Some Positive PSSA results

There were some early PSSA results that list DVSD as a top performer in some areas.

I believe in celebrating good news, and there certainly seems to be some in the preliminary PSSA results. This does not mean that we can sit back and relax. These numbers look good, but the entire PSSA results have not been released yet. The math scores for 11th grade may still be a problem and there still may be areas of concern when you look at subgroups, even in the areas that we did comparatively well.

When the entire PSSA results are released you should be able to find them on PA's site: http://paayp.emetric.net/District/Overview/c52/120522003?schoolID=

On another blog, I responded to a commenter: I am not sure if you are referring to my comments, Anonymous, but be assured that I spoke up when the budget was adopted and voiced my concern for the $2 million in unfunded spending that is still not funded. A director asked what cuts I would make and I indicated that deferring some of the new curriculum and cutting back on some technology purchases as was outlined in "plan B" would be a place to start. The board passed the $70 million budget without the votes of the two sitting directors that I am running with. We advocated reducing the budget and presenting the actual tax increase that will hit property owners if PA does not pass the entire education budget, which few believe will happen at this point.

There are still many unknowns. It is unknown if PA will fund DVSD as anticipated in the budget that was passed by the board. There is likely to be a shortfall, and the board will have to reduce expenditures. The board may to consider a tax increase for THIS year. Next year will likely be tougher, no matter what the outcome is this year.

While this is gloomy, I am not sure what else I, as an individual citizen, could have done to encourage cutting expenditures and present the potential tax increase. The equivalent tax increase if we do not get the $2 million that has not been passed by PA is 6% according to the district superintendent. I believe that she was excluding the use of some reserve money in her calculation as I calculated a 5.2% effective increase with the use of the reserve money. So much for the "0%" touted by some of the candidates this year! Even without the $2 million, PA has increased their contribution to DVSD by 11% over last year! We need to do a better job at scrutinizing expenditures.

There were two candidates that voted "No" twice, Sue Schor and Pam Lutfy. They advocated for reducing expenditures and making an effort to get to a true 0% tax increase. If I were on the board I would have voted "No" also, and joined them.

This can all pretty confusing for those that do not have the time to attend the board meetings. If you have specific concerns, feel free to contact me directly at wegreenlaw@gmail.com or post a specific question here or as a comment here.

The candidates on the slate that I am on do care about the citizens of the district and their views.

I believe that the current board, and its leadership:
-did not try hard enough to make cuts
-has been getting lots more money from the state in the past few years
-has deluding itself in thinking it is managing the budget well.

I think we can do better. I believe that we need to pay more attention to each line in the budget, we need to look at variances during the year, and we need to budget on a five year plan. We are certain to have challenges ahead when we will be required to adequately fund the pension plan.

When there is good news we should celebrate it. Don't misread me, some good news does not mean all is well, but it does mean that we should understand what we did right, and improve on that.