion dollars during the 2004-05 school year (the most
recently reported actual numbers). Here's another halvesy: Edgewood's income was only reported by the SAEN as
$85.7 million--when in fact it was well over twice that, $190.8 million. But the problem, what few Texans know or
understand, is that when Edgewood and other districts first began suing so-called "rich" districts to get a portion of
their so-called "excess" funds two decades ago, the formulas used did not include federal funds coming into the
school districts.

Oops. Edgewood, during the most recently posted period (2004-05), received $21.4 million in federal funds.

Now look at per pupil spending above; yes, Alamo Heights is high; it's the wealthiest area of San Antonio. But the
rest of the districts are pretty much neck and neck.

Yet Edgewood, for all of the state and federal money thrown at it in response to its legal tantrums over the past two
decades, is rated rock-bottom by the Texas education commissioner, Shirley Neeley.

We know throwing money at problems, including education, doesn't work. So let's stop this nonsense, now.

An employee's new Hummer in Northside ISD's parking lot
(above) is the only clue to passersby that this San Antonio-area
district's income is far more than most people have been told;
below, NISD's Team o'Eight .

Name of San Antonio-
area district (with TEA ID)

Actual/pupil
2004-05

Students
2004-05

Actual rec'd
2004-05**

Budget per
SAEN*

Alamo Heights ISD (15901)

East Central ISD (15911)

Edgewood ISD (15905)

Harlandale ISD (15904)

Judson ISD (15916)

North East ISD (15910)

Northside ISD (15915)

San Antonio ISD (15907)

Schertz-C-UC ISD (94902)

Somerset ISD (15909)

S. San Antonio ISD (15908)

Southside ISD (15917)

Southwest ISD (15912)

$12,268

$ 6,098

$ 6,928

$ 7,107

$ 6,295

$ 6,213

$ 6,086

$ 6,755

$ 6,203

$ 6,953

$ 6,778

$ 6,000

$ 6,351

4,400

7,900

12,600

14,100

18,100

57,200

73,000

56,600

7,600

3,400

9,700

4,800

9,700

$   55.5 million

$   56.1 million

$   85.7 million

$ 111. 7 million

$ 132.1 million

$ 439.2 million

$ 548.2 million

$ 372.9 million

$   62.1 million

$   23 million

$ 69.2 million

$ 34.2 million

$   77.3 million

$ 114.6 million

$   62.0 million

$ 190.8 million

$ 208.8 million

$ 180.1 million

$ 628 million

$ 994.6 million

$ 843.6 million

$   60.3 million

$   36.5 million

$ 134.9 million

$   64.7 million

$ 104.9 million

* Operations & maintenance (O&M) costs budget, published September 11, 2006 in the San Antonio Express-News.

** Total receipts, all funds

Northside's modest administration
building hardly looks like a place that
allocates more than a billion dollars
annually--with little more than cursory,
minimal state-mandated oversight.

San Antonio Express-News reporter Michelle Martinez (now Michelle De
La Rosa) (left) with vendor First Southwest's Raul Villasenor (far right) at
July 26, 2006 Harlandale ISD board meeting.

How the San Antonio paper came to
underreport the numbers
"O&M numbers are the day-to-day expenses of the
districts," said San Antonio Express-News reporters
Michelle M. Martinez by phone last week. "I wanted to
look at the day-to-day operations, and how much that
increased."

But why concentrate on the lower O&M?
"I have been covering education either solely or as part of
a larger beat over the past eight years," she said.
"During that time, when I have written budget stories, the
operations and maintenance part of the budget has been
key because that's the part of the budget districts use to
pay for day-to-day operations, and the public should
know when that number increases."

Which still doesn't explain why the SAEN
used the lower O&M numbers. Those federal
dollars impact the day-to-day operations of districts also;
plus, again, it's money the supe gets to touch and
distribute. A good example is a federally funded reading
program at South San Antonio ISD reported in the San
Antonio paper last week.

Being a curious sort, I doublechecked with the
Texas Education Agency; yes, the "total receipts" "all
funds" number is the one that the school district
superintendents get to touch before they're distributed,
with board approval.

For additional insights as to why the lower numbers are
the ones tossed about as the "budget" numbers, let's
look at what veteran teacher Donna Garner has to say,
within the framework of "equity" issues.

When in doubt,
follow the
money--and the
political agenda
"It is the members of the
Equity Center who are
constantly begging the
Texas Legislature for more
school funding because
they say their districts are not
presently receiving enough
money, " writes Donna. "It is
also the Equity Center that
chooses not to figure in
federal dollars into the
per-pupil funding figures
that they so widely tout."

Donna Garner

"Wayne Pierce of the Equity Center on
March 29, 2004, at the Joint Select
Committee on School Finance revealed
that his oft-quoted figures (funding gap for
Tier 2 schools) do not include federal
dollars," says Donna. "President Bush's 2005
budget estimates released on February 21, 2004,
indicated that Texas is to receive $7.6 billion in federal
dollars. Sen. [Florence] Shapiro stated at the hearing
that she thought Texas had received $2.5 billion last
year. Not to figure the federal dollars into a school's
per-pupil spending makes the Equity Center's figures
inaccurate."

How we take back our children's education:
one person, one question, one school at a time.

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QUERY
THE SUPE
& THE PR GUY

TO:
KATHY COX-GEORGIA
SUP'T OF SCHOOLS &
CEO-GEORGIA DOE
CC:
DANA TOFIG-
GEORGIA DOE
PUBLIC INFO. OFCR.
DATE: JAN. 22, 2006

Can you please send me
the annual dollar
amount for each school
year (the five annual fiscal
cycles 2000-2005) that the
Georgia Public Schools
DOE has spent with
vendor Computer
Consulting Services
Corp., described as a
consultant to Georgia's
DOE.

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February 11, 2008: Friends, this webpage exists for two reasons:
1. The liberal education establishment here in Texas succeeded in persuading the Lege some years ago that only
   local dollars should be included in budget figures with the result that many "poorer" districts such as Edgewood
   ISD (in red below) in the San Antonio suburbs are able to state legally that their income is considerably lower than
   it is, without counting the considerable income they receive from the feds or outside grants, etc.
2. Until I published the following chart in 2006, our friends at the San Antonio Express-News allowed this practice to
   flourish by not digging further to report the big true picture; when the SAEN published the chart which triggered
   this one--the figures were in some cases half of reality--the editorial staff involved at that time were not interested
   in actual total-dollar numbers.
This may be because folks who become reporters are typically wordsmiths by nature and not interested in numbers.
Unfortunately this has resulted in a national education press which typically shies away from digging into anything
involving budgets and numbers and content to take administrators' word for what is so. The good news is that
subsequent to the following chart being published, when the SAEN published a new number recently for a local
district, it was the real picture dollars rather than the old formula.    Better news yet is that, as of today, several San
Antonio-area school districts have voluntarily posted their check registers online, starting last November with John
Folks at Northside ISD, then Richard Middleton at North East ISD, then Robert Duron at San Antonio ISD, followed by
several more which you can see on the roster at the far left of my home page, here.

Developing . . .

02.11.08: Edgewood ISD school board with
outgoing superintendent Richard Bocanegra (top far left);
Below, 2006 Northside ISD school board with superintendent John Folks
(second from right, seated)