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5 BEFORE THE WYOMING STATE LEGISLATURE
6 JOINT EDUCATION COMMITTEE
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9 JOINT EDUCATION COMMITTEE PROCEEDINGS
Volume II
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8:00 a.m., Tuesday
11 December 17, 2002
Cheyenne, Wyoming
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1 P R O C E E D I N G S
2 (Meeting proceedings reconvened
3 8:05 a.m., December 17, 2002.)
4 COCHAIR STAFFORD: First order of business
5 today is we're going to hear some school finance issues by
6 Dr. Smith.
7 DR. SMITH: Good morning, Mr. Chairman,
8 members of the committee.
9 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Good morning.
10 DR. SMITH: Sort of an open-ended agenda
11 item. I can talk about anything I want, I guess.
12 COCHAIR STAFFORD: School finance issues
13 are pretty broad.
14 DR. SMITH: The three issues that I want
15 to talk about are the reading assessment and intervention
16 program, the classified salary adjustment, and then some
17 modifications that we have done to the actual spreadsheet
18 model.
19 Started with the reading assessment intervention
20 program. Last time we talked briefly about that and it
21 was suggested that we not do a final report until a year
22 from now, but I can bring you some preliminary information
23 that you may want to act on at this time -- may or may not
24 want to act on at this time.
25 Just briefly, this year the formula of
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1 allocating on the basis of ADM in the primary grades
2 generated about a little over $3 million. The cost
3 estimate that was done on that we still think is pretty
4 good, but there are a couple of factors that we think
5 perhaps we will recommend that be modified.
6 The initial cost estimate was based on the cost
7 of Reading Recovery, which is a well-known and frequently
8 adopted reading intervention program. It is among the
9 most expensive, so if you're going to do the cost estimate
10 it is based on one that's going to cost the most. There
11 are others that cost less.
12 And if you recall, just as an aside, one of the
13 reasons it was suggested that this be continued into next
14 year is that school districts have adopted some 12 or so
15 dozen -- some dozen or so different interventions and we
16 have no notion about how well any of those work.
17 So a year from now we will at least have some
18 insights as to which of those are most cost effective.
19 The cost estimate that was done, that was provided on
20 which you based your legislation didn't include assessment
21 time which is not really a big issue except in the
22 smallest districts which some of them receive a very tiny
23 allocation because it is based strictly on ADM counts.
24 We did a -- took a look at the -- what would be
25 the minimum grant that it would take to provide for a
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1 school district -- for a school district to provide
2 training for a teacher and have at least a half-time
3 teacher available for intervention. And without going
4 into all of the details, but including assessment and so
5 forth, it is approximately $45,000.
6 Now, there are, I think, 31 districts that
7 receive less than 45,000. Some are very close to 45,000.
8 Some of them the grant is as small as 6 or $7,000.
9 There's very little a school district can do with 6 or
10 $7,000. So without prolonging the discussion on this, one
11 recommendation that we would urge you to -- we would offer
12 for you to consider is modifying the current law, leaving
13 the amount per ADM the same until we get more refined
14 information about it, but guaranteeing each district a
15 minimum of $45,000.
16 That would allow them to have -- annually train
17 a teacher and provide a half-time teacher for
18 intervention. The total cost to the State of that would
19 be approximately $400,000. And that's just sort of a
20 back-of-the-envelope estimate, but it was prretty close.
21 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Smith, the 45,000
22 for the districts that are not receiving that amount or up
23 to that amount?
24 DR. SMITH: That's correct. The formula
25 would work something like this: School districts receive
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1 either the $45,000 or the amount the formula generates,
2 whichever is greater.
3 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Got it. Thank you.
4 DR. SMITH: So any questions about that?
5 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Any questions,
6 Committee?
7 Seeing none, continue.
8 Did you have something, Senator Scott?
9 SENATOR SCOTT: Mr. Chairman, do you want
10 to take any motions on this now or do you want to finish
11 the presentation first?
12 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Let's let him go
13 through the presentation and kind of dwell on this a
14 moment.
15 DR. SMITH: That's all I had on the
16 reading assessment program.
17 Just to foreshadow what our work will look like
18 in the future is that we will give you a little more
19 detailed report on the range of the costs of the programs
20 that districts have adopted from the least expensive to
21 the most expensive and hopefully some insight into the
22 effectiveness of each of the programs.
23 And you can never have the answer on these
24 things because there's so many other things operating in
25 the system, but you can start to see patterns, usually, in
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1 these after about a year.
2 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Any questions on that
3 specific issue in the reading assessment?
4 Senator Scott.
5 SENATOR SCOTT: Mr. Chairman, I will move
6 that we instruct the staff to draft a bill reflecting the
7 recommendation to give each district the $45,000 minimum,
8 modifying the current allocation for one year, bring us to
9 the end of the biennium.
10 I would move that -- would you rather have that
11 as a House education or a Senate education bill? Be too
12 late for an interim committee bill.
13 COCHAIR STAFFORD: I'm not sure it is too
14 late for an interim committee bill. We can put it in the
15 school finance amendments of 345.
16 SENATOR SCOTT: You want to put it in the
17 school finance?
18 COCHAIR STAFFORD: We have a motion.
19 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Second.
20 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Second to the motion.
21 Further information on that, Senator Scott,
22 discussion on your amendment to have the bill drafted and
23 inserted into 345.
24 SENATOR SCOTT: Okay.
25 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Any further discussion
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1 on that proposed amendment -- proposed motion, rather?
2 If not, all in favor signify by saying aye.
3 Opposed, no.
4 Motion is carried. That will be passed and
5 insert into 345.
6 You understand that, Mr. Nelson, how we're going
7 to handle that?
8 MR. NELSON: Yes.
9 DR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, there is one
10 postscript on reading and that is that there is a federal
11 grant of $2 million on the table that apparently Wyoming
12 has not applied for. I don't know the details. There may
13 be good reason. But there is part of the -- I don't
14 remember the specifics -- let's see if I can -- the
15 Reading First program in Wyoming has the potential of
16 getting $2 million of federal money for reading
17 intervention. You may just want to be alert to that
18 possibility of sharing in the federal coffers instead of
19 the taxpayers of Wyoming paying.
20 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Who is supposed to
21 apply for that, Department of Education?
22 DR. SMITH: That would be my -- yeah, that
23 would be my guess, yeah, as far as I know.
24 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Alrighty.
25 DR. SMITH: There may be good reasons,
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1 that the program doesn't fit with Wyoming's curriculum or
2 something. I'm not sure, but I just raise that issue.
3 Next issue is the classified salary adjustment,
4 and I can only give you a progress report on that.
5 We got the data for -- to do that, to take a
6 look at that adjustment a week ago and it still needs some
7 work. And the work has begun, but it would be well into
8 the session before that is done, so I have talked with
9 Dave and Mary and I think there's some sentiment on their
10 part for deferring it to next year.
11 Is that correct, Dave? I never know exactly.
12 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Nelson.
13 MR. NELSON: Mr. Chairman, based upon our
14 conversations with MAP and the state department, the data
15 will not be there in sufficient time to make the
16 computations necessary.
17 So in our talking with Mr. Wolkoff who has not
18 had time to look at the data and is not sure it is
19 sufficient, we have delayed implementation for a year on
20 345, on the classified staff adjustment.
21 DR. SMITH: It would be our recommendation
22 to delay it. We could have it available in a couple of
23 months or six weeks, but that doesn't work with your time
24 frame, and it is our recommendation that you do it -- that
25 we do it right instead of fast. We've had a lot of
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1 experiences having to do things fast and having to go back
2 and fix them later.
3 So given the nature of the data, we think it is
4 probably better to postpone.
5 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Committee, any
6 questions, comments concerning the classified salary
7 adjustment progress report?
8 Seeing none, continue, Mr. Smith.
9 DR. SMITH: The final item that I bring
10 before you today is the State Department of Education
11 contracted with us to do a comprehensive review of the
12 actual spreadsheet that allocates the resources in the
13 cost-based block grant, which we did. We convened people
14 from local school districts and then all of the State
15 people who use the spreadsheet on a day-to-day basis.
16 These changes are -- that are described in the
17 report before you are, I guess, best described as
18 cosmetic. They make the spreadsheet much more
19 transparent, much more user friendly, so that things
20 were -- data pages were regrouped and so forth so that you
21 can look at one page and make changes.
22 For example, if you want to make changes on
23 assumptions about pupil/teacher ratio or teacher salaries
24 or any number of variables, you can plug in one number, it
25 will ripple through, but you will only have to look at one
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1 page. It just makes it a lot more convenient for the
2 users.
3 We did other things like we adopted conventions
4 on how many decimals we would round to and that sort of
5 thing so it is consistent throughout. So we think that it
6 is a good idea to make these changes. They don't
7 change -- they're not substantive in that they don't
8 change any of the -- how the resources are allocated.
9 Everybody gets exactly the same. It is just an
10 improvement in Senator Scott's favorite spreadsheet.
11 SENATOR SCOTT: Mr. Chairman.
12 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Scott.
13 SENATOR SCOTT: With that I will comment
14 that maybe they make it more transparent but this document
15 certainly is not transparent. I defy anybody who is not a
16 computer expert to tell me what the points 3 and 4 at the
17 bottom of page 7 mean.
18 DR. SMITH: This document wasn't designed
19 to be transparent. This document was designed to be
20 useful for the people who use the spreadsheet. We didn't
21 actually design this for you guys to -- you're certainly
22 welcome and I would be glad to bring our programmer in and
23 go through this line by line anytime you would like, but I
24 suspect it wouldn't be any more enlightening than what I
25 can tell you about it.
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1 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Nelson.
2 MR. NELSON: One other thing that I
3 believe Dr. Smith didn't inform you was that included in
4 this are -- remember the technical corrections we had last
5 session? There were three or four of them that as we went
6 through the model became issues and there were even some
7 that we discovered this summer. Those are now
8 incorporated in, the model is clean and it is one
9 document.
10 DR. SMITH: But it brings the spreadsheet
11 up to date, and this, as I understand, is then the
12 spreadsheet that will be put on file with the Secretary of
13 State. So apparently there is in a vault somewhere at the
14 Secretary of State's office the spreadsheet.
15 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Further comments,
16 questions on this?
17 Any further questions for Dr. Smith at this
18 point?
19 Anything further?
20 DR. SMITH: Well, I would just like to
21 acknowledge it has been a very interesting and often
22 enlightening experience working with this committee and I
23 will miss the members who are leaving and look forward to
24 working with the new committee as they arrive next year or
25 in January. It has been my pleasure.
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1 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Devin.
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Cochair, I think
3 something coming up in our next bill that we need to look
4 at, 345, there was a recommendation from yourself and
5 others of our staff that we do one hold -- we have several
6 hold harmlesses now floating through various
7 implementations.
8 Would you like to speak to the issue of the
9 recommendation while you're in the chair that we do one
10 hold harmless so that we do not -- to keep it as clean as
11 we can?
12 DR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, Senator Devin, I
13 made that recommendation knowing how the model actually
14 works. In the end, the school districts get a check and
15 so if they -- if they're held harmless in one area and
16 they receive increased funding in another, you know,
17 they're held harmless in voc ed, have increased funding
18 elsewhere in the model, it is offsetting, and so in the
19 end it is just whatever nets out because they just get an
20 amount per ADM.
21 And having these various hold harmlesses in the
22 model, in the spreadsheet, just adds a degree of
23 complication that I frankly can't see the -- any benefit
24 to anyone in doing that way. So my recommendation is that
25 you run the model as -- without hold harmlesses and then
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1 if at the end it is the will of the legislature that you
2 do hold school districts harmless, you hold them harmless
3 to the bottom line, not to a whole bunch of interim
4 things.
5 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Questions on that,
6 Committee?
7 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Mr. Chairman.
8 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Representative Shivler.
9 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: At some point the
10 hold harmlesses have to go away, this is my assumption, if
11 we're going to be cost based.
12 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Smith.
13 DR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, Representative
14 Shivler, in fact, they don't ever have to go away if the
15 legislature doesn't want them to go away, but your second
16 statement is absolutely true and that is that a hold
17 harmless is not cost based. It is the pleasure of the
18 legislature and the Court has said that's okay if the
19 legislature -- it is sort of the pleasure of the
20 legislature if you want to implement those.
21 But, in fact, you see different practices around
22 the country and there's some places where they've held
23 people harmless, you know, forever. But in most cases
24 what the courts have decided is that there's -- you
25 provide a reasonable time and then you let it be what it
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1 is.
2 And for the most part in Wyoming the amount --
3 if you had to be sort of held harmless from the very
4 beginning, the amount of increases would have wiped out
5 the hold harmless as school districts caught up, but it is
6 my sense that if the legislature wants to hold districts
7 harmless, they can do it.
8 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Mr. Chairman, may
9 I follow up on that?
10 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Yep.
11 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Doesn't that
12 leave us open to further lawsuits? At that point that's
13 not even, that's the point I'm trying to make.
14 DR. SMITH: You're absolutely right. And
15 it would be a different set of plaintiffs but somebody
16 may, taxpayers may complain, that would be somebody, but
17 they would certainly have, I think, a legitimate
18 complaint.
19 Now, how the Court would view that, I don't
20 know. I do know that the Court has said that it is okay
21 to hold harmless. It is not okay to phase in. That was
22 in Campbell I, Campbell II -- I forget which Campbell it
23 was.
24 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Further comments,
25 questions on this issue?
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1 Thank you, Dr. Smith.
2 Mr. Nelson, would you like to come forward and
3 tell us about 345.
4 MR. NELSON: Mr. Chairman, what was just
5 distributed was a draft that was put together to try to
6 incorporate several things that -- a lot of them are just
7 administrative and some are significant.
8 First of all, the bottom of page 1, the top of
9 page 2 is a provision that provides for the five-year
10 recalculation. This is something that we did last year.
11 Mary and I heard throughout the interim that this was not
12 the wish of the legislature to do this. We didn't say
13 that specifically. We thought it was intended to do that.
14 This just says it, that every five years -- and
15 this is in compliance with the Court -- that we relook at
16 the prototypes and recost them.
17 The second amendment on page 2, the amendment to
18 21-13-323(D), this is what we were previously discussing
19 with respect to the classified staff experience
20 adjustment. This delays implementation for one year due
21 to the data problems that were brought up by Dr. Smith.
22 Section 2, the top of page 3 is the hold
23 harmless provision. It is similar to the one you just
24 enacted. It is at the end of the model. It holds you
25 harmless to the base year which was the year prior to
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1 model reconfiguration. And it is at the end of the line.
2 So it would include the vocational education work that
3 you're working on now and provide just one, not several
4 hold harmless provisions.
5 Section 3 is a significant one. It is the small
6 school study. This is the -- the committee commenced work
7 on that last session. The committee in recosting the
8 model, there was concern with the small school and the
9 regional cost and the combined impact upon a number of
10 schools.
11 So the first stage of that study was done this
12 year. The State department worked with their data
13 advisory group and MAP in assembling school-based data
14 which we will have one year's worth of following this
15 session. Based upon that data, they then would review the
16 model prototypes and essentially the study would establish
17 new small school prototypes and -- which is a pretty
18 comprehensive effort.
19 And that's what this does, and it would involve
20 a lot of site work and work with the school districts and
21 assembling people to see what it would cost to deliver the
22 basket in small schools.
23 And the amount is on page 5, lines 13 through
24 19. $325,000 would be the cost of that.
25 The second part, section 4, is a standard
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1 provision that we generally put in. It gives us
2 leverage -- the Legislative Service Office, your staff,
3 leverage so we can adjust the dollars per ADM as necessary
4 based upon legislation during that session, based upon
5 your work.
6 And then the last section is money that is given
7 to the state department to train and work with school
8 districts and to maintain the MAP model throughout the
9 years, the school funding model.
10 Part of its efforts this year -- I don't know if
11 Larry is here, but anyway, they developed a handbook and
12 they put on various training efforts that brought
13 representatives of MAP out to work with the school
14 districts in understanding the model and in working with
15 that.
16 And that's essentially the bill.
17 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Devin.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes, Mr. Cochair, I wonder
19 if Dr. Smith might just expand on what you believe based
20 on this year's investigation needs to take place with the
21 small schools in order for us to better understand the
22 real costs and what you would anticipate doing with this
23 study.
24 DR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, Senator Devin,
25 there's -- what is contemplated in that is a combination
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1 of extensive site visits. We've done -- we've done a
2 number of site visits over the years to small schools, but
3 we're proposing in this to visit -- to gather data from
4 small schools in small districts, small schools in large
5 districts, collocated schools, is there small elementary,
6 small middle, small high school, so that's one big chunk.
7 Another is to include, much as we did in the
8 beginning, an advisory committee comprised of small school
9 educators from Wyoming to help develop prototypes.
10 And then the third is using the school-level
11 data that are being generated this year and next year that
12 help come up with something that we hope will satisfy
13 everyone that, in fact, we've taken a comprehensive look
14 at small schools in a variety of contexts and are able to
15 come up with prototypes in these different contexts that
16 would be reflective of what the resources that are
17 required are to deliver the basket.
18 So it will not rely just on data but will rely
19 on professional judgment which is what underpins the
20 various -- like the basic model, what AIR did with the
21 special ed, and what MPR did with the voc ed. So it will
22 be -- it will come at it from essentially three different
23 directions and we hope will be sufficiently comprehensive
24 to answer all of the questions that have arisen about
25 small schools.
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1 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Anything further there?
2 Senator Devin.
3 COCHAIR DEVIN: I had a question on
4 another subject.
5 Earlier we received a report -- since the
6 Department of Ed is here, we received a report earlier,
7 and I think we changed the time after you left last night
8 to 8:00 instead of 8:30. My apologies not getting that
9 word to you. I completely forgot you had been involved in
10 something else.
11 But we heard a report on the reading program and
12 the fact that we needed to look at a minimum amount of
13 $45,000 in each district in order to train one teacher a
14 year in the assessment piece and to have a half-time
15 teacher there, which is a $45,000 minimum coming to about
16 $400,000.
17 But then the discussion was also that there's
18 about $2 million worth of federal funds on the table that
19 Wyoming has not applied for, and I guess my question would
20 be do we intend to, is it appropriate and could any of
21 those funds -- do we have any funds that could be used
22 to -- for districts that receive less than $45,000, to
23 accomplish some of these pieces, other than going out and
24 attempting to get a whole new appropriation for this
25 piece.
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1 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Miss Hill.
2 MS. HILL: Mr. Chairman, Senator Devin, I
3 believe the federal reading program that you're referring
4 to is something called Reading First.
5 COCHAIR DEVIN: Reading First.
6 MS. HILL: Wyoming is currently in
7 discussions with the federal department about making
8 applications for those and there's a very good match
9 between the reading assessment program and the federal
10 requirements.
11 The assessment money that has come from the feds
12 through the other stream really couldn't be used for the
13 reading assessment program. There is a $3 million
14 assessment pot to redesign the assessment system, so that
15 would be off the table. But we are looking into the
16 Reading First program and to see if we can work on that.
17 As a reminder, the committee or the legislature
18 has appropriated a separate fund for technical assistance,
19 and that -- those funds have not flowed directly to
20 districts but have allowed us to assemble a team that does
21 travel to districts and provides them with instruction and
22 assistance in implementing that program.
23 So even for those districts whose allotment has
24 been relatively small, there has been a good deal of
25 technical assistance that has come from the Department to
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1 those districts.
2 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Miss Hill, on the $2
3 million Reading First grant, is that a matching grant or
4 is it a strings-attached grant or what hoops do you have
5 to jump through to get that?
6 MS. HILL: Mr. Chairman, that is a
7 competitive grant we would need to apply for. Because
8 certain deadlines did pass, we aren't in that first round,
9 and when Congress appropriated funds for No Child Left
10 Behind, a good deal of those funding streams were mixed
11 up. So we're now going back to see what is available to
12 us, but that is something we're working on.
13 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Okay, thank you.
14 Dr. Bohling.
15 DR. BOHLING: Mr. Chairman and members of
16 the committee, I just would like to explain why we didn't
17 apply for the money last year and we're trying to work
18 through the requirements. But the main reason is it is
19 very prescriptive in the kind of reading programs that you
20 can use, and with our local control that we try to
21 maintain, it has been hard to get the match.
22 So we have just about got that worked out where
23 we think we can get it approved. But we didn't apply for
24 that reason. We think we may be close.
25 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Thank you for the
255
1 information.
2 Senator Bob.
3 SENATOR PECK: Mr. Chairman, for my
4 edification, I would like -- this 150,000 to the state
5 superintendent, could you clarify in my mind the
6 difference between the duties of the state superintendent
7 and the State Board of Education?
8 MR. NELSON: With respect to?
9 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Nelson, with
10 respect to section 5 of the bill.
11 MR. NELSON: What this is talking about,
12 Senator Peck, is money that they need to maintain the
13 school funding model. Mr. Biggio heads up a section that
14 is responsible for making guaranteed payments to school
15 districts, and they maintain the model over the course of
16 a school year.
17 During that course of time there may be problems
18 that arise and some sort of situation that would occur
19 that would require them to resolve it that school year.
20 Another example of how they would expend these
21 monies, as we mentioned, would be for training and for
22 working with districts in reporting information and in
23 figuring out and understanding the model and doing what is
24 necessary on their part to make the model work.
25 So it is more of an administerial sort of
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1 function as opposed to the state board which would be more
2 of a policy setting -- they would be more interested in
3 the educational program setting the program requirements
4 and that sort of thing.
5 Is that clear?
6 SENATOR PECK: Is that clear in all of the
7 school superintendents' minds, which authority they go to
8 for which function? Apparently so.
9 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Nobody is jumping up to
10 answer that one, so they must.
11 Senator Devin.
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Cochair, I am
13 wondering, Senator Scott made the motion to put the
14 minimum amount into this bill in terms of the reading
15 program, and I wonder if we might be open to language that
16 would do something similar to what was suggested yesterday
17 on another amendment that provided that the standard
18 amount will be provided and in the event that there are
19 not sufficient funds to meet the $45,000 minimum from
20 other sources, that the State would provide the $45,000.
21 Because I think there may be some other sources
22 here, and as soon as we come in as a state and meet that
23 piece, then we can never come back and use federal funds
24 for any of those pieces. So I wanted to throw that out on
25 the table for discussion.
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1 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman.
2 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Scott.
3 SENATOR SCOTT: I would have some
4 reservation about that where the description was that the
5 federal funds that were possible were tied up and being
6 very prescriptive about particular curriculums that might
7 not meet the local favor. I think the state department
8 may be wise in being a bit hesitant about applying for
9 that money. And I think we could do considerable harm by
10 letting the feds dictate the nature of our program. And I
11 think maybe we ought to be independent of that.
12 I also do have some reservations, having seen
13 this bill now, about putting the small school -- the
14 reading adjustment for small schools in this bill which
15 may not be a good bill.
16 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Further discussion on
17 345.
18 Senator Devin.
19 COCHAIR DEVIN: I guess I would like to
20 ask a follow-up. It was my impression from the testimony
21 from the state department that you were not going forward
22 on this Reading First money until you had the issues
23 ironed out about the prescriptive piece.
24 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Miss Hill.
25 MS. HILL: Mr. Chairman, I am just now
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1 advised that only 19 of our school districts are eligible.
2 It is based on low income. So while we are proceeding,
3 the low income is one of those issues and 19 of our
4 districts are eligible. The rest are not.
5 COCHAIR STAFFORD: That changes it a bit,
6 doesn't it?
7 Senator Scott.
8 SENATOR SCOTT: Mr. Chairman, could we
9 have a detailed explanation of the effect of section 2 and
10 is there a spreadsheet on what the effect of that is?
11 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Nelson.
12 MR. NELSON: Mr. Chairman, I'm not sure if
13 Mary has got that complete yet. We're waiting on some
14 vocational ed materials to come in.
15 But essentially the philosophy is to continue
16 the hold harmless, much as it was in place last year,
17 which would be at end of all computations, so it would be
18 falling -- really the only change you've done at this
19 point would be the vocational education which has a hold
20 harmless provision in it.
21 This was anticipating there may be a regional
22 cost sort of interim thing as well as a special education
23 thing. But essentially it is putting the hold harmless at
24 the very end of the computations, after all of the
25 adjustments to the dollar-per-ADM prototypical derived
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1 amount to be added.
2 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Scott.
3 SENATOR SCOTT: Mr. Chairman, so we don't
4 have the detailed breakout, but the effect of this is to
5 transform the vocational education bill to a very real cut
6 for many particularly of the larger districts; is that
7 right?
8 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Nelson.
9 MS. BYRNES: Mr. Chairman, excuse me. The
10 hold harmless we have in this bill would be pretty much
11 like what we have currently at the end of the model where
12 we were studying every bill we looked at. Special ed and
13 voc ed has its own hold harmless built into it. This one
14 would actually hold harmless for all things at the end of
15 the bill which might be an advantage in the voc ed bill
16 because the numbers we have in the hold harmless for the
17 voc ed do not hold harmless to the regional cost
18 adjustment and all of those other adjustments throughout
19 the model.
20 So any number we have given you as a hold
21 harmless -- example: Yesterday for the regional cost
22 adjustment there was a figure in there of about 1 and a
23 half million. These things would not be necessarily held
24 harmless at the end of the model component by component
25 which might give you a different look when you add
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1 everything up. It may not do what you had intended.
2 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Scott.
3 SENATOR SCOTT: Mr. Chairman, that's
4 exactly the problem I have with the section. I don't
5 think it does -- I don't think we know what it does. And
6 I would certainly have reservations about passing the bill
7 that has a major section like this that we don't
8 understand, and given the complexity of the model, it
9 sounds like we can't understand in a reasonable time.
10 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Mr. Chairman.
11 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Representative McOmie.
12 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Mr. Chairman, I
13 believe one of the things we ran into with our hold
14 harmless last session was that some of the increases that
15 everybody received came away from the hold harmless to the
16 small districts and they received nothing, and that's my
17 concern. I think that's what Senator Scott's concern is.
18 I may be putting words in his mouth, but that's the
19 question I was going to ask.
20 We put increases in but they didn't receive it
21 because of the hold harmless clause. It just reduced the
22 amount of money they were being held harmless for.
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Chairman.
24 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Devin.
25 COCHAIR DEVIN: We can't ask Mary to run
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1 numbers at the same time we want her here to ask
2 questions, but I believe that hold harmless was not
3 intended to cover a loss of ADM and so I think the loss of
4 ADM is the piece where you saw increases go in but the
5 increase was not enough to make up for that loss of ADM
6 and so you did actually see a hold harmless piece there
7 and they didn't see an increase as if children had been
8 still there in the same numbers.
9 But everyone was -- everyone was under the same
10 piece there in that districts who did see an increase did
11 not see as big an increase as they might if their ADM
12 dropped. So that was the caveat there.
13 And actually, districts who were still held
14 harmless probably saw more than the ones who got a bump
15 but didn't -- but had their ADM subtracted.
16 What we're doing now, as I understand it, is
17 we've got a hold harmless overall for the -- still in
18 place now for one more year for the small school issue,
19 and that we have a year left on that. And in the voc ed
20 piece there is a hold harmless in there giving districts a
21 chance, particularly large districts who don't have big
22 voc ed programs, giving them a chance to modify if they
23 choose. So that piece is in there. And if we had done
24 one of the special ed pieces there would be another hold
25 harmless. We did the other one so I think that one is off
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1 the table.
2 But if you -- if you compute that hold harmless
3 right at the point -- if you do -- if you run your model
4 and you have a hold harmless here and then one that kicks
5 in here and then one, it is not nearly as clean as if you
6 get to the end of the model and run your hold harmless.
7 And I guess it is partly the legislative intent, it is
8 your intent to see that a district does not lose money on
9 an issue. And that can be achieved by running it at the
10 end of the model.
11 But if you run it in the model somewhere where
12 the voc ed piece takes, it doesn't -- as Mary said, it
13 doesn't necessarily take into account the regional cost
14 adjustment and other pieces that go in there as cleanly as
15 if you run it at the end of the model.
16 From what I understand, that's the difference
17 that we would be doing with this recommendation. We would
18 run it at the end to achieve what I think the legislature
19 wants to achieve, is that you don't -- a district does not
20 lose money if you've promised them they won't.
21 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Scott.
22 SENATOR SCOTT: Well, Madam Chairman, I'm
23 still -- this model is -- we've got it so complicated.
24 I'm still very nervous about passing on anything that we
25 don't have the figures on to understand. And I do think
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1 on the vocational education that we pass this, it then
2 backs in the interests of a large number of bigger
3 districts to kind of kill the vocational education bill
4 because the way it was structured you will significantly
5 hurt them and jeopardize vocational education programs.
6 Mr. Chairman.
7 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Scott.
8 SENATOR SCOTT: I will move we delete
9 section 2, page 3, lines 2 through 21.
10 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Scott, we
11 haven't moved the bill yet.
12 SENATOR SCOTT: Well, then I'm not moving
13 the bill.
14 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Okay. It has been
15 moved --
16 SENATOR SCOTT: I'm not moving the bill.
17 COCHAIR STAFFORD: You're not moving the
18 bill?
19 SENATOR SCOTT: No, sir, I do not want to
20 move the bill.
21 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Further discussion on
22 this issue on the bill itself?
23 Mr. Nelson, do you have further discussion on
24 that?
25 MR. NELSON: We will bring figures as soon
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1 as she gets them run.
2 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Probably ought to wait
3 to get some of those figures and we can take a look at it
4 as a whole. Would that be okay?
5 MR. NELSON: Sure.
6 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Mr. Chairman.
7 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Representative McOmie.
8 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: If we're done with
9 the discussion on that part of it, I thank Senator Devin
10 for the -- bringing back to my memory what some of the
11 problems were. Was that the only other issue that -- just
12 the declining ADM? It runs in my mind that there was a
13 series of different issues with that and I don't know what
14 to ask. Probably the people from the school districts.
15 Was it just the ADM?
16 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Devin, would
17 you like to comment?
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Chairman, there would
19 have been impacting figures last year of magnitude would
20 have been the loss of ADM and then, of course, the
21 regional cost of living which we're working on had large
22 magnitude.
23 From districts or Mr. Biggio, were there -- with
24 Mary out working to get these numbers for us, were there
25 any other issues that districts would not have seen the
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1 increase that they expected?
2 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Biggio.
3 MR. BIGGIO: Mr. Chairman, I'm Larry
4 Biggio from the Department of Education.
5 Senator, the districts did raise the question
6 about the mechanics of making the calculation. If you
7 remember, we talked about a process versus a dollar amount
8 and some of the districts had raised the question
9 regarding the 100 percent reimbursements and how they
10 would be factored into the calculation. Some districts
11 wanted us to figure, in a sense, the hold harmless based
12 on a per-student basis before adding the 100 percent
13 reimbursements in.
14 We went to the AG's office and asked for an
15 opinion how that should be calculated. AG's office said
16 we hold them harmless to a dollar amount as opposed to a
17 process of calculation. That's my recollection of the
18 other items.
19 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: That's what I
20 remember. Thank you.
21 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Certainly. Further
22 discussion on 345 at this point?
23 Senator Scott.
24 SENATOR SCOTT: Mr. Chairman, I didn't
25 understand the explanation on section 4 as to why that's
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1 needed and what its result really is.
2 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Nelson.
3 MR. NELSON: Mr. Chairman, what this does
4 is it allows the Legislative Service Office to modify the
5 dollars per ADM in prototypes specified by statute based
6 upon action that may occur during the session so that if
7 there is an amendment that would increase the dollars per
8 ADM and it is specified in statute by prototype, by school
9 prototype, and one that may increase, one that may
10 decrease it, this just allows us to total it out so that
11 we can make that computation.
12 And it has generally been in -- a provision
13 within every omnibus bill we've put together and stuck in.
14 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Scott.
15 SENATOR SCOTT: So if we pass the bill on
16 one subject that increases the prototype dollar and
17 another one that decreases it, this just allows you to add
18 them together, and that's all it does?
19 MR. NELSON: And to make it computed so
20 that we take both computations into account and revise the
21 number by statute accordingly.
22 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Further discussion on
23 345?
24 Senator Devin.
25 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Cochair, I think one
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1 section that we have not discussed but is something that
2 we need to move forward and do and that's section 3, and
3 that is the proto -- you know, to go in and look at the
4 unusual characteristics of these small schools, and, in
5 many cases, small districts in terms of actually with the
6 communities of educators that work in them cost out what
7 it costs to deliver the basket in these varying
8 circumstances so that we've got more than one prototype,
9 we've got prototypes that actually fit small schools.
10 And I think that's a significant piece that
11 we've identified, both in capital construction and in the
12 funding model that has taken some unique individual look
13 because of the -- it doesn't -- to all parties involved it
14 does not appear to work to just simply scale down the
15 larger model. There are other considerations out there.
16 At least to sit down with educators and cost out what it
17 costs to deliver that basket I think is a significant
18 piece that we haven't really discussed in this bill.
19 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Any discussion on that
20 point? Further comments?
21 Pretty quiet this morning.
22 I think that we will take a break on 345 until
23 we get the numbers back that Mary is getting for us and we
24 will move forward on the agenda. And I think at this
25 point we will have Mr. Geesey give your finance report, if
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1 you would be willing to do that at this point.
2 MR. GEESEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm
3 Mike Geesey with the Department of Audit and last year in
4 a bill you folks asked us to go out and do some auditing
5 related to the data of the school systems it is reporting
6 not only to the Wyoming Department of Education but also
7 at the school district levels.
8 And what we would like to do is just give you a
9 little update on what we've done so far. And in essence,
10 in a nutshell, what we've really done is hired some folks
11 and developed an audit procedure and started an audit at
12 the Wyoming Department of Education and we've selected
13 some small schools on a volunteer basis or small school
14 districts on a voluntary basis to go out and audit.
15 And Pam Robinson who is the head of the public
16 funds division, which is where those employees are placed,
17 who is handing out that information will go through this
18 little handout that we have and explain what we've done in
19 terms of the hiring process and then maybe we can answer
20 any questions.
21 And of the things -- Mr. Cummings is here and he
22 will be the administrator of that division and he will
23 tell you some of the things they've found already in terms
24 of the questions we've created since we started this
25 process.
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1 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Thank you.
2 Miss Robinson.
3 MS. ROBINSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
4 The first thing we did was to hire a supervisor, which is
5 Rich Cummings. Then we advertised for senior level, two
6 mid level and one entry level. All five of those
7 positions were filled by the end of July.
8 I would ask the four that are here if they would
9 just stand up so that they can be recognized. Some of the
10 business managers will get to know them quite well. They
11 have a diverse background in both auditing, business,
12 other related items. We did look for some who were
13 currently working in a state-funded school. We did not
14 have anybody apply. That was one of our priorities, but
15 if you don't have anybody apply, it is kind of hard.
16 So I think we have an excellent team. They've
17 put together some preliminary programs and Rich can go
18 through some of that.
19 One of the first things we did is we attended
20 training provided by the Department of Education to
21 business managers so that we could understand what
22 information they were being told. A lot of that dealt
23 with how to fill out the forms, how the model works. That
24 was very productive.
25 We had -- for two days members of MAP came and
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1 trained us specifically on the history of the model, how
2 it came about, the basic concepts and then we tore down
3 the model trying to find the original input and asked them
4 quite a few questions on that. We've also provided
5 training on our department policies and other auditing
6 standards and auditing techniques.
7 Data Advisory Committee: Either Mr. Geesey,
8 Rich or myself has attended all of the Data Advisory
9 Committee meetings since March. This is where the State
10 Department of Education is -- meets with predominantly
11 business managers. There's a few superintendents. The
12 focus -- and Mr. Biggio can probably give you more
13 information on that, but -- the focus this year has been
14 to get school-level accounting and so there's been a lot
15 of discussion on the accounting manual and we have been
16 participating in there.
17 We will use the committee to resolve data
18 disputes. If we -- when we start auditing schools, if one
19 school district does it one way, another school district
20 does it the other, we will come back to this committee and
21 say, "Okay, this is what we're finding. Which is the way
22 you think should be the proper way?" So we're kind of
23 using it as a sounding board and we haven't used that yet,
24 but that's what we anticipate it to be.
25 If you have any questions through this, you
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1 know, please stop me. That doesn't matter to me.
2 I was appointed to the Data Facilitative Forum
3 and I think we've discussed that several times. You've
4 had several reports, and there was proposed legislation.
5 I think it was a good dissemination of information. It
6 proved that people can sit down and talk rationally, and I
7 think it was a very, very productive time.
8 Some of those contacts that we made during the
9 forum will be continued and I think the diversity that you
10 chose to put onto the forum was excellent. I think it was
11 great variety coming from all different perspectives.
12 And Rich will now talk about our audit of the
13 Department of Education which is in process. It has not
14 been finished and he will probably say the same thing on
15 that, too.
16 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Cummings.
17 MR. CUMMINGS: Mr. Chairman, as Miss
18 Robinson has said, we've began an audit of the Department
19 of Education. There are two functions -- there are two
20 main components that we will be auditing, the Department
21 of Education is one of them and then the school districts
22 is the other.
23 With that, like Pam has said, we've already --
24 we're in the process of auditing the Department of
25 Education and we will be discussing some of the facts and
272
1 findings that we've come up with at this point, but the
2 one thing to keep in mind is that it is all preliminary
3 and the evidence at this time is showing things and we're
4 working with the Department of Education to get those
5 cleared up.
6 We're hoping to get the -- we're hoping to
7 complete the audit of the Department of Education by the
8 end of January and get a report out at that time. What
9 we're focusing on with the Department of Education is
10 the -- their process they use to analyze the data
11 submitted and determining as to whether or not that data
12 is accurate for the purpose of the finance model.
13 If you look at the slide, bullet number 3 states
14 that we're looking at fiscal year data submitted in June
15 of 2001. Our audit period is July 1 of 2001 through June
16 30th, 2002. And the reason we're looking at data
17 submitted in June of 2001 is, again, we're looking at the
18 process that the Department of Education follows, and that
19 would have been the information they would have reviewed
20 during that time period.
21 At this time, based on the evidence that's been
22 provided to us, again, the -- you know, the Department of
23 Education has been made aware of these and we are working
24 out the detail.
25 One area that we found is a lack of controls in
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1 the -- between approval and the payment process.
2 Basically, an example of that would be in the area of
3 vehicle options approval. They do have the process in
4 place to approve or disapprove certain options and they
5 also have the process in place to make payments; however,
6 there's a lack of communication between the two areas and
7 so virtually what could possibly happen is a payment -- a
8 request for reimbursement on a denied option could be
9 reimbursed.
10 Another area that we have found problems in is a
11 lacking of controls in the data verification process. And
12 basically the way it has been explained to us is that they
13 make comparisons between data that is submitted. However
14 when they find discrepancies in that data, their process
15 entails just contacting the districts and asking which
16 number is correct. That's stated simply and there's a few
17 other details.
18 And then the third finding, issue that we've
19 identified is that -- and this partly explains the second
20 issue, there's full, detailed information not available to
21 the Wyoming Department of Education. It is only at the
22 local district level.
23 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Sessions.
24 SENATOR SESSIONS: Mr. Chairman, I have a
25 question. The lack of controls in the data verification
274
1 process, what recommendations do you give -- what could be
2 done other than calling up and asking?
3 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Cummings.
4 MR. CUMMINGS: Well -- sorry.
5 Mr. Chairman, Senator Sessions, things that could be done,
6 I guess, would be, you know, contacting them, "Okay, well,
7 this is the correct figure," "Well, you had two figures
8 originally. Why is this the correct figure? Please
9 submit some kind of evidence showing this is the correct
10 figure," to that effect. More detail, basically.
11 SENATOR SESSIONS: Mr. Chairman.
12 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Sessions.
13 SENATOR SESSIONS: Just another question.
14 Fully detailed information available only at the local WDE
15 district level. In our data facilitation forums we
16 discussed what the department needed to know of the local
17 district's information, and they -- we were told or we
18 discussed at the time that there's a lot of information at
19 the district level that the department does not need to
20 know and that if we put that unit thing together where you
21 feed your data in at one time, the department then can
22 pull out what they need to use.
23 But what -- I would just like to know what
24 information does the department need that is only at the
25 district level, and cannot they get it at any time? I
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1 mean, why should it be stored -- do they need to store it
2 at the WDE as opposed to the district level, I guess
3 that's what I mean.
4 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Cummings.
5 MR. CUMMINGS: Mr. Chairman, Senator
6 Sessions, all I can use as an example, and what we -- one
7 example that we face is the general ledger, which my
8 understanding is the 601, the -- a lot of times what you
9 have -- and then from the 601 will generate the summary
10 reports such as the 103 and items like that.
11 And what we've been finding is that there are
12 times that they're showing expenditures on the 103, the
13 summary, which you cannot tie to the detailed ledger on
14 certain expenditures. The 103 would be the
15 transportation, if I'm correct.
16 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Devin.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Cochair, I think two
18 things we've run into at this point that are going to be
19 needed for the future, too, there's the records on
20 classified staff and those are just kind of all over the
21 map in terms of how long has this person worked for the
22 district, and, you know, did they work first as a janitor
23 and then as a bus driver and then they got a degree and
24 they're an aide.
25 I mean, those pieces are all at the local level,
276
1 and as I understand it, the data has not been either -- in
2 some cases it is really difficult to extract even at the
3 local level, but if we're going to have to pay on it in a
4 form in the future we need to get it in a form that's
5 reliable.
6 And another thing we don't have now that's
7 really impeding us to substantiate we're being fair to
8 small schools is that that level -- that data is turned in
9 at a district level, but we don't know so we can't cost
10 out at a school level what it might cost to deliver. And
11 so those are two pieces that are far less technical than
12 what he's doing, they're more at the concept, conceptual
13 level.
14 But we've struggled and struggled with clean
15 data. And it is meshing a system that's never been -- had
16 to be there for payment when we just did the CRU, that now
17 needs to be there to justify the Court's cost-based piece
18 that we need to coordinate as simply as possible, as I
19 understand it, for the districts, but get it at an
20 accessible level so they can enter it once and it is
21 clean.
22 SENATOR SESSIONS: Mr. Chair, I just have
23 a question.
24 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Sessions.
25 SENATOR SESSIONS: The Data Advisory
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1 Committee and the situation, we hopefully can consider
2 what we did this summer and the hooking of the software
3 together and such will go a long way to solving that
4 problem, is that not so?
5 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Cummings.
6 MR. CUMMINGS: Mr. Chairman, Senator
7 Sessions, yes, I think that will.
8 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Miss Robinson.
9 MS. ROBINSON: I was going to say, the
10 information we're looking at is 2001. There's been
11 changes at both the Department of Education and in some of
12 the other work being done in both the data advisory and
13 the data facilitation that will make significant
14 improvements in the 2002 year.
15 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Representative McOmie.
16 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Mr. Chairman, I
17 don't believe this is the question of these people. We
18 two years ago -- or was it last year -- authorized
19 additional auditors. Are these the people?
20 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Yeah.
21 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Because this is
22 exactly what we authorized them to do and I thought -- are
23 we duplicating?
24 COCHAIR STAFFORD: This is it.
25 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Okay, thank you.
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1 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Representative
2 Lockhart.
3 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Mr. Chairman, as
4 one who has been on both sides of this issue I did have a
5 question.
6 If I understood correctly when Miss Robinson
7 spoke, you're only going to the districts that have
8 volunteered to have the auditors come?
9 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Miss Robinson.
10 MS. ROBINSON: Mr. Chairman, no, sir, that
11 is not correct. We requested some districts to volunteer
12 to be first, and I think that's coming up on a later
13 slide. As soon as we get through with those, what we want
14 to do is come back, look at our procedures and evaluate
15 whether we are doing the most productive, cost-based
16 productive way, and then we will go to all of the school
17 districts and we have done a risk-based approach on how
18 we're going to go to all 48 school districts in a
19 three-year cycle.
20 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Mr. Chairman,
21 just as a follow-up, so those that you're starting with
22 are to develop your systems so that when you have them in
23 place, then you can move them around? Is that -- would
24 that be an interpretation?
25 MS. ROBINSON: Mr. Chairman, yep, that
279
1 would be a correct interpretation. As soon as we get
2 through with the three that are listed, then we will make
3 sure that that is the process we want to do for all of the
4 other school districts and start traveling.
5 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Sessions.
6 SENATOR SESSIONS: Mr. Chairman, I just
7 need to know what an at-risk approach is. I don't have
8 any idea what you mean by that.
9 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Miss Robinson.
10 MS. ROBINSON: Mr. Chairman, that's an
11 accounting terminology and I apologize for that. We put
12 several factors into it. One is the length and time that
13 the business manager and the superintendent have been in
14 the -- at the district. If they've been there a long
15 time, that's weighted a little less than if they're both
16 new.
17 If they've had prior audit findings, both in a
18 CPA audit or what LSO was auditing last year or our
19 current audits, that is a factor. If they have a lot of
20 findings, they were a higher risk than if they have less
21 findings.
22 The accuracy of the data reported to the
23 Department of Education, if they have a lot of errors,
24 then we will probably go to them first and see if we can
25 help them either understand the system or find out what
280
1 the problems are. And those are some of the factors that
2 go into our risk-based model that determines which
3 districts we may want to attend first.
4 SENATOR SESSIONS: Thank you.
5 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Anderson.
6 SENATOR ANDERSON: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
7 So many times when we're talking about school districts in
8 the outlying portions of the state, there's a concern
9 about the amount of information that they're asked to
10 provide to the state department and now I guess the
11 Department of Audit as well.
12 The question I have in regard to the provision
13 of data is, number one, are you going to involve
14 discussions with those local districts in regard to what
15 pertinent data is, and it seems, then, there's a payback
16 for the provision of the data. There should be a payback
17 in terms of information so -- in regard to the flow of
18 data in and information out.
19 Will there be discussions as to how this can be
20 a collaborative piece from those like the Department of
21 Audit, the Department of Education and the local school
22 districts so that they can exchange data and information
23 in order to provide not only information to the State but
24 also information at the local level in regards to
25 programming and other operational changes? Is that
281
1 discussion going to go on in regard to the disposition of
2 the data that's collected?
3 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Miss Robinson.
4 MS. ROBINSON: Mr. Chairman, Senator
5 Anderson, that is, as I perceive it, one of the main
6 advantages of having the Data Advisory Committee is you
7 have a diverse group of business managers and
8 superintendents, and as issues come up, they get into very
9 good discussions, not everyone agrees, in the proper way,
10 and I think that's useful.
11 The information that goes to the Department of
12 Education is something that we use. We do not anticipate
13 at this time requesting any specific information from the
14 school districts to do our audit. We will go to the
15 Department of Education, find what information they have
16 and then when we attend and participate or go to the
17 school districts, the information that we will need should
18 just be standard -- standard accounting and data
19 information that should already be in existence that I
20 think there should not be any additional reporting because
21 of our audit function.
22 But part of our participation on the data
23 advisory is if we think there is information out there
24 that is not being productive, we will bring that to the
25 Data Advisory Committee as well and to the Department of
282
1 Education's attention.
2 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Cummings, you want
3 to proceed?
4 SENATOR SESSIONS: Mr. Chairman.
5 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Sessions.
6 SENATOR SESSIONS: Mr. Chairman, just a
7 question. Do you still think with all of this we still
8 need the CPA audits, too? Do you have any thoughts?
9 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Geesey.
10 MR. GEESEY: Mr. Chairman, Senator
11 Sessions, I guess the best way to put that is they're two
12 different types of audits. One is an audit of the dollar
13 amounts and are they being accounted for in a manner
14 that's acceptable under some guidelines for government
15 accounting mechanisms, and that's done by local CPAs: In
16 other words, do they have a checking account, are they
17 balancing, is somebody dual bookkeeping, those sorts of
18 things.
19 And the other is data being reported on number
20 of students, number of buses, numbers of this and that,
21 are those being accurately reported to the Wyoming
22 Department of Education, and is the Wyoming Department of
23 Education using that information correctly in the MAP
24 model.
25 And I guess, you know, I go back to this school
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1 finance Data Advisory Committee, and I think they've been
2 working extremely hard to get down a budget and accounting
3 manual so that everybody can understand. This is the
4 number that we want you to report not only in dollars but
5 in other things that we do in terms of reporting so that
6 you can get a handle on where these expenditures are and
7 exactly what they were. So everybody, a person in
8 Evanston is reporting the same way the person in Gillette
9 is. And I think that's been extremely valuable.
10 We've been to several of those committees. I
11 know Larry Biggio at the Department of Education is
12 working hard to get that manual put together so it can be
13 out there so they can use it and I think you will find
14 that extremely beneficial in the future.
15 SENATOR SESSIONS: Thank you.
16 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Scott.
17 SENATOR SCOTT: Mr. Chairman, one thing
18 that Mr. Geesey just said, you see the data used correctly
19 in the MAP model, if I heard you right. We've had a
20 history of being plagued with errors in the MAP model.
21 One that comes to mind, of course, is the half K error,
22 but there have been a whole series of these things.
23 Is your auditing going to go into the MAP model
24 and look to see is it being done in accordance with the
25 statutes?
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1 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Geesey.
2 MR. GEESEY: Mr. Chairman, Senator Scott,
3 yes, I think that's our intent, is that we've been mapping
4 the MAP model out in our computer system and trying to
5 follow the flow to see where it goes and they've got
6 specific training from us in order to be able to do some
7 of those kinds of things.
8 And I think as this went on, it is kind of a
9 learning process for us. That's why we took the approach
10 we did. We went to education first, tried to see what's
11 going on there. Going to go to the school districts,
12 going to do a medium, a small and a large one, as Richard
13 will talk about in a minute.
14 And the idea behind that is to kind of get in
15 your mind what the mechanism is, go back to the finance
16 Data Advisory Committee and say, "Here's what we found.
17 Here's what we need to work," and try to get those
18 together before you go out to audit and say you didn't
19 report it and they're going to cut the funds in half
20 because we don't like the way you reported it.
21 I think first we need to get everybody in
22 agreement before we start making some -- down the road in
23 a year or so we will be in here having discussions from
24 school districts saying, "Wait a minute. That cost us
25 quite a bit of money. We believe it ought to be reported
285
1 in this way and half the school districts reported it this
2 way." There's so many ways to do accounting it creates
3 some problems and we have to get everybody on board.
4 We've told that to the Data Advisory Committee
5 and we've said we think that's the direction you've told
6 us when we saw this bill come through last year was
7 getting accounting done on a consistent basis throughout
8 the state, and I think that's what we're trying to work to
9 do.
10 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Devin, did
11 you --
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Cochair, one of the
13 classical examples also in addition to the half K piece
14 that you remember happened that had gone on for several
15 years, which is why we put the audit both directions, was
16 the piece where we were paying double for the seniority of
17 all personnel in special education because districts were
18 turning in that seniority on their regular personnel and
19 they were turning it in again on special education and
20 that essentially was like a $7 million a year mistake that
21 was going out but it wasn't caught for several years
22 because there was nothing that looked at what Senator
23 Scott is talking about, the proper application of the MAP
24 model as it relates to the data as it relates to payments.
25 So we've had them go both directions.
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1 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Sessions.
2 SENATOR SESSIONS: Mr. Chairman, I would
3 just like to say that I know it was -- thank goodness that
4 we did the data -- the Data Facilitation Committee because
5 I think that instead of setting up an adversarial unit or
6 adversarial relationship between you, the auditors and the
7 school districts, we have a middle ground to go to mediate
8 or to facilitate the problems.
9 And I think that the best of both worlds can
10 come out of that because I think Pam recognized, too, as
11 we went on in that discussion -- and I tell you what,
12 everybody did not come to the table smiling all of the
13 time, did they, Pam?
14 MS. ROBINSON: Not exactly.
15 SENATOR SESSIONS: What came out of that
16 was a real learning process for all people involved. And
17 I hope that that can go on because that's how we can work
18 these things out and we can get it set and get the data
19 that people have faith in that when that data comes before
20 us as a legislature we know what it means, and then we
21 have not put these people or the auditors or the state
22 department as being the mean guys.
23 And I just think it is -- and I have to commend
24 this process, this approach. I thank you for it.
25 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Cummings, would you
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1 like to proceed?
2 MR. CUMMINGS: Well, thank you,
3 Mr. Chairman. It looks like we've covered most of
4 everything I was going to discuss.
5 The audit of school districts, our focus will be
6 mostly on whether or not the data that they've submitted
7 is correct, from that aspect. And as Pam has stated, we
8 have created preliminary programs which are constantly
9 being modified every time we learn something new or
10 determine something, from that aspect.
11 We have three districts that have volunteered to
12 be our first test districts. Those -- we wanted districts
13 at three different sizes: A small size, medium and a
14 large. Laramie County School District 2 has volunteered,
15 Sweetwater 2 and Campbell 1, Campbell County School
16 District 1.
17 Our plan at this time is to conduct all three
18 school district audits and get a feel of what types of
19 issues we would be running into at the different size
20 levels and then we plan to present all three together to
21 the Department of Education, the Data Advisory Committee
22 and the districts.
23 And then, I guess Pam said, after we've
24 completed those three, we will determine everything on a
25 risk-based concept. The focus -- however, we will -- with
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1 that, every school district will be done at least once in
2 a three-year period.
3 MS. ROBINSON: This last page, we went
4 back through some of the records that we had available in
5 our office and this is just a financial trend since the
6 '95-96 school year. These are general fund only
7 information that came from the CPA audited reports, and it
8 just shows the financial trends, both for revenue
9 expenditures, cash and investments and then the ADM. It
10 is more of an informational thing than any detailed
11 explanation that we need to go into.
12 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Questions.
13 Representative Shivler.
14 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Mr. Chairman,
15 Pam, let me ask you a question about MAP. I've always
16 contended it is a formula, albeit a complex one, and we've
17 tended to complicate it in the legislature by adding the
18 hold harmless and our equalization process, whatever.
19 How did your group find it when it studied it?
20 Granted, most of these people have financial or CPA
21 backgrounds. Was it a workable -- how do you feel about
22 the formula? Was it a workable formula?
23 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Miss Robinson.
24 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: I'm putting you
25 on the spot here.
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1 MS. ROBINSON: I think it is wonderful.
2 Once you get it down to the bare details I don't believe
3 it is as complicated as it looks -- appears on the
4 surface. There is a lot of formulas that are driven from
5 each other and so if you're looking at the underlying
6 computer formulas, it's complicated but it is able to be
7 followed.
8 One of the main things that we are looking at
9 specifically in the model this year on our audit is the
10 hold harmless calculation because that is a new -- new
11 from prior years, so we obtained the information from the
12 Department of Education on how the Attorney General's
13 interpretation of how to calculate that, and we are doing
14 detailed calculations.
15 And I'm not saying that it is the most perfect
16 model, but I think it is workable. That is what you've
17 chosen to use. I think it is something that does take
18 some time to understand and we are learning more about it
19 all of the time. And when I get a year from now, maybe I
20 will say it is more complicated than I thought, but I
21 believe we've pretty much been able to understand the
22 concepts.
23 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Mr. Chairman.
24 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Continue.
25 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Just a follow-up.
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1 Maybe you can't answer this question but in your mind do
2 you think this solves the Court's edict to us to equalize?
3 Maybe that's --
4 MS. ROBINSON: Mr. Chairman, I'm not an
5 attorney.
6 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Say no more.
7 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Further questions,
8 comments?
9 Representative Lockhart.
10 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Mr. Chairman,
11 just a clarification in my mind. When Mr. Geesey spoke he
12 said that as you go through this process, if you find
13 problems, then you're going to be able to work them out.
14 And I think that was a very important piece is we needed
15 this independent look at the model and then help to fix
16 it. Did I understand you correctly?
17 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Geesey.
18 MR. GEESEY: Mr. Chairman, Representative
19 Lockhart, our approach to this as we've tried in our
20 little presentation here is it is a step-by-step approach.
21 And we keep coming back to the Data Advisory Committee as
22 that in our minds seemed to be the place to go to say here
23 appears to be a problem, here appears to be a difference
24 in reporting between maybe a small school district and a
25 large school district in calculation of a number, here
291
1 seems to be a different methodology; can you help us as a
2 group.
3 In other words, those folks are -- there's
4 business people on there from small and large school
5 districts, there's superintendents on there, there's
6 people from the Wyoming Department of Employment --
7 Education. And it seems to me that that's the place to go
8 and have everybody agree that they would be kind of the
9 arbitrators of, okay, this is the way we're going to do
10 it. We're going to agree that this is the right way to do
11 it.
12 I think we're going to get into some pretty good
13 disagreements on some of the ways people are accounting
14 for things in different districts. We've already kind of
15 run into that several times to try to get them to say,
16 well, this is the right way to do it. It has taken days
17 in those meetings.
18 But they have, I think, come a long ways in
19 agreement that they have to -- they have to say, okay,
20 this is the way, this isn't the way. I guess -- I hope
21 I'm making sense.
22 SENATOR PECK: Mr. Chairman.
23 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Bob.
24 SENATOR PECK: On the ADM trends there
25 where we lost 10,000 kids in six years, are you able to
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1 make any future projection as to whether that's going to
2 flatten out, or are we going to be fresh out of kids here
3 in another 50 years?
4 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Cost of education will
5 go down.
6 Further questions or comments?
7 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Right here.
8 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator McOmie.
9 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Senator? Thank
10 you, I think. As long as we're waxing philosophical, I
11 would like to say one thing. When I first came to the
12 legislature and I heard all of the stories about MAP and I
13 heard how complex everything is, I truly believe that we
14 haven't had that many glitches. You got to expect some
15 problems when you're completely changing how you're doing
16 it. And while there may have been simpler methods or
17 other people that could have done it, I really believe
18 that I'm starting to understand it. I don't understand
19 the formulas, but I'm starting to understand where it all
20 goes, how it is driven by what they're trying to do.
21 And I would like to thank you for your
22 facilitation process because that's the only way we're
23 going to solve this.
24 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Anderson.
25 SENATOR ANDERSON: Thank you. Again, I
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1 kind of preface my question with a new member statement,
2 but with regard to your role and your charge into the
3 legislative end that you have and the intent of this
4 committee, of late there's been quite a lot of discussion
5 in regard to audits at the corporate level.
6 As we've followed this across the country, it
7 seems to me there's two sides to an audit coin, you know,
8 one being what goes in and what goes out. We've had
9 discussion today in regard to the allocation of resources
10 and the purpose of your audit being to determine whether
11 or not the correct resources made it to the correct place
12 in the correct amounts.
13 My question in regard to your charge and what
14 the future might bring, do you have a responsibility in
15 regard to the outcome in terms of achievement in the audit
16 in regards to the return and that side of the coin in
17 regard to the audit function?
18 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Miss Robinson.
19 MS. ROBINSON: Mr. Chairman, I'm not
20 exactly sure how to answer that question. I believe the
21 charge that we have is to make sure that the data that is
22 being used by decision makers is valid and supportable.
23 Do you want to help me out, Mike?
24 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Geesey.
25 MR. GEESEY: Mr. Chairman, Mr. -- Senator
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1 Anderson, I guess you could look at this as any type of
2 strategic planning, you go out, do the plan, make the
3 process, somebody reports the outcome and verifies the
4 outcome. And I look at the process you've given us here
5 and the mandate you've given us here is to verify the
6 outcome, we're reporting to you that this is the data
7 that's being used to go through our plan and is it
8 accurate data.
9 And so we kind of look at it that way in the
10 process of any audit. That's what we see, not only on our
11 education audits but on our performance audits of the
12 state agencies. Even in our mineral tax and our excise
13 tax audits, it is the outcome, did they comply with the
14 statutes.
15 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Anything further?
16 Senator Scott.
17 SENATOR SCOTT: Mr. Chairman, am I right
18 in understanding that you are not auditing the performance
19 data in the sense of WYCAS data, things like testing
20 conditions and that kind of thing, that you're restricted
21 to the financial; is that right?
22 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Miss Robinson or --
23 MS. ROBINSON: Mr. Chairman, I believe
24 we're not directed to audit the WYCAS. It is more dealing
25 with the information that goes into the funding model, is
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1 that information correct. There is a provision in the
2 statute that does say that other requests can be made to
3 us to audit other items, and if that request was made we
4 could probably put together some kind of an audit like
5 that, but our primary responsibility is to audit the
6 information that goes into the funding model.
7 SENATOR SCOTT: Mr. Chairman.
8 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Continue.
9 SENATOR SCOTT: In view of the problems
10 that there have been elsewhere in the country on some of
11 these assessment tests, I think that's a hole in our
12 auditing process and at some point we need to fill it.
13 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Mr. Geesey.
14 MR. GEESEY: Mr. Chairman, Senator Scott,
15 there is in the law a provision for you to allow us at the
16 request of not only the Advisory Committee but the
17 legislature to do what I would call a management audit and
18 that would be an audit to go out and say are these
19 functions being carried out, are they necessary, are they
20 proper.
21 And you can make that request. I mean, it is --
22 you know, it is just a sentence in the statute that says
23 we can do management audits and so there's an area that
24 that can be done. We're not focusing on that area because
25 we haven't been given any direction to do that yet.
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1 SENATOR SCOTT: Mr. Chairman.
2 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Continue.
3 SENATOR SCOTT: And management audit is
4 not what I have in mind, it is more an audit are the test
5 data accurate, are the testing conditions proper, the
6 right people taking it. And, you know, we've heard all
7 kinds of stories from other states as to the things that
8 can happen once assessment tests start to become
9 important.
10 And I don't think it is part of your charge now,
11 but what I'm pointing out to the committee is it is
12 something we may need somebody to do at some point.
13 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Devin.
14 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Chairman, we did leave
15 that latitude in there that the legislature could come to
16 this group, as Miss Robinson stated, to make specific
17 requests of that nature. But when we were waxing
18 philosophical before and talked about how far do we want
19 to go with this, we had said we thought this piece needed
20 properly done first before we were to expand it or even
21 know if it needed that.
22 I guess I have a question of between the --
23 there are some real disadvantages of sitting on the board
24 or in getting lots of Colorado TV in terms of you have to
25 listen to their unpleasant political ads as well as hear
297
1 about all of the dirty laundry.
2 But between the CPA audit in the district and
3 what you are doing would someone of the group be raising a
4 red flag to us if things were going on such as are going
5 on in at least two Colorado school districts right now as
6 far as use of their funds and where they're at? Would
7 somebody be coming to us saying, "There's a problem out
8 there in this district and it needs to be addressed"?
9 Would it -- what would happen should you see
10 going on what's going on in either of those districts down
11 there with use of funds or is that a piece of CPA audit?
12 Where are we on that?
13 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Miss Robinson.
14 MS. ROBINSON: Mr. Chairman, Senator
15 Devin, we on a fairly regular basis assist the Division of
16 Criminal Investigation whenever they come across any kind
17 of an embezzlement-type program. And I don't tend to
18 listen to Colorado advertisements so I'm not specific on
19 what you're -- what the specifics of their allegations
20 are, but if we ever come across in any of our auditing
21 where there's illegal acts, we immediately call in DCI and
22 we get some assistance in investigating those type of
23 things.
24 We have also been called in when CPAs run across
25 the same type of problems, and either the DCI will ask the
298
1 CPAs to assist them or sometimes we've gone in and
2 assisted them as well when it comes to illegal
3 expenditures and not proper use of public funds.
4 So we have in the past -- usually at least two
5 or three times a year we're working on some kind of a
6 possible embezzlement of state or local funds.
7 COCHAIR STAFFORD: Senator Scott.
8 SENATOR SCOTT: Well, in a circumstance --
9 and generally in the state government where the problem is
10 not an embezzlement but they simply overspent their
11 authorized budget is there a criminal statute involved in
12 that? What's the penalty for overspending your budget?
13 MS. ROBINSON: Mr. Chairman, Senator
14 Scott, I'm not aware of any monetary penalty. There is a
15 violation which is reported usually by CPAs in their
16 audit. We review CPA audits on a random basis. If we see
17 that there's a lot of statutory violations, then we are
18 required to notify the Attorney General and the Attorney
19 General sends a letter to the district or the city or
20 town.
21 Usually in the past what has occurred is they
22 don't do it in the following year and we usually do a
23 follow-up. If someone has been regularly abusing the
24 statutes, we basically notify the Attorney General because
25 they're the enforcement -- we do not have any enforcement
299
1 statutes that says if you overspend your budget you don't
2 get any more money.
3 SENATOR SCOTT: Mr. Chairman.
4 COCHAIR STAFFORD: We need to take a break
5 now.
6 Thank you for your presentation and the
7 legislature will look forward to your final reports as
8 they come down the line. We'll take a ten-minute break at
9 this time.
10 (Recess taken 9:50 a.m. until 10:00 a.m.)
11 COCHAIR DEVIN: Committee, if we could go
12 ahead and get started I think we have the potential of
13 finishing by noon or perhaps a late noon today. It looks
14 like in terms of what we have to do. For those people who
15 want to travel on home today, I don't want to rush the
16 process, but I would like to go ahead and move along
17 because I know that that time is valuable and some of us
18 have meetings yet again tomorrow.
19 We were in the process -- are our audit people
20 still here?
21 MS. ROBINSON: A couple of us are.
22 COCHAIR DEVIN: I have -- if you wouldn't
23 mind coming back, we will finish this piece quickly, but I
24 had a question -- I guess there were two questions that
25 came up, but I did have a question from -- as you go out
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1 and look at these pilot projects or pilot schools and so
2 forth, maybe not initially, but could you bring us to a
3 point that you might be able to gather information? The
4 MAP model, when we do a block grant, has components in it
5 that would say a certain amount is allocated for
6 administration, a certain amount is allocated for
7 salaries, et cetera, et cetera.
8 When you finish your process at some point in
9 the future, do you think you could give this committee
10 some comparators to say the school districts are spending
11 60 percent of their block grant in salaries and 7 percent
12 in administration and so forth? Could you give us those
13 bigger ballparks as compared to the MAP model allocation
14 so that we could get a picture over time that it appears
15 where we were this kind of number in MAP and this kind of
16 number in practice and so forth? Is that data that as you
17 look -- not minutia is what I'm looking for, but that kind
18 of ballpark piece to know how well that is fitting for the
19 committees of the future?
20 MS. ROBINSON: Madam Chairman, that's not
21 one thing we had anticipated. I think it would be
22 something we could add to our programs and provide to the
23 committee. And I don't think it would take a significant
24 amount of time as long as we're talking, you know, large
25 concepts, not the detail.
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1 COCHAIR DEVIN: Well, I think this
2 committee spends considerable amount of time trying to
3 sort out whether there's an appropriate allocation in the
4 model for this piece or that piece.
5 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chair, I think it
6 would be important to understand in doing that that the
7 purpose was not to criticize the school districts for
8 deviating from the MAP model but to revise the model on,
9 what, our five-year schedule on that to reflect the
10 realities of how people are actually using their block
11 grant so that we can make the model more realistic.
12 So I think we're looking for that kind of
13 information not to try to conform school districts to the
14 model, but the other way around, to conform the model to
15 the actual practice.
16 COCHAIR DEVIN: I think it is like the
17 current audit. It needs to kind of have a two-direction
18 thing for this committee to make decisions. There was a
19 comment.
20 MR. SCHMIDT: Curt Schmidt, manager in
21 Fremont 1, also on the Data Advisory Committee.
22 Our understanding of the whole process, the way
23 this works, our job as the Data Advisory Committee is to
24 make sure that the rules are clear and everybody
25 understands them and the Department of Audit is part of
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1 that process.
2 When they come to school districts, they're not
3 going to be able to do them all in one year, but when they
4 audit school districts they're making sure we're complying
5 with those reporting standards and those reports go to the
6 Department of Education. And we didn't want to get into
7 where we were ending up reporting to two different
8 entities.
9 And I think that the Department of Audit and to
10 all of our understanding that wasn't going to happen. We
11 would still report to the Department of Education and they
12 would then be able to give you all of the information for
13 all 48 school districts that's been audited and verified
14 over time that the Department of Audit -- by them that it
15 is actually what is required so you have comparable data.
16 So all of that falls back on the Department of Education
17 and that's where we report the data to.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: And I think that's true.
19 We weren't looking for two different reporting sources.
20 But this would be more of, you know, a request to look at
21 can you get the data in a usable format that gives us
22 pictures and concepts. But I think a great deal of this
23 data, somewhere between the two audits, somewhere in that
24 process is probably being reported.
25 MS. ROBINSON: Yes, Madam Chair, I believe
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1 most of that information is reported to the Department of
2 Education and we can just verify that it is.
3 COCHAIR DEVIN: I think maybe it was
4 Senator Anderson said we're aswim in data but usable data
5 is something that's reported in a manner and refined in a
6 manner that it is fair to the parties, which is what is
7 very important in the communication piece, but gives us a
8 usable picture of what is happening, is what we lack
9 sometimes.
10 So any other questions of this group?
11 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman, I
12 would just like to make a quick statement. Senator
13 Sessions, Senator Scott, myself, Pam, several members in
14 the audience here were involved in the data facilitation
15 group and it was a good group. It certainly opened eyes
16 to some of their problems and I think it opened theirs to
17 some of our problems as legislators and whatever.
18 I think a lot of information comes in. I think
19 the problem is it is in so many diverse forms. And this
20 is a segue to our next bill, and I feel it is a very
21 important bill. It is also a very expensive bill, but I
22 think we need to look at it very carefully because one of
23 the problems we have as a legislature and as a state is
24 getting good information that it can count on, knowing
25 that it is all coming in, how can I say this, with the
304
1 same criteria. We all get information, but it may not be
2 the same criteria.
3 So the facilitation group was a good group. It
4 was money well spent, although I personally felt when we
5 put that money forward in the last session it was probably
6 just a feel-good thing, but I was wrong. It was a very
7 good session and I hope we can do more of these in the
8 future.
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: Any other questions of
10 this -- the auditors?
11 Okay. Thank you for your approach. Thank you
12 for your time.
13 That brings us to -- we took that audit report
14 and actually we're awaiting some work on 345 which we had
15 started to discuss earlier. And basically our staff has
16 been preparing -- they tried to prepare us the options for
17 special ed this time. They got several other pieces in
18 and in terms of Mary going back and actually being able to
19 produce you the two contrasting spreadsheets, that just
20 can't be done accurately in this amount of time.
21 So I think our options are to move the bill
22 forward. If there are parts you like, you can move it
23 forward with the hold harmless piece and the understanding
24 if you don't like what you see, it can be extracted or you
25 can move it forward without the hold harmless piece and
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1 address it by the session.
2 But rather than produce something that we could
3 not be sure of in this short amount of time, it is just an
4 impossible physical demand on the people being asked to do
5 it, but that information can become available, it just
6 needs time to develop.
7 So I guess that's the committee's options, would
8 be to either leave that piece of the bill in, knowing you
9 might not like it and take it out, or take it out and put
10 it back.
11 I would like to return to 345 because it does
12 have several components.
13 Is there a motion on the bill?
14 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: You want to move
15 the bill before we talk about it? I will move the bill.
16 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Second.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: The bill is on the table.
18 Did you have comments you wanted to make?
19 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Yes, Madam Chair.
20 On the bill on section 2, it has been brought to my
21 attention what I was trying to remember on what was
22 affecting -- what was left out or added in on the Attorney
23 General's opinion.
24 And it turns out that the amount that the hold
25 harmless has been on was the amount including
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1 transportation and special education which were outside
2 the block grant. And these are both 100 percent. But
3 when you add them into the total, that's where the problem
4 occurred.
5 And even reading -- the special reading
6 assessment. So you were then using this money as the hold
7 harmless and taking that money out of the hold harmless
8 which is supposed to be returned 100 percent and these
9 districts were not getting it.
10 So maybe there needs to be some wording in this
11 section that says that these -- this money that is the
12 special -- the reading assessment, the transportation and
13 the special education that are to be funded 100 percent
14 should not be included in the ADM adjustments, because
15 that's what was happening. The following ADM adjustments
16 were whacking these that were out there.
17 I see Mary is nodding her head, but I --
18 MS. BYRNES: Madam Chairman,
19 Representative McOmie has described it but I do not
20 believe the reading assessment program is contained in the
21 block grant model, so that is outside of the model. It
22 really does not affect the hold harmless.
23 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman,
24 that's what I was trying to point out, as far as I know
25 there are three not in the block grant: Reading
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1 assessment, transportation, and special education. I may
2 be wrong on the reading assessment, but I know I'm right
3 on the transportation and special education.
4 So with -- declining ADM was affecting these
5 that are supposed to be paid for outside of the block
6 grant at 100 percent and these districts were losing that
7 money with no chance to ever get it back.
8 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mary, did you have a
9 comment, because actually while those are figured at 100
10 percent, they are then put in the block grant.
11 MS. BYRNES: Madam Chairman, that's
12 correct, that's the way they're placed in the block grant
13 is on reimbursement at 100 percent so they would go
14 towards the funding model and also look at local
15 resources, whereas the reading assessment money sits
16 outside of all of that. That's a separate categorical
17 account on its own.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: So the other
19 interpretation of that, the Attorney General's
20 interpretation, as I understand, is they do sit with --
21 they're paid at 100 percent, they do sit within the block
22 grant and there would have been some element of -- I won't
23 go further. There was consideration of some double
24 payment there on those pieces if you did it, from the
25 discussion I heard. They had to settle that issue on that
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1 piece, and I guess if we need to bring that up, they do go
2 in the block grant.
3 Mary, is that correct?
4 MS. BYRNES: Madam Chairman, that's
5 correct. The reimbursements are part of the block grant
6 and Mr. Biggio, I believe, asked for -- or the Department
7 of Education asked for an opinion from the Attorney
8 General on how to actually implement that hold harmless.
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: So further comment before
10 we leave the subject, could you add any clarity to this?
11 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chairman, yes, we did
12 ask about the process issue versus a dollar amount issue
13 and I think, going back to your issue, Representative, my
14 understanding was that the districts had asked us to in a
15 sense calculate that hold harmless amount on an ADM basis
16 in the base year without the 100 percent reimbursements in
17 place so we would have in a sense taken out the special ed
18 and transportation reimbursements for the base year,
19 calculated what the reimbursement would have been on an
20 ADM basis. That would have in a sense been the hold
21 harmless amount.
22 Then as we applied that in future years, we
23 would have rolled back in the actual dollar amounts for
24 transportation and special ed that the district incurred
25 and that would have yielded a different number and a
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1 different process than what we thought the statute said.
2 So we did ask for that opinion from the AG's
3 office. And the opinion said it is not a process that
4 we're holding you harmless to, it is a flat dollar amount
5 and that dollar amount would have included the 100 percent
6 reimbursements for transportation and special ed that were
7 paid in the base year, and of course those were paid based
8 on expenses incurred in the prior year.
9 Am I --
10 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: I understand.
11 Madam Chairman, I understand. I just -- my personal
12 feeling is that it is not right because all of a sudden
13 this money that you've got to honor these special ed
14 things -- we had the big argument about it yesterday. So
15 what we're doing is we're taking money, then, from general
16 education, whether it is books, whether it is something
17 else, to fund these things that were supposed to be funded
18 at 100 percent.
19 MR. BIGGIO: And, Madam Chairman,
20 Representative, in some situations I think the districts
21 are incurring more special education costs than were
22 available in that base year. And in that sense, then,
23 they would have to find another source of funding to cover
24 those expenses.
25 REPRESENTATIVE WASSERBERGER: Madam
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1 Chairman, then in essence we're not funding special
2 programs 100 percent. We're funding it based on what our
3 hold harmless amount of money was a year ago.
4 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: And, Madam
5 Chairman, my concern was I believe it is based on the
6 language in our statute, and if we adjust it now, now
7 would be the time to adjust it in 345 to stop this --
8 what's been happening if we as legislators believe that is
9 wrong. If we don't believe it is wrong, then continue it
10 until we get -- for one more year.
11 MR. BIGGIO: And, Madam Chairman, from a
12 strictly technical point of view -- and I'm not arguing
13 equity. From a technical point of view we do cover 100
14 percent of special education and transportation costs.
15 What happens is the regional cost adjustments and small
16 school adjustments, some districts lost funds totally but
17 it wasn't because we cut 100 percent reimbursement. It
18 was for other things that affected them.
19 COCHAIR DEVIN: So there's a huge ADM and
20 cost of living factor that were in that base year that
21 aren't there now, too, so all I'm -- the policy decision
22 is here, but you need to -- but there are so many
23 interacting factors that on that base year you had a cost
24 of living piece -- you had a regional cost adjustment and
25 you had an ADM piece that's not there as you move out. So
311
1 there is a difference, but you need to understand where it
2 is coming from.
3 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: But, Madam
4 Chairman, transportation and special education are not
5 affected by declining enrollments unless there's a decline
6 in the special education person, which the money then goes
7 away.
8 But when we add them into the block grant and
9 then make the ADM adjustment, we're adjusting also what is
10 supposed to be at 100 percent. And all I'm saying is that
11 we should take the -- leave these out when that ADM
12 adjustment is made, and then add them back into whatever
13 the schools get because they're reimbursed at 100 percent.
14 They don't have to be part of the block grant.
15 And that's where I'm coming from and I think
16 that's only a fair way to do it. But, like I said,
17 there's 90 of us, so it will all come out in the wash.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
19 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, you know,
20 we've got lots of problems with the hold harmless here,
21 and I think it is a subject that's going to have to be
22 looked at. The trouble we've got here is this is
23 proposing to make a specific change to it that we don't
24 understand the implications of.
25 I think the simple thing to do is simply remove
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1 it, so I will move we delete section 2 from the bill,
2 that's page 3, lines 2 through 21.
3 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Sessions.
4 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, I would
5 like to ask Senator Scott to consider something else.
6 Leaving section 2 in but putting the -- but putting the
7 exception of holding harmless with the exception of the
8 100 percent reimbursements of transportation and special
9 education.
10 And what that does is it -- what it does is it
11 negates, maybe, the Attorney General's opinion that those
12 two be folded in when you're figuring hold harmless as
13 they were a year ago. And this way then we can deal with
14 hold harmless on its own with vocational ed and everything
15 else that's coming down, but our 100 percent
16 reimbursements are on the outside of it.
17 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I'm
18 reluctant to do that because I think you're looking at 10,
19 20 million of cost, and -- I don't know how much it is.
20 It is significant, but I don't know. And I am reluctant
21 to do something like that at the last minute where I
22 really don't know what the cost is.
23 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
24 will second Senator Scott's motion for the sake of trying
25 to find out where he's coming from.
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1 COCHAIR DEVIN: There is a motion and a
2 second that we delete section 2, the hold harmless portion
3 that would have one hold harmless calculation in the model
4 versus however many have been put in the various areas by
5 the legislature.
6 Any further discussion?
7 SENATOR PECK: Madam Chairman, I would
8 appreciate our counsel explaining why he put it in there
9 and see what the defense is.
10 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman, as I said,
11 when we first came to this meeting we had three separate
12 adjustments that were being considered. You had one for
13 special education that had a hold harmless factor in it.
14 You had one for voc ed that had a hold harmless factor.
15 You also had an interim regional cost of living proposed
16 adjustment.
17 The culminated effects of those three things and
18 trying to work them in would have tilted and so our
19 thought was to try to consolidate that into one.
20 Based on your action yesterday, you have reduced
21 that to one, voc ed. And we apologize. We were geared to
22 look at many components here to extract it and bring it
23 back just to one. We couldn't do that this morning and
24 give you reliable figures. Mary kind of tried something
25 quick, but they're just not scanned and scrubbed figures
314
1 so that's why it was brought to you.
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: And we now would have two
3 as our bills are going forward, one for vocational ed and
4 one for the small schools.
5 MR. NELSON: The regional hold harmless,
6 regional and small schools.
7 COCHAIR DEVIN: The effect is two. We had
8 the potential coming into this meeting of having four.
9 MR. NELSON: Yes.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
11 SENATOR SCOTT: So, Madam Chairman, as I
12 understand it, this provision would not change what is
13 done now if we succeed in killing the voc ed on the way
14 through.
15 MR. NELSON: Right, you're correct.
16 COCHAIR DEVIN: All right. Then there's a
17 motion on the table to delete section 2, the hold harmless
18 part, and all of those in favor, aye.
19 All of thise opposed raise your hand.
20 Okay, that motion carries to delete the hold
21 harmless portion.
22 Back on the remainder of the bill, is there any
23 further discussion on the remainder of the bill?
24 I may remind you that as we looked at some of
25 our other bills we had talked about leaving the latitude
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1 that, depending on whether some of these passed or not,
2 that we may do one more combined bill, and this would
3 probably be the vehicle that those would be combined into.
4 And I think that meeting needs to occur with the new
5 chairmen and these chairmen to make that determination.
6 My personal inclination would be that some of
7 the outstanding things like the data system piece, some of
8 those that are clearly different might want to stand out
9 as separate bills. That might want to be discussion.
10 But as we've done the other bills, we've left
11 the latitude that we can go forward with the education
12 bill and I wanted you to know that that vehicle is here.
13 Senator Scott.
14 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I thought
15 the bills we've passed so far we've voted to introduce
16 those bills. I don't remember any latitude to combine
17 them into other things. Was there? I don't recall it.
18 MR. NELSON: In your meeting in Casper,
19 Cochair Devin did indicate that, that she would decide on
20 how to introduce, what House and how to assemble that
21 based on discussions with cochair, and that was my
22 understanding of how they would be carried forward.
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: It could be taken more
24 like an omnibus or a -- we've taken a bill that combines
25 the school issues. We've always separated capital
316
1 construction and finance, but we have gone forward --
2 rather than having an education bill with eight bills
3 moving forward, we've had one or two depending on their
4 subjects. And we did pass them not assigning them, but
5 assigning that latitude. I guess I wanted the
6 committee -- I wanted to refresh that and if there's
7 input, any of the chairs certainly will take it. I
8 certainly won't be making that decision alone.
9 Senator Scott.
10 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, given the
11 things we're looking at this time, I would certainly urge
12 us not to combine the bills that we've already passed.
13 Some of those are plenty controversial in their own right,
14 and I think it would be safer to let them stand on their
15 own.
16 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman.
17 SENATOR SCOTT: Introduce a bill that
18 would be a vehicle for that.
19 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: At first blush I
20 support what you're trying to do simply because I would
21 like to see this put as a package so there's no games made
22 and we can delete a bill out of it just like we would
23 delete a section, but I think that they all tie together
24 and to have them sticking out there and showing up
25 piecemeal at a time, I'm not real comfortable with that.
317
1 Like I said, the first thing that pops into my
2 mind, sometimes that's good.
3 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, what
4 bills would you -- would you list the bills that you had
5 thought about putting into one bill?
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: I think that -- and this
7 would just be one opinion of the four chairmen, certainly,
8 but the special education bill that we enacted yesterday,
9 we have always treated that as part of the omnibus bill
10 that we took forward with education.
11 We did not take action on the cost of living
12 piece to change so that -- wait, we did on the index, and
13 I think that one might want to stay outside, but I guess
14 that's for discussion. It affects the whole Wyoming Cost
15 of Living Index but it is an improvement in the whole
16 thing, versus just the school model, so I would -- my
17 first -- as Representative McOmie says, my inclination
18 would be to treat that separately as a separate subject.
19 I think that the at risk could come in because
20 that's -- as part of the bill. The vocational ed piece
21 could come in as a part of the bill, and then I guess on
22 the accountability, assessment and data systems, I would
23 like to see that advisory assistance, that information
24 advisory assistance go into the omnibus bill because I
25 think that discussion kind of incorporates -- it is a part
318
1 of everything, it is not a separate subject.
2 I'm a little bit sensitive to maybe the data
3 systems should be separate because it does have a large
4 appropriation on it and we might want to debate that
5 separately.
6 And the other pieces of assessment and
7 accountability probably could go in and be debated as a
8 part of the whole bill. So that's just one person's
9 thought on how that might sort out, and I welcome the
10 committee's input on any of that.
11 But that would still leave us taking forward
12 probably in the neighborhood of six bills, not including
13 the capital construction bills. We are looking -- well,
14 this is no longer current. We were looking at about $28
15 million yesterday, right around $30 million and that was
16 trimmed substantially yesterday. But we will -- we
17 will -- and we don't have anything current on the --
18 MS. BYRNES: Madam Chairman, no, I think
19 right now the external cost adjustment for 7.6 million
20 advanced by the JAC and I believe the voc ed, it may come
21 in around 1.5 to 1.8 additional dollars to the system.
22 And that's really all we have right now.
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: And we would have the
24 pieces where we've asked for the data system, and we've
25 asked to continue the advisory assistance. We are asking
319
1 to continue that regional cost of living study and the
2 small schools study.
3 So those are the financial pieces that we're
4 moving forward. And in those pieces where we're asking
5 for the amounts to continue the studies and to move the
6 data discussion forward, I would like to see those smaller
7 amounts in one bill than to have to come to the floor with
8 every one of them.
9 Any further questions?
10 Senator Scott.
11 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I would
12 certainly urge us not to include the voc ed in the omnibus
13 bill. That's going to be plenty controversial itself.
14 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Sessions.
15 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, to move
16 this forward I would move that we include those bills that
17 you suggested with the exception of the voc ed bill in an
18 omnibus bill, to move forward.
19 SENATOR SCOTT: Second.
20 COCHAIR DEVIN: There's a motion that
21 we --
22 REPRESENTATIVE WASSERBERGER: Madam
23 Chairman, have we moved those other bills yet?
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes, we have --
25 REPRESENTATIVE WASSERBERGER: I was going
320
1 to say --
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: -- at previous meetings.
3 We had to get something off the table because I won't get
4 this committee here for Christmas.
5 REPRESENTATIVE WASSERBERGER: I don't
6 blame you. You don't want me for Christmas.
7 COCHAIR DEVIN: And we needed to move what
8 we were ready to move with and those other bills have all
9 been forwarded by the committee, but they were forwarded
10 with the latitude that the chairs could decide which House
11 they started in when we saw the load and then we could
12 also -- the latitude that there could be some combinations
13 of those bills into another bill.
14 There's a motion on the floor -- now you sort of
15 got my opinion, not the other chairs but I guess we'll put
16 forward this committee's piece.
17 Representative McOmie and then Representative
18 Lockhart.
19 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
20 would urge you to vote against this amendment because I do
21 believe the vocational piece is part of this omnibus bill
22 and I just think that having it go out there on its own as
23 there's money that all of a sudden here's the money
24 floating around, here's the formulas floating around, it
25 is tied in with the rest of these. We tried to put those
321
1 kinds of things together, so I would speak against the
2 amendment.
3 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Sessions.
4 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, the
5 reason for excluding the vocational part of it is I would
6 like to put the pieces together that we know are pretty
7 much noncontroversial, that will have some discussion on
8 them but have a chance of going forward.
9 And in looking at -- my personal feeling with
10 vocational ed, anytime -- I'm tired of hold harmless, and
11 that's a personal feeling. I think all it does is say we
12 don't know what we're doing.
13 And I think that there's a lot of people within
14 the legislature that are feeling that way. I have seen
15 really good bills go down because you make the decision
16 because you don't like one thing specifically that you
17 vote the whole thing down. And I think there's enough
18 controversy surrounding the vocational ed program that I
19 think it needs to be out for every -- we have heard all of
20 the discussion on it, this committee has heard it
21 repeatedly, but we have particularly in the House a whole
22 new set of legislators that need to have that time on
23 Committee of the Whole to hear the whole discussion on the
24 voc ed piece instead of making -- having to make a
25 decision to bring everything else down if they don't like
322
1 that part of it.
2 And I guess that's -- I've just seen those
3 things happen, and I think that we have enough new
4 legislators that I'll say it again that we need that piece
5 out for everybody to get that -- to have that point of
6 view across.
7 COCHAIR DEVIN: Did you have a comment?
8 You were next.
9 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
10 I have three points to make. Speaking of new legislators,
11 we have Kurt Bucholz in the back from Saratoga who wasn't
12 introduced yesterday when we had some of the others.
13 COCHAIR DEVIN: Kurt, welcome.
14 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Second, I think
15 if we start taking the controversial ones out, then we
16 lose the perspective of the whole bill. When we
17 introduced it last year, it started in the House and we
18 had the whole schmeel in here. And there were some that
19 were more controversial than others, but I do think it
20 kept everybody in perspective of what all was in the
21 school finance bill. So I'm with Representative McOmie
22 that we ought to keep that one in there as we go forward.
23 I mentioned three things. The third one is I
24 would like to come back and make sure that we do some
25 drafting on the hold harmless with the LSO so we've got
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1 something to look at when we first get to the legislature
2 because hold harmless is not going away either even though
3 we've taken that out of the bill.
4 I guess I'm speaking in favor of a little larger
5 omnibus bill including vocational ed and asking LSO to do
6 better work with detail on hold harmless because we're
7 going to need that.
8 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: Madam Chairman.
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes, Representative
10 Simons.
11 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: I also am very
12 opposed to taking it out of the bill. I live in a very
13 rural area where we don't have access to the community
14 colleges, where we don't have access to the things to keep
15 our kids off the streets. Our teachers in vocational
16 education do night things to keep the kids from being out
17 driving around in their cars drinking booze and smoking
18 cigarettes on the corner and getting into trouble.
19 And we -- vocational education may not be
20 important to Casper, but it is vitally important to the
21 rural communities. And you stop and look at what -- at
22 what some of the areas are doing with vocational education
23 and it needs to stay in the package, it needs to be funded
24 and it needs to go forward.
25 And I agree with Del and with Lockhart that it
324
1 needs to stay in that bill. That omnibus bill last year,
2 I had never heard all of the discussions when I walked
3 into that committee a year ago and I could understand it.
4 And I think we have elected a bunch of very highly
5 intelligent people, many of whom have worked in the school
6 systems and been involved. I think it needs to stay in
7 the package. I don't think we ought to be isolating it
8 for a target.
9 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
11 SENATOR SCOTT: I resent the implication
12 that vocational education is not important to Casper.
13 That's what a good part of this discussion is about. The
14 trouble is that the artificial way that the vocational
15 education adjustment is now being proposed makes it very
16 difficult for some of the larger school districts,
17 including Casper, to put on a vocational education program
18 because it cuts our funding way back for them.
19 That's what a good part of this dispute is
20 about. And I think it would be best left as an
21 independent piece because I think then we'll get it fixed.
22 And the current one just would devastate the vocational
23 programs in places like Casper.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: Well, and putting it in
25 does not preclude alterations to it. I'm sure that we
325
1 will see -- we can see amendments, so it isn't as though
2 it is untouchable, as you all know well.
3 Senator Sessions.
4 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, having
5 been in a junior high for 18 years in this district, I
6 know the value of vocational education programs, but I
7 will tell you now -- and I didn't want to say this, but
8 I'm going to say it -- there are the votes not to do the
9 vocational thing if we don't fix it because as large
10 school districts we have fought tooth and nail to take 30
11 kids out of a kindergarten room and put 20 in and with the
12 additional funding.
13 And I will not nor I don't think a lot of larger
14 school districts who have so fought for that additional
15 money. And we still -- Laramie 1 still educates our
16 students in this state for the least amount of money of
17 any school district in the state. And I will not vote to
18 take a million dollars out of my funding package. And
19 that's all there is to it.
20 And what I'm trying to say is the votes are
21 there to put the whole thing down if we want to get into
22 that kind of a fight. If we can fix it, I support it
23 wholeheartedly. And as I'm saying, every time you take
24 money away from one funding component and say, oh, we'll
25 hold you harmless, huh-uh, we're wrong to do that. We're
326
1 totally wrong.
2 So if we can fix it, fine, include it. But I
3 cannot support it the way it stands now.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: Okay. We have a motion on
5 the table to combine -- an amendment to the bill to
6 combine the pieces that were discussed which would be
7 including vocational education, I believe, was the
8 amendment --
9 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: The motion is
10 without --
11 SENATOR SCOTT: The motion was without --
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: Thank you. As I said
13 that -- the motion is to combine the bills with the
14 exception of vocational education.
15 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman.
16 COCHAIR DEVIN: So an aye vote would leave
17 the bills combined and vocational education out and a no
18 vote would leave the option to include voc ed.
19 SENATOR SCOTT: Oh, Madam Chairman, I
20 think a no vote would be a motion to not combine at all.
21 SENATOR SESSIONS: Yeah, it would.
22 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: That's right.
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: To not combine at all.
24 SENATOR SCOTT: If you want vocational
25 education included, Madam Chairman, I think you need an
327
1 amendment to the motion.
2 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: I seconded it.
3 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes, our second.
4 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
5 believe the motion was made to take it out. I seconded
6 the motion so we could discuss it. So we already have a
7 motion and a yes vote would be for the motion which would
8 be to take it out and a no vote would be to leave it in is
9 the way I understood my second.
10 SENATOR SESSIONS: No, I rolled them all
11 into one.
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: Dave, if we're all quiet,
13 would you straighten us out on this because I want people
14 clear on what they're voting for.
15 MR. NELSON: The motion forwarded by
16 Senator Sessions was to go with your listing of bills to
17 be in an omnibus bill excluding the voc ed bills. There
18 are three voc ed bills that would not be part of the
19 consolidation. A vote in favor of that would be just
20 that, you would support your proposed consolidation absent
21 voc ed. A vote against it would just be a vote against
22 it. It would not prohibit another motion coming forward
23 to do a different look at it.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: So a yes vote on this
25 motion leaves voc ed out of the omnibus bill. A no
328
1 vote --
2 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: Doesn't do
3 anything.
4 MR. NELSON: Start over.
5 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman.
6 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam
7 Chairman --
8 SENATOR SESSIONS: I have -- excuse me.
9 Go ahead.
10 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
11 I believe there's another way besides two votes and that's
12 to amend in vocational ed. And I think for clarity on
13 this issue, so we can get it behind us I'll make that
14 proposed amendment that we add voc ed back into the bill
15 on the floor.
16 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Second.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: There's a motion and a
18 second to amend the amendment -- no.
19 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: It is to amend
20 the proposed omnibus bill.
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: Amend the omnibus bill.
22 Madam Chairman, speaking on and in favor of the amendment,
23 I don't think we lose the level of debate when it is
24 included. We can have all of the debate that is necessary
25 for this issue because it is a very important issue. But
329
1 then it folds into something we all have the big picture
2 of.
3 That's my rationale for having it in there. And
4 I would not discourage any debate on this because
5 vocational ed is one of those kinds of issues.
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: Okay. For purposes of
7 procedural and clarity, what we've had now is this
8 amendment is a clear, affirmative one. A yes vote puts it
9 all in. A no vote leaves it -- we would need to come back
10 for another amendment. But we have a previous one on the
11 table, so it either needs to be withdrawn --
12 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: No.
13 SENATOR SCOTT: No. Point of order. The
14 main motion is Senator Sessions' one to combine the whole
15 thing less vocational education. He's moved to amend the
16 amendment --
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: Amend the amendment?
18 SENATOR SCOTT: It is not an amendment.
19 It is the same motion. He's moved to amend the main
20 motion and if you vote aye on his amendment then
21 vocational education is part of the main motion and we
22 come back and vote on that.
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: So an aye vote on
24 Representative Lockhart's would put vocational in the
25 omnibus bill?
330
1 SENATOR SCOTT: Yes, provided we pass the
2 main motion.
3 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Sessions.
5 SENATOR SESSIONS: I have a question. Can
6 you make an amendment that entirely changes your bill? I
7 didn't think -- your original motion? I didn't think you
8 could.
9 SENATOR SCOTT: This doesn't.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: As long as it is on the
11 same subject.
12 SENATOR SESSIONS: Go ahead and vote on
13 it, I don't care. I have another procedural question to
14 ask when this is over.
15 SENATOR PECK: Madam Chairman, I have a
16 facetious technical question. If an omnibus is part of
17 transportation, then it is all 100 percent funded.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: I'm so glad we have
19 clarification on at least one thing.
20 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, let's
21 go ahead and vote on Representative Lockhart's motion.
22 COCHAIR DEVIN: We're voting on
23 Representative Lockhart's motion which is to -- an aye
24 vote would include vocational education in the omnibus
25 bill.
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1 All of those in favor, aye.
2 All of those opposed, no.
3 I need a show of hands for the ayes.
4 And a show of hands for the noes.
5 Okay. That motion carried. Six were in favor.
6 SENATOR SESSIONS: Now, Madam Chairman, I
7 have a proposal or I would like to -- I have a question of
8 parliamentary procedure. Now that we have the vocational
9 funding bill -- the vocational bill in the omnibus bill,
10 technically does that open it up so I can make another
11 proposal?
12 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, point of
13 order. We still have Senator Sessions' original motion to
14 vote on but now it authorizes inclusion of all of those
15 things and we have to vote on that.
16 SENATOR SESSIONS: But wait a minute.
17 Before we vote on that and close those bills out,
18 technically, you know, the vocational bill was closed out,
19 you know, it was voted on in itself, in its entirety. The
20 question I have is when you roll it in -- when we reopen
21 it, so to speak, to put it in an omnibus bill, can we go
22 in then and make a proposal change, an amendment change in
23 one of those bills?
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: I don't think that's
25 the -- we left the latitude that we could combine and
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1 decide what House they were in, but they would have to be
2 brought back for --
3 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: You can't open
4 them now.
5 SENATOR SESSIONS: I want to know if you
6 can do it -- does anybody know -- I think you can because
7 technically you've opened the bills up again. I don't
8 know.
9 MR. NELSON: They've been approved. You
10 approved them and forwarded them at your Casper meeting.
11 Again, you would reconsider your stance on them, you know.
12 That would be an option.
13 COCHAIR DEVIN: I think the only method to
14 technically do that would be a move to reconsider.
15 MR. NELSON: Reconsider the Casper --
16 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman,
17 when the bill, the omnibus bill, goes to whatever
18 committees it goes to in both the House and Senate, that's
19 the time where you could get in the bill and work your
20 will on it, is that not correct?
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: Absolutely. Every section
22 should be worked by both committees in both Houses.
23 Senator Sessions' original motion, then, to
24 include these components in one, for lack of a better
25 word, omnibus bill that we had earlier discussed,
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1 including now the voc ed.
2 All of those in favor, aye.
3 Those opposed, no.
4 That motion does carry.
5 And are there further amendments to be proposed
6 for this bill?
7 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: I hope I'm not
8 the only one confused here. Can't we now amend out the
9 vocational ed bill out of the omnibus bill? I thought
10 that's what the purpose was, we were first going to
11 include everything in the omnibus bill because of all of
12 the amendments we had, and then we had the option to amend
13 it out.
14 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: We took the vote
15 to put it in.
16 SENATOR SESSIONS: We voted it in, Bubba.
17 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: How close was
18 that? Because of the hold harmless I agree with Senator
19 Sessions and Senator Scott that because of the hold
20 harmless I would like that to be looked at as a separate
21 bill, and I thought we had the opportunity after we put it
22 all together to pull it back out.
23 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: In committee.
24 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: I can't claim
25 ignorance.
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1 COCHAIR DEVIN: Dave, do I need to get
2 counsel from our counsel whether that can be considered
3 now?
4 MR. NELSON: Whether you can consider
5 another motion that contradicts what you've done? You can
6 always reconsider the vote on the action.
7 COCHAIR DEVIN: Move to reconsider and
8 that's not a consideration, what is in my mind is same
9 subject, same day, so I'm clear on that on the floor, I'm
10 not clear on it here. So if Bubba wanted to move to
11 reconsider, he -- the vote on the vocational education
12 piece, he could do that?
13 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Voted on the
14 prevailing side.
15 COCHAIR DEVIN: Voted on the prevailing
16 side. Thank you, I think that is correct, any pieces
17 prior to the passage of the bill can be reconsidered.
18 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman,
19 can I make that motion for reconsideration --
20 COCHAIR DEVIN: You may.
21 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: -- having voted
22 on the prevailing side?
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: And does that require a
24 second? It does.
25 SENATOR SESSIONS: Second.
335
1 COCHAIR DEVIN: There is a motion to
2 reconsideration. The first vote will be on
3 reconsideration. All of those in favor raise your hand.
4 It is on the table for reconsideration. Would
5 you like to make a motion?
6 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman, I
7 would like to move that we take out the two -- I don't
8 have the bill numbers here, but the two vocational ed
9 bills out of the omnibus bill and consider them separately
10 on the floor.
11 REPRESENTATIVE SAMUELSON: Second.
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: There is a motion and
13 second to consider them separately on the floor.
14 For further consideration, can we think of
15 anything else on this subject?
16 All of those in favor of considering them as a
17 separate bill, raise your hand.
18 All of those opposed, raise your hand.
19 That fails on -- that motion passes, right?
20 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Six to six.
21 REPRESENTATIVE WASSERBERGER: Six to five.
22 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Irene voted for
23 it.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: All of those in favor
25 raise your hand.
336
1 All of those opposed.
2 That motion passes.
3 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Your vote
4 determined it.
5 COCHAIR DEVIN: It did. And I will vote
6 to take it out. I don't want to endanger the rest of
7 these pieces and I think if it is this controversial in
8 this committee, we better go to the floor and fight it
9 out.
10 Now, freshmen in the room, they always urge you
11 never to put a motion in a negative manner, to always
12 state it in the positive and then speak against it. You
13 have just seen the perfect lesson as to why any motion
14 made in the negative confuses even the Chairman, mostly
15 the Chairman, I think, as to really you're voting aye or
16 no.
17 And that's what we did here and that's the first
18 lesson they'll tell you. And experience has taught us it
19 is a good lesson to learn early because any motion that
20 has a negative in it starts to turn the entire floor
21 around and pretty soon you don't know where you're going.
22 And this was kind of a simple subject and we still got
23 turned around.
24 That brings us, then, to the main content -- the
25 main bill. Is there further discussion on 345?
337
1 Then we need a roll call vote on 345.
2 MR. NELSON: Senator Goodenough.
3 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Aye.
4 MR. NELSON: Senator Peck.
5 SENATOR PECK: Aye.
6 MR. NELSON: Senator Scott.
7 SENATOR SCOTT: Aye.
8 MR. NELSON: Senator Sessions.
9 SENATOR SESSIONS: Aye.
10 MR. NELSON: Representative Lockhart.
11 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Aye.
12 MR. NELSON: Representative McOmie.
13 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Aye.
14 MR. NELSON: Representative Miller.
15 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Aye.
16 MR. NELSON: Representative Robinson.
17 REPRESENTATIVE ROBINSON: Aye.
18 MR. NELSON: Representative Samuelson.
19 REPRESENTATIVE SAMUELSON: Aye.
20 MR. NELSON: Representative Shivler.
21 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Aye.
22 MR. NELSON: Representative Simons.
23 REPRESENTATIVE SIMONS: Aye.
24 MR. NELSON: Cochair Devin.
25 COCHAIR DEVIN: Aye.
338
1 Thank you, Committee. Apologize for getting
2 tangled around on that because I think I tangled you
3 around and you were probably more clear than I was.
4 The next piece we need to look at is the school
5 level data collection. Mr. Biggio.
6 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chairman, Larry Biggio
7 from the Department of Education. In light of your
8 schedule this morning I've got a handout that will discuss
9 activities that we have taken through the Data Finance
10 Advisory Committee through the year to address this issue.
11 I will pass that out.
12 And to briefly summarize, let me tell you we
13 began work on this project in February of this year,
14 primarily through the School Finance Data Advisory
15 Committee which is school districts, the Department of
16 Audit, LSO and the Department of Education.
17 We've worked through that diligently through the
18 year. We've just run a survey with the districts earlier
19 this month to find out where they are and what kind of
20 problems they might envision with the school level
21 accounting. We have about 40 percent of those surveys
22 back in.
23 We're finding that most districts are able to
24 implement it; however, a number of districts have asked
25 for additional training for school level accounting which
339
1 we will provide.
2 We think the effort is moving along well and
3 we're confident that we will provide you with the data
4 that you have asked for after the close of next fiscal
5 year -- this fiscal year.
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: Any specifics in detail
7 that the committee needs to know beyond that in terms of
8 what kind -- what you're working with or you feel like
9 your process is going forward and do you need anything
10 further from this committee?
11 MR. BIGGIO: Madam Chairman, I will tell
12 you the process was difficult to begin with. There were a
13 lot of players who came to the table, including MAP, who
14 worked through the process, and we are continuing to deal
15 with issues more related to consistency of coding and what
16 is required to be coded in the specific type of activity.
17 But I think we've come a long way. I think we've got
18 probably 85 to 90 percent of the issues addressed and
19 we're continuing to clean up the smaller numbers.
20 I think I would like to tell you that we have a
21 process in place that is working well to do this through
22 the Data Advisory Committee and we will continue that
23 process and we think it benefits all of us.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: Okay. In the end I would
25 think this would be -- you know, if I were administering
340
1 at any level, I think that would be very helpful data for
2 me to have. I know we certainly in business break things
3 down and look at them in those factors.
4 This gives us an idea of the meetings that are
5 occurring and of the training, and I want to say both to
6 the audit group and to this group, I think I really
7 appreciate through the work of the Data Advisory Committee
8 and the Department and the Department of Audit and the
9 districts that you have taken an educational approach and
10 a collaborative approach to getting these pieces done.
11 But I think that, you know, we always get --
12 when you see the bleakest picture painted in debate, it is
13 always an authoritarian sort of thing, an enforcement sort
14 of thing. That was never our intent, but we know if we're
15 going to keep sitting here howling about unreliable data
16 and we have an equal responsibility to help make that data
17 reliable rather than demand that it come out of the air
18 when people haven't been keeping track of it that way or
19 have had no need to or just wasn't something that they've
20 done.
21 Committee, questions? You've had a bit of a
22 chance to look at these pieces.
23 MR. BIGGIO: Thank you very much.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: We appreciate that.
25 I did have one question before we depart into
341
1 our next subject, and I'm not sure whether, Scott, this
2 involves any portion -- or Dr. Bohling, but as we progress
3 forward now this will be the year that we will see -- many
4 districts have been doing it, but this will be the year
5 that we begin to see some form of a uniform report card?
6 And I'm harkening back to Senator Scott's questions
7 earlier on, you know, performance. We're not really
8 asking the Department of Audit to do -- he talked about
9 the WYCAS, how it is applied, how it is done, but as we
10 need to track performance and how we're doing and what we
11 need to modify and so forth, how -- I know our report card
12 comes out, but how will we get data in a usable form that
13 gives us a picture by school, by district, by state how
14 we're doing that's in a usable form that we can -- we can
15 access as parents and citizens and committee members and
16 so forth?
17 MR. MARION: Madam Chairman, Scott Marion,
18 Department of Education. I think there will be two
19 components. I think the component that Mr. Hamilton has
20 just produced will be the vehicle for that, in addition,
21 in spite of some of the difficulties in terms of
22 implementing No Child Left Behind, it affords us a lot of
23 opportunities in terms of a couple of pieces of
24 legislation that did get incorporated into the omnibus
25 bill that will allow us to build a statewide
342
1 accountability system and present results that -- in
2 hopefully an informative, meaningful manner and then to be
3 reported through the uniform reporting system, Every
4 Student Counts report as well as other vehicles to say now
5 we have data on every school, multiple years of data.
6 And eventually by the time the student
7 assessment piece comes to bear when we have assessments in
8 grades 3 through 8, we will be able to do many more things
9 such as the longitudinal tracking of students over time as
10 well as the cohort analysis of simply schools as a whole.
11 So we will be able to report data in multiple formats.
12 And I think the vehicle that the data reporting
13 unit has established with Every Student Counts will allow
14 us to do that and will expand upon that.
15 COCHAIR DEVIN: So will you continue -- I
16 guess, Mr. Hamilton and Scott -- Dr. Marion, to -- will
17 you continue to develop something that will look at this
18 longitudinal piece for the individual student and it will
19 look at, you know, how the school is doing and how the
20 district is doing -- I mean, I know we're required to do
21 it by school, but will we get -- reach a point that like
22 we as a committee or I as a person, citizen of this state,
23 could then take that data and -- I mean, will it be
24 accessible for me to tell how we're doing as a state?
25 MR. HAMILTON: Madam Chairwoman, I think
343
1 that is the case. What we're looking at now is we've done
2 kind of an initial rollout. We had a pilot last year and
3 we have to add a report to the Every Student Counts to
4 give the trend information you're speaking of. As far as
5 longitudinal data, Scott may be better able to speak to
6 this. But at this point in time the IDs we get with the
7 student level data we collect from districts is not at a
8 point that we could be able to do any kind of reliable
9 longitudinal studies.
10 I would differentiate to this group the
11 difference between a trend record and longitudinal report
12 is the trend is just a cohort, 4th grade class for 1998
13 compared to the fourth grade class of 1999, so on, so
14 forth.
15 In your longitudinal study you're looking at the
16 same kids from year to year. I think for that to happen,
17 to be able to incorporate into the Every Student Counts,
18 certainly you could put a report in that would do that,
19 but I think there are some other things that need to
20 happen behind the scenes for us to be able to do that
21 effectively. I hope I've answered your question on the
22 longitudinal part.
23 As far as trend information and giving a picture
24 of what's happening in the school, the legislation that
25 drives Every Student Counts, the 1997 legislation was
344
1 intended to give that picture, achievement information in
2 addition to factors that affect that like percent of
3 teachers with Master's degrees, teacher experience,
4 percentage of students with an IEP, free and reduced lunch
5 counts as an indicator of lower socioeconomic status.
6 So I think that that is certainly the intent of
7 that report is to give that picture.
8 COCHAIR DEVIN: Well, what I'm partly
9 harkening back to is Senator Anderson's earlier comment
10 that I mentioned earlier today and that is that we're
11 afloat in data but we have a lack, sometimes, of usable
12 data. And, you know, I don't -- someone needs to know how
13 that individual child is doing longitudinally. I need to
14 understand longitudinally whether we're improving or not
15 improving and so does every other legislator on a
16 committee like it and as a citizen.
17 But, you know, I also have the need to be able
18 to collate how our big picture is doing. For example,
19 Business Week's comment that I mentioned in Casper, the
20 October issue, the November issue says that we just dumb
21 down our standards, our proficiency to the point that
22 everybody can pass. And I don't have a good answer to
23 refute that. I don't believe it, but I don't -- but our
24 data, we need to get it in a usable form to say that
25 businesses and citizens and parents and legislators, this
345
1 is what our data really shows and we're confident in it
2 and so forth.
3 MR. HAMILTON: Madam Chairwoman, I think
4 we have arguably taken the first steps. I think if you
5 take a look at -- if you haven't had an opportunity to
6 look at Every Student Counts, I think it does put the
7 information forward in a way that is comparable. It does
8 satisfy the statute that says that we wanted to have
9 uniform reports from district to district.
10 That data is collected. The data will get
11 better but right now I would argue that it is quality
12 data. We have good information in the report and it gives
13 a big picture as to what's happening in the district.
14 I would like to add -- and there are a number of
15 district folks in the room. One of the things I would
16 like to add, we're the only state that provides as much
17 space as we do for the schools and districts to provide
18 narratives to go along with the report.
19 And I think to make data informative it is
20 absolutely critical that there's that narrative that
21 accompanies the report. And certainly we have some
22 oversight at the state level and can take forward programs
23 and policies from the state level, but to know what is
24 going on at a local level I think it would be remiss for
25 me to sit down and try to write what happens in Laramie
346
1 County. That's a job for those folks to do.
2 So we've added that and I think that's a nice
3 feature there. If you haven't seen this, I think it is a
4 good effort on our part and also districts' and schools'
5 parts to make that a report that does give that big
6 picture. We would be glad to present that at any time and
7 walk all of you through that report.
8 COCHAIR DEVIN: For legislators and
9 others, how do we get that piece?
10 MR. HAMILTON: One of the things we like
11 about it is entirely web based. We're trying to get away
12 from paper if we can. It can be printed out and looked at
13 in hard copy. You can go to the website -- certainly when
14 I get on the spot, I'll forget it -- www.K12.wy.us, the
15 first link on the screen that you'll come to --
16 fortunately Steve is here to help me out, our data
17 supervisor.
18 If you go to the first page and click on the
19 Department of Education, if you go to the next page, the
20 first link you will see on that page, if you take a look
21 at that, it will walk you through school level reports,
22 district level reports, gives expenditure information. I
23 notice there's a lot of discussion about expenditure
24 information here. I don't know that it -- I doubt it
25 would go to the level you're talking about as far as being
347
1 able to see what is allocated, what is spent, but it does
2 certainly provide some of that information. By statute
3 we're required to do that.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Anderson.
5 SENATOR ANDERSON: Thank you, Madam
6 Chairman. The perspective I'm coming from at this point
7 is the discussion we had in appropriations with regard to
8 management of information across the big board. The kind
9 of term that went with that, we find ourselves data rich
10 and information poor.
11 With regard to what we're talking about with
12 regard to the educational piece, my question would be if I
13 as a legislator, local school administrator or perhaps
14 even a teacher at a much lower level needed to receive
15 information from the available data, my understanding is
16 that you first in order to get good information have to
17 phrase an articulate question and present it to someone
18 who is an analyst, maybe someone like you, in order to
19 take that appropriate question, draw the data and
20 interpret that into some sort of information.
21 The question being there is that analyst, is
22 that person going to be available as a resource for
23 someone like me to go to with a question? Is there going
24 to be an available resource?
25 MR. HAMILTON: Madam Chairman, Senator
348
1 Anderson, absolutely, we try to provide the information on
2 that report. If you have questions on that, we have
3 information where you can contact somebody at the
4 Department. I would say that Steve is probably the key
5 person. Steve King is our data supervisor within the
6 Department. I would consider him to be that key analyst.
7 I can answer the questions because I've been the
8 one who has worked through the accounts. I know
9 everything in the report and can certainly give you an
10 explanation of what's there and answer your questions.
11 SENATOR ANDERSON: One other quick
12 question, and this is kind of from the broader
13 perspective, in regard to the amount of data that's
14 available across the state, I hear practically from every
15 department in regard to the efforts that they're taking to
16 gather data. And we're hearing particularly with the
17 collaboration here of the Department of Education, the
18 Department of Audit and things that are going on there.
19 My question is in regard to the Department of
20 Education as well as the Department of Audit, are you
21 collaborating with other human resource agencies within
22 state government in order to have some sort of pool for
23 data in regard to health, social, education and other
24 issues that could be very beneficial in how we guide this
25 whole process of education given the broadness of that
349
1 issue?
2 MR. HAMILTON: In answer to that question
3 I would offer up one of the things we looked at in the
4 data facilitation forum that Senator Sessions has
5 mentioned as well as Representative Shivler, we made an
6 attempt -- I shouldn't say we made an attempt. We have
7 contacted other agencies in the state to see if there was
8 information that we were collecting that was duplicative,
9 maybe similar to what they were collecting and in that
10 sense we tried -- if we could find something like that, we
11 could somehow combine it into one collection so that
12 districts were reporting fairly similar information to
13 different agencies.
14 So that was the tack we took with that group and
15 we found that there really wasn't duplicated information
16 that different agencies were collecting.
17 As far as being able to get that information in
18 one report, maybe information that they collect that we
19 don't collect, to be able to offer that in one report to
20 bring it all together, that isn't an issue we addressed in
21 that forum and that's not one that I've been able to spend
22 a lot of time with. I honestly haven't spent time
23 thinking how we might be able to do that but it is
24 certainly something we can look into.
25 COCHAIR DEVIN: Dr. Marion.
350
1 MR. MARION: Madam Chairman, a couple
2 issues related to Senator Anderson's point and your
3 original question.
4 Senator Anderson, one of the things you're
5 getting into the hands of the people making the decisions
6 closest to kids. I can only speak about the test data and
7 we try to do that in multiple formats and provide, I
8 think, a wealth of professional development opportunities
9 to provide instruction at the district and school level so
10 people are able to analyze test data and use it, actually
11 change, if need be, the kind of instruction they're
12 providing in the classroom. Can we do more? Certainly.
13 And we're working on ways all of the time to try and
14 present that data in an easier-to-use format.
15 To go back to your original question, the way I
16 understood it, Senator Devin, was that it -- can you find
17 out how things are working, considering all of the efforts
18 and initiatives about education, as a state. You know, we
19 have the Every Student Counts, is really a
20 school-by-school report or district by district.
21 And we've never really been charged with -- we
22 have our annual report that we're required to pull out as
23 an agency. That doesn't really get at exactly the same
24 kinds of things that you're dealing with right now in
25 terms of are things getting better in the state of
351
1 Wyoming. And there's so many variables to look at with so
2 many different data sources so, you know, we would be
3 happy, actually, to write such a report depending on the
4 types of parameters that the committee or the legislature
5 of the whole decided were important to have: End of year,
6 state of the state report and assessment. That would be
7 an interesting thing.
8 Every time I, you know, run some analysis, WYCAS
9 data, and write about it I get a lot of people mad at me,
10 so it would be easier to have it be directed by the
11 legislature. Really, what do you want to see? Do you
12 want to see the effects of certain types of differential
13 expenditures and WYCAS scores, teacher experience on WYCAS
14 scores. We have to constrain it in some way to make it
15 usable and make it something we can produce over time
16 consistently.
17 SENATOR ANDERSON: Just a quick comment in
18 regard to reports. Many times reports are answers looking
19 for questions. In other words, as a legislator, teacher,
20 practitioner, I get these huge volumes of reports and I
21 have to look through there to see if I have an appropriate
22 problem to match the report.
23 The point I'm trying to make, in regard to how
24 we've got to drive instruction and how we've got to drive
25 policy that governs instruction, we need someplace where
352
1 we can go with the problem with the question and then beg
2 the answer.
3 What we get in terms of reports are just the
4 opposite.
5 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Data.
6 MR. HAMILTON: I would just like to say
7 that I actually called my secretary and she's going to be
8 running over some brochures that we've developed and
9 realizing that we've developed these brochures realizing
10 that we don't advertise probably as well as we should as a
11 data and technology unit what kind of information is
12 available.
13 So you can come with a question and if it is a
14 question that's focused on staffing that you can go out
15 and actually find a resource that has that information for
16 you. And so one of the things that we're trying to do
17 with this brochure that I will hopefully have in my hand
18 shortly and be able to hand out is to let folks know where
19 that information is at.
20 One thing I would say, if you printed out the
21 Every Student Counts, this report would be thousands of
22 pages long. So to avoid that, what we've tried to do is
23 just put it out and make it available on the web. The
24 reason it is so long is it does go down to the school
25 level. It has information about schools and to do that we
353
1 have 379 schools and provide all of the reports that we
2 provide on a school right there.
3 If you do the multiplication, four different
4 reports we do, that adds up. We're trying to make a
5 resource that isn't a stack you dig through and try to
6 find your question. Hopefully you're able to go to that
7 and it will be presented in an interpretable way. That's
8 one of the things the legislation talked about was
9 presenting this information in an interpretable way. So
10 hopefully we're getting better at doing that because
11 you're right, you can have a lot of data and not any
12 information.
13 So we're trying to really advertise and put the
14 information out in a way that folks would be able to do
15 that.
16 COCHAIR DEVIN: Would I have to go through
17 all 300 and some schools to pull this data together to try
18 to tell how we're doing as a state? A couple of years?
19 Because there's different levels. I mean, I speak to the
20 Rotary Club or the Optimists and I'm asked, we've done all
21 of this, put all of this in, we've made these changes,
22 what's happened for children?
23 And we get the same -- those questions are only
24 going to intensify for future committees and future
25 chairmen, I think, and I think it is only responsible for
354
1 us as representatives of the people to be asking those
2 questions and to know what is happening because it
3 certainly makes a big difference where and how you
4 allocate money and what kind of policies you have in terms
5 of where your trend lines are going or where they're not
6 going.
7 MR. MARION: Madam Chairman, we could
8 easily produce an aggregate report, a state report that
9 aggregates all of the district Every Student Count
10 reports.
11 COCHAIR DEVIN: If I'm sitting with a
12 child in a certain district, I want to know specifics
13 about that to be an effective parent, but as a citizen, I
14 also want some aggregate data.
15 REPRESENTATIVE WASSERBERGER: Madam
16 Chairman, at least in our district we have all kinds of
17 reporting facilities that we use. We have a report card
18 that is given to the school board by every school, but in
19 my office as a principal I have my WYCAS results.
20 All of this is done on a computer program called
21 Powerschool. It has every grade, all the way through that
22 student's career. It has all its discipline referrals,
23 whether or not that student is on an educational --
24 special education plan and all of the reports within that
25 plan. I can click on anything that I want. I can
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1 actually split my screens, which is a wonderful tool, and
2 look at what the WYCAS scores and what the grades are.
3 And that doesn't seem very important but it is
4 absolutely crucial data because one of the problems with
5 WYCAS is that students are not accountable for their test.
6 I am as an administrator, my teachers are, the school
7 board is but how a student scores on that doesn't bother
8 them in any way. It is not held for graduation purposes
9 or anything like that. But what it does do, what that
10 does show me is if a student has good grades and they have
11 scored novice on the WYCAS test in three or four different
12 areas, I know that that student bobbled in the test. And
13 I can pull him down or her down and talk to them about
14 what -- how important that is.
15 We test at the eighth grade level at the junior
16 high I'm at. What the purpose of that is for is at the
17 11th grade they will know when they take the WYCAS the
18 next time someone is watching and hopefully they won't
19 bobble the test again. We have for every student across
20 the district all the tests, all the grades. We have
21 cumulative by school. It really is a wonderful piece of
22 information.
23 COCHAIR DEVIN: We struggled long and hard
24 to get that, both districts and the committee, I think, to
25 get that at that meaningful local level because I think
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1 that's where you effect the most hands-on change. I think
2 what we're hearing here and what I'm concerned, when you
3 move to the responsibilities of this committee and the
4 legislature, you have some need for some aggregate pieces
5 also and those are pieces that are hard to --
6 REPRESENTATIVE WASSERBERGER: Madam
7 Chairman, I believe the State Department of Education does
8 have a report on every school with the WYCAS results and
9 they should -- we are also required to give our report
10 card to the school board and then from the school board it
11 is sent to the State Department of Education. I believe
12 that all of that information is on file if you choose to
13 want to have it.
14 COCHAIR DEVIN: But I think that's the
15 problem. Citizens don't want to go through 300 and some
16 schools to figure it out. And then we're probably going
17 to get however many different conclusions as the people
18 who go through the data. That's what I'm asking, is that
19 we have a reliable source where people have done it
20 responsibly and understand it can pull it together.
21 SENATOR ANDERSON: Just quickly, Madam
22 Chairman, in regard to Representative Wasserberger's
23 point, he's making a good point because he's showing this
24 committee, not all of who are educators, the resources
25 that are available to him as an administrator in order to
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1 make program decisions. He is schooled and skilled in
2 regard to pulling that information and making program
3 decisions.
4 Take it a level higher to policy making
5 decisions, then, we need the kind of resources to come
6 before the education committee in order to help us make
7 policy decisions somewhat similar to what he uses at the
8 school level in order to make program decisions, and I
9 think that's what I'm seeking is so that when we sit down
10 to make policy decisions it will help drive better
11 instruction, better achievement, we need to be able to
12 access information as easily as he can and have someone
13 available that has the training that he has to help us at
14 the policy level make the decisions that we need in order
15 to drive instruction.
16 COCHAIR DEVIN: Very well stated.
17 Senator Scott.
18 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I just
19 would like to say, as I look for this data, I really have
20 two needs. One, the WYCAS fills very well, you know,
21 snapshots of how well we are doing against our standards,
22 how well the schools and the districts are performing, and
23 I thought that the current WYCAS system did a very good
24 job on that.
25 And, for example, when it showed we had
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1 deficiencies in the reading area, a high percentage of
2 kids not learning how to read, the result was the reading
3 assessment program. So you can see that it got used to
4 translate into change trying to do something about
5 results.
6 There's, I think, a second need, and that is to
7 be able to say, okay, there's a lot of variation in how
8 ready kids are for school and the really family
9 preparedness that you get, do the parents think education
10 is important, there's a whole series of things that go
11 into the overall level.
12 And for seeing how well the schools are doing
13 and how well individual schools are doing I think you need
14 to see -- you need to be able to track groups of students
15 from one year to the next to the next so you can say,
16 "Okay, this school maybe had a tough population," and we
17 do have a school in Casper particularly that's got a
18 reputation of doing a good job for kids that -- they're
19 not special ed but they're close. And if you evaluate
20 that based just on the WYCAS snapshot, it doesn't look
21 very good. What you want to see is are they making
22 improvements in those kids from one year to the next to
23 the next because that tends to hold the other -- drop the
24 other things down and see are they -- are the schools
25 doing a good job in making progress given what they have.
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1 And so you have sort of two purposes. I guess
2 the one is longitudinal and the other is something else.
3 But I think that the reports we have have to fill both
4 needs so that we can see the kind of quality we're getting
5 in our education accurately.
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Sessions, you had
7 a comment?
8 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, I would
9 like to talk to Scott about tracking that student. And
10 what a measure of a school is -- and we can get all of the
11 stuff that surrounds it, but the measure of a school in
12 education is when you take a child in the beginning and
13 you take them with all of the warts and everything that
14 happens and it is that individual child's measurement of
15 progress from year to year to year within that individual
16 classroom.
17 And that's the true picture of what your schools
18 do from K through 12 of each individual child. And if
19 we -- and I don't know what we need to do this, and
20 maybe -- and I think what we need to do is we need -- we
21 need the grade level testing that will replace the WYCAS
22 that will do it, and we need the student identification
23 number so that we have the ability to track them clear
24 through.
25 And then you can take that back in your school
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1 improvement and look at each of that and look at three
2 third grades with the same teacher and you can say, you
3 know, at teacher evaluation over a three-year period
4 there's a problem in this school because these third
5 graders are not progressing like they should. I mean, you
6 know, you can take each individual child and show the
7 progress.
8 And that's what our communities need to know.
9 They need to know that our children can progress at the
10 level that we expect them to from grade to grade to grade.
11 So what do you need to do that? And is it that
12 we're going to have to wait for that type of
13 down-to-the-bottom-level kind of information for the WYCAS
14 to turn into the grade level tests.
15 MR. MARION: Madam Chairman, Senator
16 Sessions, that's one of the bills you voted on to
17 incorporate the omnibus bill. First, to have grade 3
18 through 8 testing. The next piece is to be able to
19 identify and track individual students. And I don't know
20 how much of the piece that you guys are putting in get to
21 that, but that's our goal, is that it becomes a single
22 system. I could have all of the grade level tests I want.
23 If I don't know what kid took it third to fourth grade, it
24 is useless.
25 The other thing -- I probably should just shut
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1 up, really. I can't help it -- it is a notion of tracking
2 growth of individual students. It is not quite as simple
3 as it sounds intuitively. It sounds so intuitively simple
4 that why wouldn't everybody do it. This relates to
5 expectations as well. How much growth is enough?
6 Everybody is going to grow because they're getting a year
7 older. How much is enough and how much will be enough to
8 actually start closing gaps is the real issue.
9 In a lot of places where they've simply said, we
10 expect everybody to grow, the gap between, for example,
11 the white kids and minority kids actually widened instead
12 of narrowed. That's not the result that any of us wanted
13 to see. That's the kind of things we want to get at.
14 COCHAIR DEVIN: That's the bigger system
15 picture. Without belaboring it, we've identified that
16 teachers need pieces, parents need multiple pieces,
17 principals need a piece, but ultimately we're asking you
18 for a piece for policy.
19 Representative McOmie.
20 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
21 have one more question that ties in with what Senator
22 Sessions was asking and what Scott was talking about.
23 We've got $6 million or so to try to develop a program
24 that will measure individual children's progress and we
25 can integrate it. It won't be one school this way, one
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1 school another way.
2 But No Child Left Behind and all of the various
3 other things coming down on education, are we supposed to
4 be measuring our children versus children in other areas
5 or are we just looking at ours? If we develop our own
6 individual tests, there's no standardized test throughout
7 the United States, what in the world -- where is this all
8 going to go? Do you have any idea?
9 MR. MARION: Madam Chairman, my crystal
10 ball this week is a little hazy, I'll tell you, on this
11 one, Representative McOmie, but the one common test we do
12 all have is the National Assessment of Educational
13 Progress. In the initial legislation there was an attempt
14 to put in a provision that would allow the U.S. Department
15 of Education to link state schools to the NAEP scale and
16 then evaluate states on that. Many studies have shown
17 that's going to be very difficult.
18 What the U.S. Department will likely use NAEP
19 for is in a state like ours where we have -- this is
20 actually the perfect contradiction to this Business Week
21 article -- where our standards, we show very similar
22 percent of kids being proficient on NAEP as we do on
23 WYCAS, where if you go to North Carolina, they might have
24 75, 80 percent of the kids proficient on the state test
25 but fewer than that actually proficient on NAEP.
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1 So the Department will use that to evaluate how
2 well states are doing. When we say yeah, we're making
3 great strides in our state on our standards, based upon,
4 and look, we have an increase in number of kids performing
5 proficiently on WYCAS and if we don't see a similar
6 increase on NAEP, there's no question we will get eyes
7 raised from the U.S. Department of Education.
8 There's no provision in No Child Left Behind to
9 really say how much of a gap between NAEP scores and state
10 assessment scores is acceptable, how much is unacceptable.
11 There's no provision in the law to use it for an
12 accountability mechanism. But it is very clear from
13 conversations with folks in D.C., that's certainly the
14 intent.
15 So that's -- but you can't have a common
16 national test unless you have common national standards,
17 and so NAEP is the closest thing to that.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: Okay. Thank you for that.
19 I think it is just important that before you go further in
20 your work we just clarify what our expectations are and
21 what we do need done.
22 Annette, did you have a comment before we moved
23 on?
24 DR. BOHLING: I do, Madam Chairman,
25 members of the committee. The Wyoming Department of
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1 Education each year submits its annual report to LSO and
2 we just turned that in last week, and it has data in there
3 that you are interested in seeing which is the aggregated
4 data based on the WYCAS, as well as accreditation scores
5 from all of the districts that we have visited in the last
6 year.
7 So the kind of data -- there's an executive
8 summary in the booklet, but, in addition, you will look at
9 colored score pages which will give you nice aggregate
10 overview of all of the WYCAS data, trend data, and it
11 won't be longitudinal data because we don't collect that,
12 meaning this will compare fourth grade to fourth grade to
13 fourth grade of each year.
14 But I think this will help you, it will
15 help provide the committee with some of the information
16 that you've been asking for.
17 COCHAIR DEVIN: Okay. Thank you.
18 Then the next item on our agenda is the School
19 Boards Association have asked for an opportunity to
20 present just for our edification a model -- a piece that
21 they have been putting in time on, if I find it here in my
22 stack.
23 So thank you, and welcome. If you will
24 provide -- introduce yourself to the committee and feel
25 free to --
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1 MR. RIESLAND: If I may, may I stand up.
2 COCHAIR DEVIN: You certainly may, any
3 method so long as our court reporter can get what you're
4 saying. We've discovered that some people talk so fast
5 she needs to be able to read lips just about.
6 MR. RIESLAND: I'll try to talk slow. My
7 name is John Riesland and I want to thank you for giving
8 us the opportunity to speak here today. I'm the president
9 of the Wyoming School Boards Association. Just took that
10 office as of December 1st.
11 We're here today -- or I'm going to speak a
12 little bit and my colleagues will help me. I'm going to
13 speak a little bit about a vision and I think in listening
14 to you speak this morning about education I think you have
15 the same vision that I do and other educators around the
16 state of Wyoming.
17 We have a vision of where our schools can be
18 funded equitably and sufficiently to provide the basket of
19 goods, educational goods, to our children. That was one
20 of our visions.
21 We have another vision where we can stop
22 fighting. We're tired of lawsuits. I don't know exact
23 numbers in which lawyers benefit every year, but it is
24 around a million dollars plus. That doesn't go to the
25 children of our educational system. And it doesn't go to
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1 school districts. It doesn't go to the State. It goes to
2 the individuals.
3 We want to stop fighting. I want to be able to
4 talk to a larger district or smaller district, get their
5 ideas on education so that we can develop better policies
6 within our districts instead of, "We can't talk to you
7 because you're the enemy." So we really think that's an
8 important issue.
9 When we started to develop this model with the
10 coalition of educators and professionals, one of the other
11 goals was to make it simple. We want everyone with a
12 little bit of education to understand it. That doesn't
13 mean you will understand it, as I've heard this morning,
14 in a year or so, or I understand it now after four years
15 of the current model. And maybe I'll understand it better
16 if I continue to study it.
17 We want to be able to understand it today. We
18 can make changes within the model. We can see what it
19 does. You as legislators can do that. We as school board
20 members can do that. Superintendents and business
21 managers can do that.
22 And what that allows us to do in the state of
23 Wyoming, number one, is for you to set budgets with -- you
24 work with dollars all of the time. But so do we. And if
25 we don't understand the current model, if we don't know
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1 how much money our district is going to get because of
2 hold harmless and that sort of thing, it is very difficult
3 for us to convene in July, set up a budget, put in
4 curriculum so that we can educate our children to their
5 fullest need so they can do well on the WYCAS test if
6 that's what we're looking at or any standardized test so
7 we can present it to the public. We can actually put in
8 programs. We can put in budgets.
9 It has to be creative. As everyone here knows,
10 we've lost, what, 10,000 I believe was the number of
11 students in the last six years. It has to be creative and
12 adaptive that it can take the changes in population and be
13 simply incorporated into the model.
14 It is one thing -- I've been on the school board
15 in my local district now for ten years. And I just want
16 to add this in because I don't know where it started and
17 it has always puzzled me. I've been here to the
18 legislature and spoke before, but there always seems to be
19 a mistrust between you and school districts. There's
20 always that mistrust: We don't trust you. You don't
21 trust us.
22 Well, today I think we have an olive branch. We
23 can put it out there. We can give it to you. We're going
24 to give it to you. You can put it on your computers. You
25 can play with it. You can ask questions. You can go back
368
1 to your local districts. You can talk to superintendents,
2 business managers, hopefully the public, teachers, staff,
3 classified, anybody, and they should be able to understand
4 what we're trying to do here.
5 It is simple in nature, but it solves a lot of
6 complex problems, which I've even heard a few this
7 morning. It solves some of those issues of hold harmless,
8 equitable funding, and hopefully it solves the
9 constitutionality question that everybody knows of, but it
10 should also solve the lawsuits.
11 That's the vision of the school boards and the
12 School Boards Association. And we've had a lot of help
13 along the way from professionals in the business of
14 education. And just wanted to present that to you.
15 At this point I, if I may, Madam Chairman, I
16 would like Bryan Monteith to go ahead and speak a little
17 bit more.
18 MR. MONTEITH: Good morning, Madam
19 Chairman and members of the committee, and thank you very
20 much on behalf of not only the School Boards Association
21 but all of the other groups that work together in this
22 process over the past few months to try and develop a
23 product that we could present to you to do some of the
24 very things that John was talking about.
25 I'm in front of you this morning because as part
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1 of my responsibilities as being president of the
2 superintendents association, the Wyoming school boards
3 group that kind of tapped on me last year and asked if I
4 would chair this and I said I certainly would because we
5 certainly have some issues that are important to us
6 related to school funding also.
7 Also at our table this morning is Vern McAdams
8 who is the business officer for Laramie 2 and I want to --
9 you're going to get -- we have a lot of materials to
10 present to you this morning. And let me tell you what
11 they are before we get too much farther.
12 We have a complete database spreadsheet printed
13 for you to take with you and examine.
14 There's also a two-page overview from the
15 Wyoming School Boards Association related to issues that
16 were taken up by the School Boards Association, discussed
17 by the executive committee of the association, and
18 certainly a resolution that was adopted by the Wyoming
19 School Boards Association at the delegate assembly.
20 In addition to that, we do have a few copies
21 available for you of the latest Excel-based spreadsheet on
22 disks that we're perfectly willing to give to the
23 committee and the committee can determine how they want to
24 distribute those for people to do their own analysis of
25 what the spreadsheet is about and how that model is put
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1 together.
2 I suspect before I go too much farther I want to
3 talk a little bit about basically some of the reasons that
4 the School Boards Association and certainly other groups
5 related to this entire process came together this summer.
6 I don't think there's any secret that there's a
7 lot of dissatisfaction with MAP across the state -- I
8 should say the current funding model which is based on
9 recommendations you received from MAP. As John has
10 alluded to, we're certainly concerned about issues of
11 equality, about distribution of education throughout all
12 of the districts and all of the schools, wherever those
13 school sites are in the state.
14 And one of the basic components that is
15 extraordinarily important for us to try to convey to you
16 and for us to have you understand is that the primary
17 difference between the model that we're going to present
18 to you this morning and the one that currently exists is
19 that this is a school-based funding model. It is not
20 based on district aggregate ADM as is true with the
21 current funding model.
22 Which is simply to say that if you have a school
23 in Hulett, Wyoming, or if you have a school in Pine
24 Bluffs, or if you have a rural school in Laramie County,
25 what the committee did was look at the most important
371
1 criteria required by the State of Wyoming, and that is the
2 delivery of the basket of goods.
3 You can impose that basket of goods upon any
4 school anywhere in the state and the next question is what
5 kind of staff do you have to have to effectively deliver
6 that basket of goods. And that's the basis upon which
7 this model was developed, is to make a determination of
8 what kind of staff you need to develop -- deliver the
9 basket of goods in Rock River and put that many staff in
10 there.
11 That's an increased cost component, but I think
12 it has been stated before that kids don't come in neat
13 packets of 16 kids and you drop them in schools and
14 therefore you have a teacher. If you have 8 children or
15 27 children, this model accommodates those needs pretty
16 effectively.
17 Let me go back -- I kind of got off track a
18 little bit. Let me address one thing with you.
19 I think the immediate catalyst, the cause for
20 the formation of the committee this past summer was the
21 issue with the hold harmless designation and the reduction
22 in the cost-based allocation dedicated to 23 school
23 districts that occurred during the last legislative
24 session.
25 The bottom line for us is when you come up to
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1 the 2002 -- I mean the legislative session for funding in
2 2002-2003, as a group you get a recommendation to reduce
3 the funding for the delivery of the basket of goods in 23
4 school districts in the amount of $14 million.
5 Frankly, we don't know where that came from.
6 We've never really understood that.
7 The secondary question that we have is it was
8 cost-based for five years and how all of a sudden it
9 isn't. We didn't understand that. So that was the thing
10 that really drew the attention of certainly the 23 small
11 districts who are immediately impacted. And essentially I
12 can tell you that we first were advanced by the small
13 schools group or Small Schools Coalition asking for
14 assistance from the School Boards Association and from the
15 School Administrators Association last year to try to
16 develop a means to take a look at these issues, solve the
17 problems, and as John said, create some sort of
18 school-based funding model that was far more simple to
19 understand than the one that's currently in place.
20 Now, I know that you all started out with a
21 pretty simple MAP model, pretty simple model that results
22 in the current funding model that's been adopted by the
23 State and over the course of time through additional
24 lawsuits and additional things that were deemed important,
25 that has become extremely more complicated than it was
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1 originally intended to be. I don't think I can sit here
2 and guarantee to you that this model won't become more
3 complex than it is being presented to you today.
4 But let me assure you of one thing at this point
5 in time. You can take this model home. You can put it on
6 your computer, and if you have Excel you can run the
7 spreadsheet and you can change it any number of ways you
8 want and see immediately what happens.
9 I don't think that's true with the current model
10 because we have a great deal of difficulty understanding
11 what a modification amounts to, why that was recommended
12 and how that impacts the bottom line in some cases. So
13 we're advocating the simplicity of the model as John
14 noted.
15 I think there's another issue that the committee
16 was very much focused on and that is the entire definition
17 of what is a quality staff and what is enough staff to
18 deliver the basket of goods and I am going to diverge here
19 for a minute and talk about the issue of cost based.
20 We hear cost based, we hear expenditure driven.
21 We hear cost effective and a whole number of other things.
22 But for purposes of our committee, we came to one basic
23 conclusion and it probably won't surprise you at all. If
24 you want high quality results in our schools you're going
25 to have to have high quality people and that means you
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1 have to have the ability to attract people to take
2 positions in your district by virtue of the salary and
3 benefit packages that you pay them to entice them to
4 choose to be in Wyoming rather than some other place.
5 So one of the big pieces of the component that
6 you're going to hear about in a few minutes is that we are
7 advocating significant increases in salaries for
8 professional staff in order to meet what we see as the
9 cost-based component of this model and that's providing
10 high-quality people to teach in the classrooms of your
11 schools.
12 In addition to that, we want to talk a little
13 bit about the ratios of staffing, particularly as it
14 concerns small schools, and I've mentioned that a little
15 bit. But if I'm not mistaken, Vern and John, I think
16 those are the main points of what we wanted to cover this
17 morning.
18 I will end there and we've asked Vern McAdams to
19 go through some of the information related to the actual
20 model expenses and we're going to talk about those
21 expenses with you and about where those component expenses
22 are so you have a clear understanding of what it is we're
23 advocating for you.
24 MR. MCADAMS: Madam Chairman, Vern
25 McAdams, business manager at Laramie County School
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1 District 2. I volunteered from the beginning with the
2 Small District Coalition to work on this model and put it
3 together. I became pretty quick the wizard trying to make
4 the ideas work with help with a number of things.
5 Without belaboring a lot of this, I would like
6 to go to the large legal size and go to page 1, explain
7 some of this model. I think you can see some of the
8 simplicity rather quickly and I'll just kind of explain
9 how the elementary works.
10 On page 1 what you literally see is district by
11 district totals or summaries. The first thing to
12 recognize is we're using the same ADM in this model as you
13 see here today as the current funding, it is districts are
14 getting currently funded under. You see elementary,
15 middle school, high schools, those are pieces of it based
16 on the same ADM we're using today in current funding.
17 Maintenance and operation, we have the square
18 footage out of MAP that's 3.2B and district funding we're
19 basically different components applied a little
20 differently than what MAP is doing. But then you will see
21 the WCLI increase, what we saw yesterday and some of the
22 recommendations in the study could easily be placed in
23 here instead of what we've done because you will see we
24 basically held anybody harmless and added the increases in
25 in this model. That could easily be modified to the study
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1 we saw yesterday. That's a piece we're aware from the
2 very inception of this.
3 Transportation, special ed and those other ones,
4 these are actually off of MAP 3.2B so they're a year older
5 and actually comparing them to this year's funding. I've
6 talked to the Department of Education. We're going to
7 work on getting those numbers and have it so we could do a
8 head-to-head comparison because that's the way the
9 spreadsheet is laid out. The districts currently funded
10 under the current funding system and how would they be
11 funded under this model.
12 Understand those reimbursements are a year out
13 so that would actually change the total some, and without
14 having MAP's exact final numbers or the current funding
15 final numbers, the variances we see in this model will
16 change. And I think you'll see they actually go down.
17 The important thing to understand is that 116
18 million of this total we're looking at goes into certified
19 staff salaries. The majority of what we're talking about
20 going into in money is going right into certified staff.
21 Some of the things when we look at for like
22 assessments or gifted and talented, we're still using the
23 same dollar amounts that MAP is in this model in these
24 pieces and we will see some of that in a minute.
25 Page 2 is just a summary, just a tie-in for some
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1 of the analysis. I want to go to page 3. Page 3 through
2 8 actually shows the ADM. You can see literally district
3 by district, school by school -- and literally this is
4 three-year rolling ADM school by school, grade by grade in
5 each of these. You can see half K, kindergarten, first,
6 second, third grade and adds up all the way through as the
7 schools are currently configured and comes up with a
8 total.
9 What this model does is if it is from 1 to 40,
10 it literally goes 1 to every 10 kids, follows that MAP
11 example and the very necessary small schools.
12 Above 40 to 170, which is the average of these
13 elementary schools, it actually does it looking on the
14 staffing ratios at a 15 to 1 in the elementary, K through
15 3, jumps to 15 to 1 and eventually 19 to 1 based on
16 staffing ratios. Based on those ratios in the model it
17 says how many educators do you need to educate those kids.
18 There's a prototype under 40 on the real
19 necessary small schools and there's a prototype from 41 to
20 170 and 170 to infinity on how we calculate those
21 teachers. There's three prototypes in there. Basically
22 what we've done when we've done that is done away with the
23 small school adjustment. You will see we've actually done
24 away with the small district adjustment and that's how we
25 dealt with actually getting rid of the adjustment and yet
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1 dealing with the economy issues.
2 If you look at Beitel Elementary, the first one,
3 the kindergarten is 1.1 at 15. If the whole school is
4 170, you would see that as two teachers because it is a
5 15-to-1 staffing ratio, the reason being in small schools
6 when you met that number and you say under your policy,
7 under your board guidelines it is time to have a second
8 teacher, you ended up paying for all of the costs, the
9 salaries and benefits of that second teacher.
10 In this model we said needs to fund that second
11 teacher above 170. We said there's certain economies of
12 scale, we're only going to phase that in and not
13 necessarily jump right to a second teacher. Because if
14 you look on down through here, about in the middle, Lovell
15 Elementary, you will see that they're talking about --
16 well, they're at 28 but they're talking about 2.
17 You can see just going through there, we
18 literally are going grade by grade trying to figure out
19 what is the teacher needs, how many FTEs do we need to
20 educate each of those classes. And actually, you will see
21 that at the elementary, pages 1 through 8. If you go to
22 page 9, you will see the rest of the teachers and then
23 there's just a subtotal, classroom teachers in that
24 basically fifth column, and that's just adding up the
25 teachers there. If it is under 40, it is 1-to-10 ratio.
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1 And then based on a ratio -- specialists,
2 counselors, librarians, nurses -- you will see all of
3 these rolled up to the nearest tenth. These are people we
4 share in the buildings so these are the people we felt no
5 matter the size of the school, it was best to add it to
6 the nearest tenth in the ratios. Assistant principals and
7 principals basically come in there at 170 to 1, after 170
8 you get a full-time principal regardless of size.
9 Assistants come in at 340.
10 And we can go in ad infinitum with the ratios,
11 but you can see it calculates staff, comes up with a
12 subtotal of staff, noncertified staff, the technology
13 people in the building, secretaries, aides, media aids.
14 You will see food service isn't funded. There's
15 not a good study, no information how we can do that. In
16 my own district food service is not self-supporting. We
17 have to take from the general fund to do it. Until
18 there's some information to actually say how that should
19 be and what that should look like we had to leave it out
20 of the model.
21 Days for subs and days for secretaries and
22 clerks in there, the model literally says here's the
23 salary, we set the base salary at 30,000 in this model and
24 at the average of 12.4 years and an average of -- I think
25 it ended up being a BA 30 in the lanes, that's where we
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1 come up with an average salary number that you see the
2 numbers in this model.
3 So we take the FTEs, times the compensation
4 amount, salaries and benefits, job sharing, and there
5 again is the classroom teachers. There's the dollar
6 amounts.
7 We turn back to -- to get back and see more of
8 the model as it goes out. Usually when I do this on the
9 spreadsheet I don't get quite so lost here. Actually go
10 back to page 17. You can see here we put the dollar
11 amounts of specialists, counselors, librarians. It
12 follows exactly the same thing. We calculated what the
13 staff needs are and what the dollar amounts should be for
14 that number of staff, not only through the certified, but
15 then the noncertified, a subtotal for payroll comes up and
16 then the nonpayroll stuff, the supplies, the equipment,
17 the contract services, all of those kinds of things.
18 The gifted and talented assessments and the
19 piece of maintenance that's actually ADM driven is
20 actually -- if you looked on page 21, those are literally
21 ADM in the school times the dollar amount, and except for
22 activities these are the same dollar amounts MAP brought
23 to you.
24 And see in 3.2B in activities we went to the
25 Wyoming High School Activities Association and the survey
381
1 they did in 1995, and they said here's the average cost
2 for 1A, 2A, 3A schools. And we actually put that in the
3 model instead of using a lumped, rounded number of all
4 districts. But that's the only departure in the
5 nonpayroll side we actually have from MAP in these dollar
6 amounts and these numbers.
7 So you see, our model, literally what is driving
8 it is the number of people, the way we're calculating
9 those people and the costs for those people. If we go
10 through the middle school, you will see it follows the
11 same concept. Actually below 260, above 260 which is
12 average size of middle schools it follows the high school
13 concept, and again, the high school concept is a little
14 more difficult. We look at ADM and say what do we need to
15 staff that.
16 And if you go clear to the back, you can see --
17 in the two pages or three pages from the back you can
18 actually see the staffing ratios for the larger middle
19 schools and high schools, and part of what we did in there
20 is set down there and said what do we need, what do we
21 need to deliver the basket of goods.
22 And basically we started with 454 high school.
23 This includes vocational ed teachers. At 454 we're
24 looking at three vocational ed FTEs. We've dealt with
25 part of that vocational ed. You notice the nonpayroll
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1 side, we didn't have that piece. We need some information
2 to say what could actually be justifiable and what could
3 hold up to court scrutiny as we saw in the food service.
4 But developing those ratios from there, 19 to 1 ratio,
5 what do we need to deliver the basket of goods and apply
6 that to the high school model and concept and add the
7 other pieces in just when the ratios might change is
8 really the same approach we just went through with the
9 elementary.
10 Maintenance and operation, it is simple enough,
11 we just said fund the square footage. And many of you
12 will recognize, we funded it at 2.52 a square foot -- and
13 I'm not turning back to the right page yet. Page number
14 42 -- page number 44 is actually where I want to go. All
15 we're saying on maintenance and operation, because there's
16 a piece in maintenance and operation that's already ADM
17 driven so John's school district at 500,000 square feet
18 and a thousand kids and my district at 500,000 square feet
19 and only 50 kids, there's a difference in maintenance and
20 operation because a piece is ADM driven.
21 That's currently in the MAP model. And going
22 around doing this presentation it is interesting to notice
23 how many school people didn't even realize that, Didn't
24 realize there's two pieces in the MAP model for
25 maintenance. And this model follows that same approach.
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1 We're just saying fund the square footage.
2 And if you turn back to page 42, what we
3 literally did on the district adjustment, we basically
4 took the same personnel maps for 250, 550 and a thousand,
5 using our salary numbers and said if you're a district
6 above 550, fund the personnel for the first 550. You're a
7 district above a thousand, fund the personnel for the
8 first thousand. Then literally using MAP's numbers for
9 personnel and nonpersonnel, we said fund the rest of the
10 personnel by the ADM of above a thousand or ADM above 550.
11 And you will see the ones under 250 get funded
12 for the first 250 like you see right now in the small
13 district adjustment. You can literally read a good deal
14 of MAP's report in the small district adjustment word for
15 word, you can say we applied that and we basically dealt
16 with the problem of technical corrections you just came up
17 with. I was the one that sat down and talked to Dr. Smith
18 and pointed that out to him and said I think we have a
19 problem on these districts above a thousand all the way up
20 to 2300 ADM.
21 So we've taken and twisted his approach a little
22 bit. We are basically using the same personnel to start
23 that. But the nonpersonnel is the same numbers MAP is
24 using for their district calculation right now. We just
25 took it out of district prototype calculations that you
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1 see actually in the schools and applied it here.
2 And that's basically the model. I'm about to
3 lose my voice already.
4 And just a real quick overview of how the model
5 works, it is made to be transparent. You will see the
6 last pages are literally you can weed through the ratios
7 we've set, you can go change them, change the dollar
8 amounts for staffing and salaries, the other pieces and
9 the whole model will follow suit and just changes.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: Did you have --
11 MR. MONTEITH: We didn't get to the bottom
12 line and I know that's what is on your mind.
13 COCHAIR DEVIN: It does seem to come up.
14 MR. MONTEITH: It does come up.
15 We have looked at this in a number of various
16 different ways, but the model as it is currently
17 constituted and has been reflected by Vern for you this
18 morning represents $158 million in new funding and that's
19 a lot of money. We understand that.
20 But let me tell you where some of that is so you
21 know what we're dealing with. 116 million is in salaries
22 and benefits.
23 MR. MCADAMS: For certified staff.
24 MR. MONTEITH: And classified? No, just
25 certified staff. Okay.
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1 The purpose of that particular figure is to try
2 to make us competitive regionally and nationally because
3 that is the arena in which we compete. I don't think this
4 will be new to the current members of the JEC because this
5 is a recommendation that came from the MAP advisory
6 committee last year. So this has not been altered since
7 that time except to say we think if we're going to be
8 competitive that the base salary for certified teachers at
9 the entry level ought to be $30,000. If you're at $30,000
10 and then you figure the averages for your salary over a
11 standard salary scale, you would be at 98.2 percent of the
12 national average of teacher salaries based on two-year-old
13 data. So we're already behind in terms of that
14 percentage. If we did something very similar for the
15 administrative staff, that's a big chunk of the 158
16 million total.
17 The second chunk is a piece you're already
18 paying, that's the hold harmless, the 24 million. So
19 assuming that you resolve this issue one way or another
20 and you do fund small districts in a manner that provides
21 them the basket of goods before the recommendation last
22 year, you are talking about then 140 million in that
23 amount and the rest of it is in supplemental staffing.
24 And in terms of the specialists and the prorated
25 staffing, particularly at the small school levels so you
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1 don't get caught up in this issue of having one teacher
2 for 16 and not getting another one until you hit 31.
3 That's where it is at.
4 Now, the next question you may have, I know
5 you -- I'm going to try to precede some of your thinking
6 so I can frame some of this for you, as a committee we
7 understand your concern with the total dollar amount. It
8 is a concern for us. But we go back to what we think is
9 needed in terms of what is required to provide a high
10 quality education for the kids in Wyoming and we think
11 that's our charge to make that recommendation to you.
12 The question is can the model be put into place
13 and then funded on a proportional ratio for a period of
14 two or three years to get there and the answer is yes.
15 We've looked at that two or three different ways. I don't
16 know that we can give you that figure today because we've
17 brought it down nearly 20 million since last week with the
18 recent adjustments but there is a way to do that and we
19 have talked about that and that is a possibility.
20 One of our primary requests of you is to examine
21 this model carefully and consider it as an alternative
22 means of funding schools in the state of Wyoming. I know
23 that's a mouthful, but that's the charge from the Wyoming
24 School Boards Association, and I'm also here to advocate
25 for that position. We want you to examine it very
387
1 carefully in relationship to the quality issue, in
2 relationship to the staffing issue and in relationship to
3 the salary issue which we think are all important if we're
4 going to provide that level of education that we want for
5 our kids in Wyoming.
6 I will stop there and see if you have questions.
7 MR. MCADAMS: Madam Chairman, if I may, to
8 make sure we're all on the same page, this handout we're
9 giving you actually shows about $176 million more if you
10 did the math. I think Mary is doing the math. It is the
11 same one we've given to the districts, that's why we've
12 handed it to you.
13 On our review process we've gone through lately
14 we decided we had an extra lane for the teachers and an
15 extra year of experience for several staff people,
16 including teachers. When we do that it brought it down to
17 158 million. I understand that's 158 million above MAP
18 3.2B which you're currently funding above that number
19 because that's the 704 million. That's the comparison to,
20 not actual comparison numbers for this year's funding.
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Sessions.
22 SENATOR SESSIONS: I would just like to
23 ask him to say that again.
24 MR. MCADAMS: Say?
25 SENATOR SESSIONS: Just what you said
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1 again, the dollars things.
2 MR. MCADAMS: Madam Chairman, on the
3 computer disk it is $158 million more than MAP 3.2B. We
4 started this clear back last May. And that was, of
5 course, numbers and information we had to pull some of
6 this from and to do for the comparison with. Like I said,
7 we're currently talking with the Department of Education
8 about getting the current year funding numbers so we
9 actually have a better comparison of the current funding
10 system versus this model, what districts would see this
11 year and that would be a better comparison what the
12 increase would be also. I'm sure you're aware you're
13 funding more than 704 million today to school districts,
14 but that's the number we're comparing to here.
15 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman.
16 COCHAIR DEVIN: Yes, Representative
17 McOmie.
18 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: My understanding
19 is that if we had one of those disks or with your disk,
20 with your computer, we could say we want to change the
21 classroom teacher ratio from 16 to 18 and within a matter
22 of seconds we could see how that would affect our bottom
23 line. Is that correct?
24 MR. MCADAMS: Madam Chairman, yes, sir,
25 that's right.
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1 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: And any other
2 change, similar changes like that we could have, that
3 would be -- we could say we only want to fund the model at
4 90 percent or 85 percent and that would go through the
5 entire thing; is that correct?
6 MR. MCADAMS: Madam Chairman, let me -- if
7 you change the teacher salary in this model by a thousand
8 dollars, you can go in there and instead of 41,300,
9 whatever exactly that dollar amount is, you change it up
10 and down by a thousand dollars, it is roughly $9 million
11 statewide is the change. You literally type it in
12 whatever you want the number to be and see what the total
13 is.
14 The model was made after much discussion and
15 much debate. It was made to have a phase-in in it. When
16 you open it up, you get -- basically a funding option
17 screen comes up. You can pick single year or three year.
18 We're advocating to stay with the three-year rolling
19 average. If you pick the single year it is a $148 million
20 increase, about a $10 million cut. With a click like that
21 you can actually see how much the funding changes.
22 You can also change the phase-in. This is at
23 100 percent. Can you say let's phase in at 85, 90, or 90,
24 95, 100, or over a couple years, two or three years and it
25 changes the model and does the calculation for that part
390
1 of the model, part of what's in there now.
2 It also has external cost adjustment. You can
3 literally on that same one drop in what that's going to be
4 and the model will change through. Right now it is zero
5 on page 1 but it literally does the MAP. The WCLI index
6 would be changed to what we saw yesterday.
7 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
8 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, looking at
9 this, you know I've got a number of criteria I'm looking
10 for. One is simplicity. This is more complicated than
11 the old classroom unit system but it is significantly
12 simpler than what we've got, so that's a major advantage.
13 If you look at it in terms of the relative
14 position of the districts, and I did run a few numbers,
15 having had this slightly -- got ahold of it yesterday, and
16 comparing your totals here on your large spreadsheet to
17 what MAP showed -- and I didn't run all of the districts,
18 but I did run a sample of them including some small, large
19 and medium sized I find the end result in the relative
20 position is quite close.
21 The greatest difference I found, actually, was
22 in -- when I looked at it as a percent of total, the
23 greatest change I found was one quarter of 1 percent,
24 actually in your district, Madam Chairman. My district
25 came out exactly -- we got the same percentage amount of
391
1 total whether it was with the MAP system or your system.
2 Crook County came out, for instance, two one-hundredths of
3 1 percent better in the new system.
4 So the differences in the relative positions of
5 the districts are quite small with this.
6 I think there's another thing we need to look
7 at. If you get districts that are radically underfunded
8 on the mean on a per-pupil basis you get into trouble.
9 That is far more complication than I've had the time or
10 ability to deal with it. I think in listening to you I
11 think there's some things within your model that need some
12 further refinement.
13 The real question I've got is on the integrity
14 of the model if we say, look, this increase is not
15 something that we can afford, we are going to have to go
16 back to something closer to the current funding. And in
17 all candor, I think, Madam Chairman, that's something
18 we're going to have to do because I don't think it is a
19 matter of phase-in, I think this is a matter of this is
20 going to be the level.
21 And let me explain my reasoning a bit. We've
22 got to come up with a system, a budget for the state as a
23 whole that strikes a reasonable balance between what
24 people are willing to pay in taxes and all of the
25 obligations that we've got. And, you know, if we don't do
392
1 that, the people have the right and have shown the ability
2 to exercise the right to replace the legislators. That's
3 the form of government that our constitution guarantees
4 each state. We have to strike a balance. And if we have
5 to come up with 158 more, that's adding two cents to the
6 sales tax or 20 million to the property tax or it is
7 cutting out the state health department, you know, the
8 people aren't going to stand for that sort of thing and it
9 is their right not to stand for it.
10 So we've got to strike a balance here that gets
11 the dollar numbers down to something that is within the
12 affordable range. If we do that and come back to
13 something close to where education funding now is does the
14 system maintain its integrity? Does it work or are there
15 pieces that you had to increase it that much? And if you
16 take -- say, okay, we've got to fund it at 85 percent --
17 because I haven't done the math, but 85 percent of the
18 dollar figure that the model produces, does that do harm
19 to some set of districts?
20 MR. MONTEITH: Let me -- Madam Chairman,
21 if I could, please, Senator Scott, the answer to your
22 question is yes, you can do that, but you take away all of
23 the pieces in the model to get back to where we are now
24 which is to say we probably don't have enough nurses, we
25 probably don't have enough counselors, librarians are not
393
1 funded at a level we think is appropriate for schools to
2 meet the needs of schools. The proportional staffing in
3 small schools to us is extremely important because of the
4 wide variation you can get between class sizes that is not
5 accommodated in the current funding model.
6 And then, of course, the big chunk is can you
7 bring the salaries all the way back to what the current
8 funding model allows. Yes, you can, but we would have a
9 very big concern with that because this is not a new
10 argument to you. We have a shortage nationwide. We're in
11 competition nationwide. Generally speaking, those states
12 that come here, beginning teachers -- pay a lot more money
13 for beginning teachers than we can pay, and I think it was
14 last January at this meeting held at a different site that
15 five of six foreign language teachers at the University of
16 Wyoming said to this committee in January that they had
17 taken jobs in other states because of money.
18 So, yeah, to answer your question, Senator
19 Scott, you sure can strip it all the way back and be
20 approximately where you are right now, but as advocates
21 for education, we can not comfortably say that's okay.
22 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
23 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, let me
24 pose the question again and in slightly different form. I
25 understand what you're telling me the educators are saying
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1 we need -- the figure I have here is 881 million. The
2 bottom line is what you've said, it is somewhat smaller
3 than that. 881 actually turns out to be about 88 -- our
4 current funding is 88 percent of that.
5 Let me put it to you this way. In a democracy
6 nobody ever gets everything we want. It just doesn't work
7 that way.
8 MR. MONTEITH: Could be the first time.
9 SENATOR SCOTT: Too many competing
10 demands. If we come down some percentage, say we come
11 down 90 percent of what the model shows and say, okay, we
12 will fund it on an ongoing basis, 90 percent of what this
13 turns out, that's going to force the schools overall to
14 make some compromises with what they would like to have
15 and the ideal.
16 No big surprise. All of us do that all of the
17 time in our daily lives. Every state agency probably does
18 it. Nature of the work. Do we -- if we do that, do we
19 differentially hurt some school districts? And I'm
20 talking school districts advisedly because with a block
21 grant individual school problems the districts can
22 accommodate through the district itself if the district
23 isn't hurt or does the relative balance among the school
24 districts stay the same as you come down.
25 MR. MCADAMS: Madam Chairman, Senator
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1 Scott, when you cut this model back to fairly close to
2 what we see on MAP right now it is the small districts
3 that actually start falling out. Arapahoe would actually
4 be one of the first ones to fall out, and part of the
5 reason behind that is we've not addressed at risk in this
6 model. We have addressed a piece of vocational ed but not
7 at risk and I think that's part of the reason you see
8 Arapahoe drop out as quickly as it does, Pavillion,
9 Sublette, some of the other districts.
10 And what we saw was small districts with small
11 outlier schools tended to be the first ones to drop out
12 when you really started scaling this way back.
13 COCHAIR DEVIN: And I guess that goes back
14 to your statement that, you know, when you began this you
15 went to the point that you held everyone harmless to the
16 manner in which they were funded and then you applied the
17 increases as I had in my notes. But, you know, that then
18 takes us full circle back to the problem that we've got
19 with the Supreme Court when you made the comment that 14
20 million came out of the model last year and where did that
21 recommendation come from.
22 Well, unfortunately, it came from the court
23 decision. And our hold harmless is a stopgap measure
24 because we're wanting more time to figure out, but in
25 fact, the Court said you must apply a regional cost of
396
1 living and we disallow the small school and the small
2 district.
3 So if we have to remain faithful to the
4 cost-based piece of the court decision, how do we go to
5 the point where we go back and hold everyone harmless and
6 then just apply the additions and not violate that court
7 decision.
8 MR. MONTEITH: Chairman Devin, that was
9 certainly on our mind when we began to explore this model
10 and the concept of this model. As I said earlier, we were
11 concerned with the recommendation and the adoption of the
12 recalibrated model for the small districts last year. As
13 part of our discussions, we said that we were going to
14 advocate for this model, we had to go back and take a look
15 at the whole issue of the basket of goods in the 23 small
16 districts school by school and make a determination about
17 what level of staffing would be required to accomplish
18 that.
19 So I guess the bottom line here is that I think
20 that we went through that process. We imposed the basket
21 of goods on the schools and the small school groups met
22 together and they developed a mathematical model to
23 support the need of the staff to present that small school
24 basket of goods in those districts. So we believe that
25 component of it will meet the constitutional test.
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1 Now, beyond that, folks -- and that does not, of
2 course, match with MAP's recommendations which came to you
3 last year which were adopted in the funding. There's a
4 distinct difference in the two of those that we will need
5 to look at carefully.
6 But from our point of view we did superimpose
7 the basket of goods and then develop a mathematical model
8 to support that delivery in the districts. I don't know
9 how ours will come out with the one you're currently
10 working on, but if you're going to maintain that basket of
11 goods, this is the model that would be required to do so.
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: Just as a follow-up, that
13 also then presumes that every school that's open today
14 needs to stay open, no matter how many students we lose
15 over time?
16 MR. MONTEITH: Chairman Devin, let me
17 address that if I could. The answer to your question is
18 yes, that's the way we approached it. We have been going
19 around to the regions presenting this model and that has
20 caused us to do some of the refinements you've currently
21 heard about and we will continue to do that.
22 But the question was certainly raised at some of
23 those places is it appropriate to continue to fund all of
24 these schools at their current sizes and geographic
25 locations, and basically our point of view was that's not
398
1 our decision to make. That's been the legislative
2 responsibility as long as I can remember in terms of
3 making a determination about how small a school is before
4 you discontinue funding it, which would be forced
5 consolidation, for example. And we just said that wasn't
6 our place to go. We're going to look at the schools that
7 exist and fund them.
8 COCHAIR DEVIN: But I think that presumes
9 consolidation of districts and what we're seeing, for
10 example, now in capital construction with a district
11 coming forward and saying, you know, we need some new
12 elementary schools and we're within a few miles of each
13 other, this makes sense for us to do one.
14 We've seen Green River close one school and turn
15 one into a K-3 and a 4 and 6, and I hear very good pieces
16 on that. My own community is in discussion right now.
17 We've had multiple schools drop into small school
18 qualification and this is -- you know, I think the
19 citizenry -- if you're remote and isolated, that's one
20 issue, but to have some reasonable expectation that their
21 tax dollars are being handled efficiently in education
22 like they would expect in any other area of government.
23 And I guess we as a committee have to balance that piece,
24 and I don't want to belabor everyone's lunch.
25 But I guess another few court pieces that
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1 concern me, because we've tried to -- real hard to move in
2 this direction, is the fact that the court has said you
3 can hold harmless for a period of time because that's an
4 extra gift of the legislature, but you cannot phase in.
5 If you determine that that's a cost, it is due
6 immediately, which gives us some problems with -- and you
7 cannot partially phase it, 90 percent, 80 percent. If
8 you've determined that's a cost, it is to be funded. And
9 so those are other issues out there.
10 I do want to refer the committee -- Senator Job
11 sent a letter circulated to you yesterday and she's had
12 not only work responsibility but she's had family
13 responsibility and I did promise her that I would call
14 that to your attention and not insist that she appear in
15 order to have her voice heard. I think that courtesy is
16 always open to other legislators and those who want to
17 bring written material.
18 Before it gets lost in your stack, I do want to
19 refer to that.
20 There are a number of other points, but I think
21 some of us would need a lot more time to digest this.
22 But, Committee, questions.
23 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
24 wanted to ask, the small schools falling into the
25 problems, was that because, if we say 16 in the lower
400
1 grade is the ratio, if you get 18 you get two teachers; is
2 that right?
3 MR. RIESLAND: Madam Chairman, if I can
4 answer that, basically that 16 class ratio is developed
5 from people in the profession of education. And when you
6 start with a classroom size of 16, the way the current
7 model goes, you have one teacher, you get funded for one
8 teacher and you get funded for one teacher up until you
9 hit 31 and so that's all you have. So you have a
10 classroom size or possibility of a classroom size of 31
11 students.
12 And what this model does is breaks that down
13 after 16 and says, okay, you're funded for two teachers.
14 Now, you can have a variety of things
15 incorporated in this because it is a block grant. I mean,
16 hopefully with the local control and the school districts,
17 as I said before, the budgeting process we go through we
18 can develop programs we may want to put in there. And if
19 we have 20 students we may have two class sizes of 10 or
20 we may hire an aide and put in some kind of special
21 program or something of that nature to help those
22 students.
23 So there's a variety of things that we do within
24 education to help that out. And that's where that comes
25 from.
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1 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman,
2 the reason I asked the question, I keep hearing about we
3 have got these numbers of teachers teaching 30 kids and
4 that probably is the explanation there, I guess. I don't
5 know. It depends probably on the subject, too.
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: But you do need to
7 remember that we would just in our two fall meetings we
8 were presented data that the average class size across the
9 state is also 12. We have the smallest classes in the
10 nation at this point in time. So philosophically I'm
11 having a little trouble with how much smaller -- now, I
12 will realize that this district here has had problems
13 reducing their class size, but, you know, that's an
14 exception in the other direction for which I think there
15 are multiple reasons.
16 But how do we go forward? Given some of the
17 background of what Senator Scott has described, how do we
18 go forward and say we need yet smaller classes? That's a
19 hard piece of logic to move forward. But I don't want to
20 stop other questions.
21 Representative Shivler.
22 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: Madam Chairman,
23 it occurs to me that if the basket of goods is driving
24 this kind of stacking, perhaps we need to revisit the
25 basket of goods because this puts us at $11,000 per
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1 student, highest in the nation. We're over New Jersey
2 now, they're 10,400. We're going to be hard pressed to
3 put this on the citizens of Wyoming recognizing that cost
4 of living is probably 70 percent of what New Jersey's is.
5 As far as the teacher shortage goes, we keep
6 hearing that, but every time we get expert people to come
7 in and talk to us about that, Dr. Zax said it is how we
8 choose to spend our money in the teacher shortage. A good
9 example. I think two of the finest teachers in this
10 district, Marty and Mack McGraw, have moved to Ft.
11 Collins. He can't get a job there. He can't even get on
12 as a substitute. Why? Too many teachers. And yet we
13 hear all of the time Colorado is coming over here and
14 stealing the teachers. I don't know why they're stealing
15 them if they don't need them.
16 The point I'm making, if we try to put this on
17 the people of Wyoming we're going to see something akin to
18 Proposition 13 and we certainly don't want that for our
19 education system. And that's my concern. And I think
20 that we need to look at this very carefully.
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Scott.
22 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, it seems
23 to me there's two big unanswered questions about this
24 model. One, how do you reduce it to something that the
25 people can afford and keep the integrity of the system,
403
1 and the second one we haven't touched on which is what
2 incentives are there in there for the behavior of the
3 school districts, how will it change over time as people
4 react to those incentives?
5 Having said that, I think there's a good deal of
6 promise in this and the question I've got is how as a
7 committee do we carry the process forward because it is
8 going to take considerable staff work to get it into a
9 shape where we can say, yeah, this will work better than
10 what we've got.
11 And certainly I think we need to do that, look
12 at this as a realistic option because what we've got has
13 gotten so complicated that we're losing control over it.
14 And second, I think it is -- relationship to any
15 kind of rational cost basis is questionable at this point
16 because of the complexity. It keeps doing things we don't
17 expect it to.
18 So what do we do to carry this work forward and
19 see if we can't develop something that can be a
20 replacement for our current system?
21 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Anderson.
22 SENATOR ANDERSON: Thank you, Madam
23 Chairman. These are not questions I need answered today,
24 but if we were to pursue this conversation these are
25 questions I would like to be answered.
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1 As always, there's a third party involved with
2 this with the court that's not here today. If I were a
3 Supreme Court judge and this were the bench -- you don't
4 have to do this -- I would like to know in ten minutes how
5 this stands the test with MAP. That's going to be the
6 comparison. I think this -- all of those court tests, all
7 of those court things will have to be addressed.
8 The other thing, we have the court test, we have
9 the cost. You talked some about cost, about whether in
10 fact this is cost based. It seems as we go for education
11 solutions, quite often the first solution is rub a little
12 money on it. This rubs about $150 million and we've
13 talked about whether or not it is able to maintain
14 integrity if we take the money out.
15 And my question would be if we put this amount
16 of money in the current MAP model how would the two
17 compare?
18 The next one has to do with equity, and I used
19 the term yesterday in regard to the grieving districts,
20 those 23 districts, but I would like to see over time --
21 and I used a pie analogy but this is somewhat different --
22 I looked over time at the funding pie and we look at the
23 amount that those districts got, I would like to look at
24 the pie that this provides in regard to the piece of
25 equity in comparison to the MAP model over time.
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1 Those are some things I think as we sit down we
2 really have to make comparisons in regard to. It would be
3 the court test, cost, complexity and equity.
4 COCHAIR DEVIN: Representative Bucholz,
5 were you wanting to make a comment or were you just trying
6 to find a comfortable position over there?
7 MR. BUCHOLZ: I was doing that as well,
8 but I did want to make a comment.
9 COCHAIR DEVIN: Please.
10 MR. BUCHOLZ: Just in the interest of
11 expanding my understanding of the model and the funding,
12 because they're kind of a combined issue, I guess I float
13 this balloon and if I'm wrong then I'll find out I'm
14 wrong.
15 But it would appear that there really are two
16 separate and distinct decisions or issues as proposed
17 here. One is the model by which policy will be developed
18 for funding our education in the state, and what method is
19 the most efficient and understandable. And the other
20 issue is at what level do we fund and in which ways do we
21 fund our educational needs in the state.
22 If that understanding is correct -- and I think
23 this is another way of stating Senator Scott's concerns,
24 Madam Chairman, and that is if we have to retreat to some
25 level that is lower than proposed here, is this model
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1 still an operating model that will probably meet the
2 challenges of the court mandates.
3 COCHAIR DEVIN: Thank you.
4 And I think Senator Scott makes an excellent
5 point as we continue to look at pieces, but what are the
6 incentives in here over time that -- you know, I think our
7 new representative makes an excellent point, the court
8 test, the amounts of money, they're all individual issues
9 that become interlinked, but also what does it encourage.
10 Because, you know, I just made quick notes as I
11 listened to you and the issue of keeping all schools open
12 no matter what level of students we're at, I think the
13 issue of keeping all square footage, the incentive to keep
14 those and not take facilities out of commission is there
15 and I'm not sure those are incentives we want to
16 necessarily build into a system. But just -- we all
17 certainly are at a point of study and more work.
18 MR. RIESLAND: Madam Chairman, as you talk
19 about these concerns that Senator Scott brought up, and we
20 talk about closing buildings, square footage, taking
21 buildings out of commission, I think you find -- and I'm a
22 board member. I'm elected by the public, same people who
23 elect you, and I know there's board members around the
24 state of Wyoming that have more votes or have to receive
25 more votes to get into office than a lot of senators and
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1 representatives in this fine building.
2 We are also -- I guess my point is we're also
3 held accountable to the public in the fact that anytime we
4 walk into a grocery store -- and we may have a school of
5 ten students and the school according to a study needs to
6 be remodeled, rebuilt, redone. We have to answer those
7 questions to the public also. I mean, we're held
8 accountable for our budgets to the public and constituents
9 of our district.
10 And I would hope that we're given the capability
11 and the knowledge -- the ability from you to make those
12 vital decisions, whether we keep a school open or whether
13 we close a school. And as you've mentioned earlier, there
14 will be some schools that have been closed. There have
15 been schools that have been changed. In my district I
16 know there's a building that is a school for K-5, but
17 we've also incorporated some remedial learning for other
18 students in this building because it works good for that.
19 Will it stay that way forever? I have no idea.
20 It is going to depend on the population, depends on the
21 ADM. And those are the local decisions that I hope that
22 responsible board members who are elected can make and
23 work with you as legislators in making some of those
24 calls. I think that's the basis of it, too. We're held
25 accountable and should be.
408
1 COCHAIR DEVIN: And the point we're at at
2 this point in time is we've been able to manage this
3 without going out to your constituents for that 20 mills
4 of property tax or that two cents of sales tax, and as
5 soon as that happens the rubber is going to meet the road
6 in terms of you're going to hear a whole lot more because
7 it has been painful for us to rearrange and do some of
8 this.
9 But there has not been a pain extended, taxation
10 pain extended upon the citizenry yet and, believe me,
11 sitting on Revenue Committee also, the minute we start to
12 talk about it, the same districts that wanted more money
13 for their schools are there to say, but not, you know --
14 they are probably the strongest advocates in not wanting
15 more taxation and there's understandable reasons why they
16 are. Their income is not high in those areas.
17 MR. MCADAMS: Madam Chairman, if I might
18 address a couple questions. The Supreme Court when they
19 said look to the MAP model, develop a prototype and use
20 that prototype to develop the cost-based system, that was
21 acceptable, that's what we've done. We used professional
22 judgment, so did MAP. Yes, we've changed some ratios
23 because we had the advantage of saying where are we on the
24 ratios we have.
25 And to answer Senator Scott's question, and a
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1 couple other ones, you can go right back in and change the
2 ratios without changing the integrity of the model.
3 Instead of having a 15 to 1 or 19 to 1, make it a 16, same
4 with MAP, make it a 19 or 21 in the high school. It will
5 affect the integrity of the model. It is designed to
6 actually go in there and make the changes. You can see
7 what does it do to the dollar amounts. I've done that and
8 changed some of those up and it was surprising the change
9 in the dollar amounts.
10 Also, the biggest piece on the expense side is
11 to go in and say no, we're going to cut teacher salaries.
12 We are not going to start with a 30,000 base and make the
13 other calculations the way we did. We can say 28 or even
14 clear back to 25 without changing the integrity of the
15 model. As I said earlier, that's a little over 9 million
16 for every thousand dollars you change the teacher
17 salaries.
18 So real quick it is not real hard to start doing
19 math and say what does that do statewide by changing one
20 position's salaries. Obviously you can go in and change
21 the ratios for the counselors, librarians and nurses and
22 it gets more complicated and changes the money very little
23 when it comes right down to it.
24 The biggest piece I see here is I do believe
25 this model would stand up to the court in the fact we do
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1 take the prototype, develop a prototype and the method of
2 developing the prototype I think would stand up. The
3 Court has already said that you as legislators can set
4 those class ratios. If you want to make it 19, leave it
5 19. You want to make it 21, make it 21. It is totally
6 within your purview to do that and the Court made that
7 clear, too, and that's one way to change the cost in this
8 model.
9 And obviously, setting what you want to do for
10 salaries and say this is where we really would have
11 salaries be is a decision that we really should be
12 discussing, not necessarily square footage or other
13 ratios. It would be good to sit down and say this is what
14 we see and this is the problem we're having.
15 I'm two short on special ed teachers. I didn't
16 get the applications, I hired every application I had this
17 last year. I'm still two short on special ed teachers.
18 We're trying again at the break and hopefully do it,
19 hopefully be able to come up and do it. I realize my
20 salaries is a big part of the problem, but I have other
21 obligations to meet as a district. I've gone through hell
22 this last year as a district -- excuse me -- closing a
23 school. It is not an easy thing to do, especially a high
24 school.
25 The MAP model has no consideration of the fact I
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1 had three high schools and 900 kids. This model does.
2 That's a cost-based system that's not being basically in
3 the MAP model. Our current funding system does not take
4 that into account because there's inefficiencies, and I
5 know you want to deal with that. It is not as a
6 criticism, but that's the problem with our model today, it
7 cannot hold up in court because it doesn't take my 900
8 kids, my 400, whatever I have in high school and fund me
9 any different if I had all 400 in one building. And
10 there's definitely a cost difference there. This model
11 takes that into consideration.
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: You know, you raise an
13 excellent point. Essentially where the state is at in the
14 court decision now is that 18 of the 21 points have been
15 ruled to be cost based and accepted by the court. We
16 change horses in the middle of the stream. Are we
17 starting over again?
18 MR. MCADAMS: Madam Chairman, I believe
19 we've changed horses. I believe from when the court
20 looked at it to the current funding we've changed horses.
21 If we went back to court today we would find we wouldn't
22 have 18 points acceptable anymore. I'm not an attorney,
23 but that's my personal opinion.
24 COCHAIR DEVIN: Representative McOmie.
25 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, a
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1 little while ago it was talked about the, you know, fact
2 that this doesn't close any schools, continues to pay for
3 all of the square footage and things like this. And then
4 the response was, well, that's the legislature's
5 responsibility to see this. And that's what the MAP model
6 is doing. The MAP model is saying, look, if you're only
7 going to get this much money, you solve how you're going
8 to handle these problems.
9 You have to start closing schools. Nobody wants
10 to do that. I've been reading the paper and seeing what
11 you guys are going through with this. As the Chairman, I
12 believe it was, just said, nobody out there has had to pay
13 any of this yet.
14 And maybe that's our fault as legislators.
15 Maybe we should have went with Tony Ross' 2 mills last
16 year and go to wards with this kind of stuff and let these
17 people see these kinds of things because, to be honest
18 with you, I'm tired of funding schools out of the general
19 fund and get something else to go on with the general fund
20 because, as Senator Scott talks about, we have a lot of
21 other demands.
22 MR. MCADAMS: Madam Chairman, page 36,
23 high schools, currently doesn't affect anybody but some
24 alternative schools, but if you go down through here and
25 look at high school, cooperative school, about one-third
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1 of the way down 401057, 14 students in it, three-year
2 rolling average ADM. None of the certified staff is
3 funded.
4 Basically when we get below 22, we cannot figure
5 out a good, fair way to make the staffing work. And from
6 the educator's standpoint it makes no sense to have a high
7 school that small. We do have some bottoms in here where
8 things fall out. We actually looked at setting it at 40
9 or 50. It is amazing the number of schools, Farson and a
10 number of places like Tensleep, that are fairly isolated
11 that would actually not be funded if you moved it clear to
12 50. At 40 it is not quite so bad.
13 But right now, 22, you're going to see there are
14 schools right now -- what I mean by not funded,
15 noncertified staff is in there and nonpayroll stuff is in
16 there but there's no certified staff basically because
17 there's no way.
18 The reason I bring that up, there are
19 disincentives that go too small, not only educationwise.
20 We looked at closing high schools because at 40-some kids
21 9 through 12 I don't believe -- and I know, they're my
22 relatives, too. They don't necessarily agree with me --
23 we're not offering the same curriculum in that high school
24 that they are, too, because we've cut and cut and cut and
25 tried to make sure we're staying within our means in that
414
1 building. And they look at it and don't realize what
2 little we're actually offering their kids. They think it
3 is a good thing. I'm talking about my own relatives here.
4 I'm sad to say that.
5 They can't see the educational opportunities
6 that kids are missing. When you get to a school that size
7 there's many educational reasons to actually close the
8 school and there is a bottom to the funding. We didn't do
9 that in elementary. Look at Albany County alone. They
10 have one-room schoolhouses over here closer to Wheatland
11 they're trying to fund and take care of. We have left it
12 all the way down there to the one-room schoolhouses and
13 the middle schools really aren't -- that's not much of an
14 issue. There is very few really small ones in there.
15 MR. MONTEITH: I guess I'm looking for a
16 closure here because I'm sure everybody is hungry and
17 you're ready to go, too.
18 At this point is there anything that the
19 committee would like us to do and report back to you at
20 some point in time that would be helpful in your
21 deliberations?
22 COCHAIR DEVIN: What the cochair and I had
23 offered to you was an opportunity to present this and
24 offered to some committee members that wanted to hear it,
25 but we did promise they would have time to digest it,
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1 study it, take a look at it.
2 And you will certainly have a new committee
3 coming on board. You have heard several requests, I
4 guess, and concerns that some us have and are there others
5 that as this -- as work on this would move forward you
6 would have any specific things you would like to see
7 considered, concerns, I guess I need to know concerns and
8 requests.
9 So, Representative Lockhart, I believe you were
10 next.
11 REPRESENTATIVE LOCKHART: Madam Chairman,
12 until an hour ago we really -- most of us hadn't had any
13 clue of what you had here. I recognize you've done a lot
14 of work and simplicity has some value and all of us like
15 that word. However, even in this I heard some things that
16 make me wonder.
17 For instance, the funding model here is simple.
18 If you've got 15 students, you have one teacher. If you
19 have 17, you have two. And then there's funding. But I
20 also heard that the local school districts and boards
21 would then decide whether they made two classes of 8 and a
22 half or one class and one, but the funding is on it, too.
23 So there's a lot of things that go into your
24 mind as soon as you hear some of the simple stuff and you
25 try to put it into practice and we work very hard to do
416
1 that, I think.
2 I don't think we're in a position to do anything
3 very quickly with this, just given the magnitude of what
4 you're asking. And those of us that are on Revenue and
5 Appropriations and as we look at school capital now that's
6 probably something north of $600 million, another $150
7 million here, there's obviously going to be other
8 ramifications.
9 So my request after that long diatribe, when you
10 come back, you tell us where you think we can get the
11 money. Can we take it away from wages for state
12 employees, benefits? Do we raise taxes and if so, whose
13 taxes do we raise? And how would the school board then,
14 for instance, take the responsibility that they're behind
15 this plan for the additional millions and how would they
16 step into that process.
17 That would be helpful in a future meeting
18 because the way the Supreme Court has directed us, the
19 responsibility for funding schools is at the state level
20 and so that's sort of taking the school boards out of the
21 local school district bonding issues. But the school
22 districts are the ones asking us to raise these additional
23 dollars in this case and I look for how you would support
24 us and which ones you would do and that kind of thing.
25 REPRESENTATIVE WASSERBERGER: Madam
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1 Chairman, I guess my position -- first of all, I would
2 like to commend the people who brought this. It does
3 represent a great deal of effort. And I would submit to
4 this committee they've probably done that for the low cost
5 of maybe 25,000, with all of the people involved, after
6 the millions of dollars we have spent.
7 And one of the things that I've always felt
8 about our prototypical model and our funding was that it
9 needed to be done by Wyoming people to solve a Wyoming
10 problem for Wyoming students. And this is an attempt by a
11 number of different people across different districts to
12 solve that problem for Wyoming. So this is exciting
13 stuff.
14 But it is a problem with the total amount of
15 money. And I am not willing to walk away from all of the
16 work that you have done as chairman -- which has been
17 wonderful work and I commend you for that -- and walk away
18 from MAP unless we know for sure that this one is going to
19 be constitutional.
20 And the question to the sponsors is does this
21 pass the strict scrutiny level that the Supreme Court has?
22 Will it pass a compelling state interest that the Court
23 has and what guarantees can you give me that that's going
24 to be done?
25 MR. RIESLAND: Madam Chairman, if I may
418
1 respond to that, the only way we will ever know if it will
2 pass the scrutiny of the Supreme Court is if there's a
3 lawsuit. So I believe with the resolution that was passed
4 at the delegate assembly, the school boards unanimously
5 were in favor of coming up with a new funding model. And
6 it is a work in progress right now and we're taking it to
7 every district and refining this thing. If there's no
8 lawsuit, I don't know how the Supreme Court would ever get
9 their hands on it.
10 And so it is kind of a double-edged sword here.
11 Are we trusting that somebody is not going to hire a
12 lawyer and sue the State of Wyoming because the funding
13 model is incorrect? And I don't think anything we as
14 humans can put our hands on is going to be perfect and
15 you're asking for perfection, and I think the Supreme
16 Court in their estimation is asking for the same thing.
17 What we've built here is a model that gives
18 every school district a win, they're winners, and I
19 believe if school districts are the winners and students
20 are the winners, you probably will not see a lawsuit
21 coming from them. I mean, it could come from anywhere,
22 but coming from the school districts I don't see that
23 happening. That's not a guarantee. I don't know if I
24 could ever guarantee that.
25 I can't guarantee that the MAP model won't be --
419
1 meet the muster of the Supreme Court either. And I don't
2 know if Dr. Smith could do that. I mean... So that's
3 something that I think is almost an impossibility. But I
4 can assure you if all districts accept this thing, as they
5 have so far, that you probably will not see a lawsuit and
6 therefore it probably will never reach the Supreme Court
7 from that standpoint.
8 MR. MONTEITH: Chairman Devin, let me take
9 a moment to explain the process, and I won't belabor this,
10 but we are very, very concerned through the number of
11 meetings that we had that we could take a look at the
12 points that the Court had said, okay, these are
13 constitutional and make sure that we were not in violation
14 of those.
15 We think we've done a pretty careful job of that
16 and asked those hard questions. Beyond that one of the
17 things that we did -- and this has to do with the
18 composition of the committee which I did not detail for
19 you previously -- we made sure there was equitable
20 representation from all levels and sizes of schools
21 throughout the entire state.
22 We had a number of representatives from the
23 School Boards Association, had representatives advocating
24 on the part of teachers in this process. We think that
25 the composition of the committee which numbered 23 or 25
420
1 was really well rounded and represented all of the
2 stakeholder groups we could think of to include in there.
3 While we developed this based on those
4 stakeholders, we were asking the questions that Jeff is
5 alluding to -- Representative Wasserberger -- I'm sorry.
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: Representative Scott.
7 SENATOR SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I'm going
8 to make several suggestions. First, once this thing, if
9 we can get this thing into a form that is generally
10 accepted by everybody is something that is affordable,
11 then you've got two possible routes for making sure it is
12 constitutional.
13 One is to pass legislation instructing -- the
14 Court has retained jurisdiction on the school finance
15 litigation -- passed legislation instructing our Attorney
16 General to propose a new system based on this as a
17 settlement of that litigation so you put it before the
18 Court saying look, this is a way to settle all of the
19 outstanding issues and if they say no, you're right back
20 to where we are -- that's perhaps one way to do it.
21 It does mean you need to get consensus among the
22 various parties that, yes. The other way is if you hit
23 something and say we have to make it work, we have to do
24 this, and this does not mesh with the court decision, then
25 you're looking at trying to amend the state constitution
421
1 which is doable, again, if you have real consensus.
2 And I know when this litigation first -- after
3 the first Campbell decision I was talking to an attorney,
4 a former member of the Senate who I have tremendous
5 respect for, and he said, look, the Supreme Court is going
6 to second-guess you on everything that you do forever.
7 You're going to have to put your formula in the
8 constitution.
9 I don't think putting the formula in the
10 constitution is a good idea, but we may have to to get out
11 of this mess we're in. We may have to put it in the
12 constitution. So you have two possibilities.
13 Now, how do we carry it forward? What we've got
14 here, I think, is a good start that can perhaps form the
15 basis for something, but it clearly needs some detail
16 work, some refinement. You have heard some of the
17 concerns that we've raised. I would suggest that what you
18 do is find several legislators, preferably ones who will
19 be on the Education Committee, to bring forward a private
20 bill to take this model, study it, refine it, put receipt
21 sources of the state behind doing the staff work that you
22 guys have done on a voluntary basis, perhaps retain an
23 advisory committee that really represents a whole series
24 of districts and the other parties that there are in the
25 lawsuit, the other stakeholders. There's several ways you
422
1 could structure it.
2 But that would be my suggestion as to how you
3 proceed next on this because I think it has a lot of
4 promise. I don't think you're there yet, but it has a lot
5 of promise.
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: Senator Sessions.
7 SENATOR SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, just a
8 couple of things. How would -- I think some of the
9 information you've got school by school here I think is
10 invaluable and maybe -- you know, it makes much sense to
11 me that we know what it takes, you know. You've done the
12 research that we know what it takes to staff those schools
13 and that's the largest amount for your cause.
14 I don't know how I would go about this, but I
15 would like you to be part -- or representatives from your
16 group to be part of small schools study because I think
17 right now you've got some information on different areas
18 that could be very vital to that. And that's your
19 decision to make as well as, I guess, MAP's decision to
20 make, or whoever does that. I would like that to happen
21 and maybe somebody can tell me after this is over how that
22 could come about so that some of that information you
23 would have a voice in the small schools study because I
24 think that's vital.
25 And the second thing is if I have Mr. Nelson
423
1 send you a copy of the facilitation plan that this
2 committee had looked at that I gave to the new governor to
3 form the committee to try to sit down with a group of
4 people to facilitate that lawsuit, if you would like to be
5 part of that. After you've looked at the plan, I will go
6 bug the governor again -- speaking of locked doors, he's
7 going to lock it when he sees me coming.
8 But anyway, I would go and ask, you know, that
9 your representatives from -- your group specifically is
10 not set out in the plan, but I would go ask that you be
11 included in part of that if you would like to.
12 So after you look at the plan you can let me
13 know and I'll do what you wish me to do, but I would like
14 some comments about people who were involved in the small
15 school study, how they would feel about listening to some
16 of the data that these people have and some of the
17 concerns and whatever. I don't know how that would be
18 part of that.
19 COCHAIR DEVIN: I think we certainly --
20 there's a number of these districts that would be involved
21 and there's -- those groups haven't been formulated so --
22 Representative Samuelson.
23 REPRESENTATIVE SAMUELSON: Madam Chairman,
24 I guess in three weeks I will be one of the concerned
25 citizens. I will no longer be a member of this committee.
424
1 But if I were on this committee what I would like to see
2 would be to compare these models with the same size of
3 pies that Senator Anderson has been talking to us about.
4 I'm sure if we put $150 million in the MAP model all the
5 districts would be excited and we'd be heroes. To be
6 realistic, we have to look at the same size of pie and we
7 need to look at this model.
8 There's some real intriguing things in there. I
9 would be excited if I were around for a couple years to
10 work on this. If I do come back in two years, it would be
11 wonderful because it will all be solved. As long as my
12 senator is here I have no worries.
13 I think you need to look at the model and use
14 the number we're using now, realistic number, 700 million,
15 and see if the model is as appealing to everybody then as
16 it looks now. And that would be my question as a future
17 citizen three weeks from today.
18 COCHAIR DEVIN: Did you have a hand up
19 also?
20 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Representative
21 just said what I was going to say.
22 REPRESENTATIVE SHIVLER: He said what I
23 was going to say.
24 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Madam Chairman,
25 just a follow-up. The same thoughts, direct the group
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1 that put the model together, use the $718 million funding
2 that we're looking at right now, plug it into this model
3 and do a district-by-district comparison with the MAP and
4 just like to simply see what that number is.
5 REPRESENTATIVE MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I
6 did have one thing. I forgot to mention this. I didn't
7 see ag as a component in here, the ag adjustment. Is it
8 in your model?
9 MR. MCADAMS: Madam Chairman, vocational
10 ed, the salaries are, not the nonpayroll piece.
11 COCHAIR DEVIN: So there are a number of
12 concerns out there.
13 MR. MONTEITH: I have a half a page.
14 COCHAIR DEVIN: Really what the State has
15 to meet is, you know, that cost-based system as
16 Representative Wasserberger said it has to withstand court
17 scrutiny. It is the State's obligation to prove and
18 defend as the lawsuit is set up, so that begs the question
19 who will defend it, where the expert witnesses come from
20 to substantiate that it is, in fact, cost based.
21 Those are real key points. And I guess one word
22 of caution out there is that, you know -- because all
23 districts come together, and I will tell you I am getting
24 already calls that say, gosh, we would like to continue to
25 explore it, but we don't know our level of enthusiasm, you
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1 know, it may not be all uniform. And if we start to take
2 money out of it, I would imagine it will become more not
3 uniform, might support it but we all work on those issues
4 every day.
5 But as we go forward I think those are key
6 pieces that we've got to do. But any -- because the CRU
7 settlement, as I've learned more about it, that gave us
8 the classroom unit, essentially was an agreed-on
9 settlement and as soon as it got back to court, it didn't
10 withstand the test.
11 This small school, small district piece, was
12 essentially -- with some cost-based work it was
13 essentially an agreement that education could be done for
14 that. The Court didn't buy it.
15 Even if all districts agree, that doesn't mean
16 any other entity not a part of the lawsuit now cannot come
17 back in. It does lead -- if we don't get this right leads
18 to the first disgruntled district, the first disgruntled
19 student or parent, taxpayer. All of those can come back
20 and bring it before the courts. It is not a pressure that
21 I want to put on you we haven't had on us, but it is a
22 mutual pressure. It has to withstand these pieces as this
23 goes forward and is tumultuously tumbled.
24 SENATOR PECK: Madam Chairman, just to
25 insert a little historical data, which is well-known to
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1 many of us, you recall the tax reform 2000 recommendation
2 as the best way to get the broader, reliable source of
3 funding was a state income tax, and that has been a death
4 sentence for any elected official proposing it.
5 I was interested in your saying that you wanted
6 to retire the fighting, but I heard you say if we cut it
7 back to 85 percent the districts that would fall out,
8 first one would be Arapahoe.
9 MR. MCADAMS: Not at 80 percent.
10 SENATOR PECK: Pardon?
11 MR. MCADAMS: Not at 85 percent of the
12 current numbers there -- Madam Chairman -- excuse me. I
13 don't believe you will see anybody fall out at 85 percent.
14 SENATOR PECK: I thought I heard you say
15 that a moment ago.
16 MR. MCADAMS: If you come back closer to
17 704, MAP 3.2B, they sure do.
18 SENATOR PECK: That is inviting a fight if
19 we start wiping out school districts, because this isn't
20 going to fly. And then I -- we have sitting with us here
21 Representative Gentile who defeated Mr. Tanner who had the
22 courage to suggest we start eliminating exemptions.
23 And I tell you that as a member of the Revenue
24 Committee, we keep adding exemptions, we don't start
25 taking exemptions away, I realize that's not what our
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1 charge is, but I mention these things as realistic hurdles
2 out there that need to be overcome if we're going to add
3 huge amounts of money.
4 And I would say finally that we are all blessed
5 by having a mineral industry that is paying a big chunk of
6 it, but I will say also the mineral industry is rather
7 fragile in itself with the coal people selling their 369
8 million tons of coal at $5 a ton and on the hopeful side,
9 $7 gas will put us on the way.
10 COCHAIR DEVIN: You had a moment.
11 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Madam Chairwoman, I
12 think if we're serious about complying with the No Child
13 Left Behind requirements which requires so much
14 proficiency, we're going to have to do something serious
15 or create tests that everybody can pass, which it sounds
16 like other states are doing.
17 The expectation of federal law seems to me to be
18 impossible to achieve over time, but I suspect if we're
19 going to even have a chance at it, we might have to look
20 at some serious additions to the budget, smaller class
21 sizes or whatever.
22 COCHAIR DEVIN: You know, I think there's
23 some validity to looking at that No Child Left Behind
24 piece in our consideration in that it doesn't cause us
25 extra work. But I think that's where the goals need to be
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1 anyway. So it doesn't give me heartburn. And somehow I
2 do feel that as we approach being the top funded in the
3 nation, we ought to be at a point where we can get the job
4 done.
5 Now, we're kind of arguing where that point
6 needs to be, but, you know, when we're in the top two,
7 number 2 or number 8 depending where you look, we're
8 getting to where we ought to be able to get that job done.
9 At least it shouldn't be funds standing in our way.
10 So I would encourage the continued communication
11 on this piece.
12 SENATOR ANDERSON: Madam Chairman, I would
13 just like to kind of say in conclusion to my remarks that,
14 you know, we talk about No Child Left Behind. You can
15 look at that as a challenge or threat. I would prefer to
16 look at it as a challenge, but I've long maintained in
17 regard to the wealth of resources we have in educators,
18 teachers, administrators and people out there we have yet
19 untapped, and whether we continue to go forward with the
20 current MAP model and use this kind of guidance in order
21 to make the mid-course corrections or if we blow that
22 missile up and launch another one, we need to continue to
23 communicate like we have this afternoon in regard to those
24 people out there so able and so willing that are literally
25 champing at the bit to take on some of these challenges
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1 and issues we have discussed. I would hope win, lose or
2 draw we can continue this kind of dialogue.
3 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: Madam Chairman, when
4 we have as many reading teams as sports teams, we will
5 probably be okay.
6 COCHAIR DEVIN: You're sounding distinctly
7 like Senator Erb, and that worries me.
8 SENATOR GOODENOUGH: He's the man.
9 SENATOR PECK: Would it be appropriate to
10 invite Mr. Smith to make a general observation on the work
11 laid before us?
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: Mr. Smith, do you have any
13 comments you choose? That rather puts you on the spot.
14 DR. SMITH: Well, it does put me on the
15 spot a little bit. I think there are a number of issues
16 that I would take issue with.
17 Certainly teacher salaries, you can hope and
18 believe whatever you want to believe, but the State has
19 commissioned four studies and all four gave you the same
20 information: That teacher salaries weren't too low, there
21 was no teacher shortage in Wyoming. If it is going to be
22 cost based, it is hard for me to say how you could justify
23 30,000.
24 Another issue of how the MAP model is
25 characterized as giving increments of whole teachers is
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1 just not the case. It doesn't work that way. It gives --
2 it is proportionate on the number you get -- each ADM
3 creates the number of teachers in proportion to the number
4 of students.
5 There's a variety of things. I applaud people
6 who are trying to improve it. We've tried it a lot. The
7 notion that this is simpler I think is a little bit
8 elusive as well because once you put this into a
9 spreadsheet you have the exact same formulas that Senator
10 Scott observed today. Those are exactly the same kind of
11 formulas that operate this spreadsheet. It is no
12 different.
13 So I fail to see how it is simpler. And, in
14 fact, to me it would be less cost based in that you're
15 giving chunks of teachers rather than at a continuous
16 amount, which was what was criticized by the Court last
17 time. That's how we got to where we are. We proposed in
18 increments and the plaintiffs went to the Court and said
19 that's not cost based, the court agreed, we changed it and
20 now you have a proposal before you that is exactly the way
21 it was before.
22 So I think before, you know -- I think
23 there's -- again, we applaud people who are taking a stab
24 at making it better, but I think you need to take a look
25 at it very carefully before you throw out the work you've
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1 done over a period of six years and hop on a different
2 horse.
3 COCHAIR DEVIN: Any other questions?
4 I thank you for your hard work and I thank you
5 for bringing it and taking the time and putting it in and
6 would ask that you continue communication with those
7 working and keep this committee apprised of your thoughts
8 and your progress and anything that you feel like we need
9 to know.
10 MR. MONTEITH: Madam Chairman, we will do
11 that. Thank you very much.
12 COCHAIR DEVIN: Committee, that's all of
13 the work I had before the committee. Any other issues
14 that need to be brought up?
15 Thank you, we are adjourned.
16 (Meeting proceedings concluded
17 1:10 p.m., December 17, 2002.)
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7 I, JANET DEW-HARRIS, a Registered Professional
8 Reporter, and Federal Certified Realtime Reporter, do
9 hereby certify that I reported by machine shorthand the
10 foregoing proceedings contained herein, constituting a
11 full, true and correct transcript.
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13 Dated this ___ day of _________, 200__.
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19 _____________________________
20 JANET DEW-HARRIS
Registered Professional Reporter
21 Federal Certified Realtime Reporter
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