Jay Kersting's Blog

How financially responsible is your School District?

Back when I was working in radio, my listeners knew that I could be and would be an outspoken advocate for the right issues. One incident illustrated this better than the rest and that was when I threw my support behind the casino movement in Jefferson City.

The issue was defeated, but I offered reasonable suggestions to my audience why they could support the idea of a casino in Jefferson City. At the same time, I did lock horns with a group that chose to use the word “Integrity” in their name while acting without integrity. I pointed out their hypocrisy and they got very angry.

In any case, I did learn something from this experience. You can’t beat hypocrites unless you stoop to being a hypocrite yourself.

And that leads me to another issue that I took on at the urging of my listeners. It was an issue that hit close to home, special education cuts.

Here was the situation. Jefferson City Public School Superintendant Dr. Bert Kimble asked that the individual school principals to be sure that special education personnel were being used in the most efficient ways possible. Specifically, if para-professionals could be shared by two or more students, then do so, so long as the students do not suffer.

This was brought to my attention and I schedule Dr. Kimble to come on the show to discuss this and other financial issues facing the district at that time.

Because I am the father of a special needs child, many expected me to go on the attack and to be offended by Dr. Kimble’s actions.

Didn’t happen.

Why? Because the bigger issue was not how things were being handled for special education students, it was how things could be made more financially responsible. Dr. Kimble came on and said that the negative reaction was being amped up by some people who were not clear as to his request. Dr. Kimble’s request, as it turns out, opened with the statement that the needs to the special needs students came first, BUT if there were ways to make things more efficient please do so.

The other big issue at the time was the money being spent at Adkins Stadium. It had to be done due to an insurance issue and by doing the improvements and expansions, the district hoped to repay the costs more rapidly. Oh, and a lot of the money to fund the work was donated.

OK, so what prompted this was when I saw a news story from Columbia, Missouri, about cuts being made to the budget of Columbia Public Schools. Add to that the fact that I work for a company who serves over fifty school districts in the state, with our goal being to help them keep as much money in the classroom while still providing the students a good use of computers and technology.

Well, I know that Columbia Public Schools does not follow a reasonable practice. That practice being to do as much business with local and locally owned companies as they could. If they did that, they would keep more money in the community. That would have the impact on the Columbia Public Schools tax base by increasing it.

Simple tax policy lesson here. There are two ways in increase tax revenues. One, is to raise tax rates. The other is to increase the tax base.

And it is the second school of thought that explains why tax cuts increases tax revenues in both the short and long term more effectively than the former. And this works at all levels.

So, if Columbia Public Schools had worked with a local I.T. company, maybe Midwest CompuTech, or anybody else with an office in Columbia, rather than with vendors out of St. Louis, Columbia Public Schools would have a fraction more money than they do now.

Extrapolate that model beyond I.T. to other areas in spending, and the budget problem may still exist, but the discussion today would be about much smaller figures.

I personally think that, overall, Jefferson City Public Schools does a good job with our tax dollars. Are their areas of improvement? Of course, but what organization cannot say the same?