More school board secrecy Trustees continue to shirk open-meeting laws
of course that's just the tip of the iceberg. I've often said you're fishin' for minnows.... when you should be looking for icebergs.
Bond Oversight Committee Meeting Issues.
Going to see a bond oversight meeting is a combination of boredom and aggravation. It is small wonder why so few people go. Even the press doesn't go much. I've been going to speak and to find out what the Trustees, Facilities and Accounting want the BOC to think is going on. During these meetings I usually have some notes or pre-prepared speech because they only give each speaker 3 minutes so you have to be organized somewhat. I'm always tempted to toss my speaking points aside to discuss some of the nonsense that is presented to the BOC during this 2 or 3 hour presentation that is many times nothing more than a commercial for what a great job CCSD's bureaucracy is doing. So I'll try to jot down a few notes on some of the talking points presented at each meeting. Below.
03/01/2011
I am going to appear on the Rose Moore show on the first Tuesday each month. Today I will be speaking partly about the recent meetings of the BOC and here are some documents on the subject. Minutes Agenda . I have posted the audio here. It is about 2 hours long but you can download it and listen at your leisure.
4/15/10
Did
you know that for the three years prior to 2010 the Chief Financial Officer
of CCSD told the public that 12 month school year sessions were cheaper than
9 month? Now he has reversed his conclusion to say that 9 month school
is cheaper! Why? Well.... at least partly because they
built 4 unneeded schools. a $50 million mistake. Here is the video of
when the mistake was made. you will hear me telling the school board
not to proceed on the unneeded schools and use the money to fix our many
sorry existing schools. Due to the added overhead of the unneeded
schools being put in operation... jobs have been lost and classroom sizes
increased. Trustees incompetent decisions, management and planning
have led us into another part of the current disaster.
03/02/2010
Here
is how the bond money is being spent!!! At last a simple example of
the kind of shenanigans that go on....!!! Today's lesson is how
to get rid of our excess money! "What!!" you say? Yes if your
intention is to spend more for a product then it is actually worth then the
best way to do that in a bid is to only allow one product to be used.
That way the manufacturer can charge whatever he wants or whatever price has
been agreed to privately. So at Clark County (not CCSD) they bid two
carpet fibers (this same two) to get competitive bidding. At CCSD they wrote such a
narrow focus specification that only one manufacturer can make the fiber.
Why have a bid then? Because they think that the public can't
figure it out. You will see multiple bidders.
but they are INSTALLERS. What is the result? No matter what bid
is low CCSD gets the same product. Is this carpet so incredibly
special that they can't allow another ? Ha Ha HA!!!!
Part 1 of 1
This is the link
to the documents given to the County Commissioners
01/05/2010
The Clark County School District's competitive bid process for architects does not comply with state law, according to a claim made by Gina Spaulding, the executive director of the Nevada State Board of Architecture and Interior Design. http://www.lvrj.com/news/bidding-process-criticized-80686167.html
11/19/09
I am pretty disappointed in the LVRJ web site I search it once a week minimum with the terms "CCSD" or "HAUG" and some similar terms but the articles that are current don't come up. So please forgive the lateness of this discovery. November 4 Jim Haug wrote this article that I and many insiders believe to be accurate No school construction expected for five years is the title. http://www.lvrj.com/news/no-school-construction-expected-for-five-years-69268767.html You probably read elsewhere in this site that the statistics that CCSD bureaucracy put forth to the BOC were obviously phony as they hit the air 2 months ago. But the Trustees went ahead and authorized the construction of 3 unneeded schools. It was an "Interesting" decision to build 3 (soon to be 4) unneeded schools as opposed to upgrading many old schools. Read on to see what activities this ties into.
(It is also amazing to hear staff insist that the student population has grown after the LV Sun article http://m.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/sep/21/school-district-sees-enrollment-decline-1667-stude/ from September admitting that it is not so.)
Here is a follow up on population growth http://www.lvrj.com/news/breaking_news/Forecasts-Nevada-to-lose-more-jobs-more-people-82407387.html as of 01/20/2010
11/19/09
In the BOC meeting today we heard Mr Weiler & Paul Gerner admit that the district is not adequately maintaining the buildings and equipment and therefore the items that have been paid for by the bond money will not last for the originally projected life. So we are borrowing more money with more bonds to pay for replacements. If you listen to the recording you will also hear staff telling the Bond Oversight Committee that we are buying items that last only 5 years with money that is loaned for 10 years. So we are always borrowing against the future. According to suspicious statistics from the procurement staff they claim that the average life span in only 8.2 years. So they are financing items that on average last 8.2 years with 10 year bonds. In other words the items are in the dumpster 1.2 years before they are paid off. If this makes sense to you then please go to the blog and explain it to me. No one would loan you on a car or a TV for longer than the thing is expected to last.
11/14/2009
I just posted some info regarding the BOC on the front page today please have a look. In case you are interested in hearing what goes on at a BOC meeting don't bother reading the minutes. The person keeping the minutes has been instructed to keep it so vague that you could have no idea what was said. The room that the BOC meets in is fully outfitted with cameras like they use for the Trustees Board. In fact the Trustees do sometimes meet there and use the cameras. But staff instead keeps audio tapes instead of using the camera system. So if you want to see you have to go.
How the BOC works 11/14/2009
The Bond Oversight Committee is an interesting tool for the district because if you go to complain about some shenanigans or (you know) Vegas style Facilities 'operations'. The Trustees send you to the BOC. You will mistakenly think that the BOC is who oversees if the district gets bond money. That is untrue. Actually the decision to allow CCSD to make more bond sales is made over at the Clark County Government Center. That is the Debt Management Commission. Not the CCSD BOC. So to some extent its a stalking horse. One more layer for those who want to complain to spend their time on before it gets to those who have authority to cut off funding. As I mentioned above it also seems to have been created to disenfranchise the vote. But like anything created by politicians for some suspicious purpose someone honest can get appointed and work for a noble reason there. While many BOC members have come and gone while contributing nothing or maybe never even bothering to show up much there is a core group who really are keeping the hard questions coming at staff. Of course the BOC typically (legally) meets about 11 times a year for a few hours each time. So how much can they really do to catch a $5 billion program with over 300,000 people evolved? OTOH the board has appointed their favorite political spinmeister, a paid politician working on the district payroll to sit on the BOC. And further helping the district is another general board appointee who basically spends most of their time acting as defacto defense council of the head of facilities and his henchmen.
On the paid staff side there is an array of personalities. Some of which seem to live for the need to confuse issues with a dizzying array of "Tools" with acronyms that nobody (possibly not even some staff or BOC members) remembers the name of or understands. These tools are basically created so that you and I can't figure out what just happened or why my ox just got gored. Once you accept the concept that these meetings are mostly a big commercial for what a great job the Facilities department is doing... You can accept the finely tailored statistics and other BS much easier.
11/2009 Question to the BOC
Will the BOC investigate or do anything about the Winn medical clinic that was on the front page of the LVRJ Spring Valley insert this week? The LVRJ report does not show up on a search of the LVRJ web site.
http://ccsd.net/news/pdf/20091020-1998215003.pdf. Even if CCSD is not paying for the clinic the land was bought with bond money? If you want the read the school board's side of this situation I suggest that you see this article: http://m.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/nov/03/neighbors-speak-out-against-school-clinic/ http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/nov/04/permit-issue-puts-clinic-hold/ It seems that stories vary about if the clinics serve parents of indigent students also. One thing seems apparent CCSD proceeded to build this illegally without permits. This hails us back to two major problems with the district. One is that it refuses to televise its meetings for fear that the public would not like what it sees. The other is that it basically does what it pleases being only controlled by its own police force, building department investigators and inspectors. Had it not been for some neighbors happening by the construction would be done and it would be another "Too late" scenario.
Take a look at the Emily Richmond article and you will see that no mention is made of any use that could not be conducted in the school nurses office. so why is this free clinic being built? As with many things at CCSD explanations vary with who you ask. There is some believability to the neighbors belief that this is not just for school children for that reason.
Today's news 09-18-2009
The
BOC members will enjoy this LVRJ article!
I laughed so hard when I read this that I almost spilled my breakfast!
After the BOC heard that CCSD is predicting enrollment growth I went to the
Trustees board and predicted that it was untrue. Perhaps
Mr. Weiler forgot that on 07-01-09 I spoke to the board when they were voting
to build 3 unneeded elementary schools?
I told them then that these "Growth Statistics" were false. This was
not an accident! They could have
realistically predicted the student population by using the last week of
school enrollment figures. But
they deliberately chose not to.
Hey Jeff! I have a real nice 4" crystal ball on my desk.
Feel free to try listening to me anytime! But there's no need for
magic because everyone in the BOC meeting who heard this statistical lie
engineered by the bureaucracy presented knew that it was crap.
I'll just say that I appreciate the honesty of Trustee Garvey when
she said that she voted for these (my word “Unneeded”) schools because she
wanted to offer jobs to our community.
Let's try honest and fair dealings as opposed to a wink and some
nonsense statistics. I am the
only architect who is LEED accredited and a Recognized Educational Facility
Planner in southern Nevada. I
get up to the mike at these school board meetings and they just vote with
the bureaucracy no matter how absurd (or thinly veiled lie) the reason is. I
used to be the foremost advocate of new schools but this is the kind of self
serving bureaucratic nonsense that makes my blood boil.
There is an excellent article on the NPRI web site today titled ...
August BOC meeting notes
While these notes are about the August meeting, time has passed since the meeting and I have forgotten some topics. However, in the interest of getting the ball rolling I am reporting a few things that I recall on September 10th.
There was considerable discussion on the topic of the "Extras" tracking process. While Facilities went over how it works correctly what was not mentioned is that the system is set up so that it does not record costs of facilities managers mistakes. this is just as well because if a line was provided then nothing would be written on it anyway. It was also noted that the decision as to what is a "Fair Extra" is left up to the CCSD project manager who would then be in charge of writing up his/her own mistake. Unlikely at best. I have also reported to the Trustees that some, less competent, project managers have the habit of removing items that have been vetted in the design process and low bid. this is done for a reduced credit or no credit. There is also no tracking for these items. These are just some examples of what is deliberately set up not to be tracked for obvious reasons.
While it was reported to the BOC that project managers have 20 years plus experience this is actually inaccurate. I'm sure that there are some that have 20 years experience as something but most have come up from being such things as: subcontractors, asbestos led abaters, factory engineers, CCSD warrantee staff, guys or something similar. Therefore at this point you have many good and some bad PM's who all report at their own will basically unchecked. Because their supervisors rarely come out to the field to review problems unless the PM requests it. And auditors only look at paperwork.
Today, September 10 2009 is "Count Day". By the next BOC meeting I expect that my statement to the Trustees that they were given false projections to get them to vote for 3 schools under construction will be proven true. I found it very apparent that this was the case when the BOC has the presentation about the student growth. Of course since staff chose to ignore U-hauls leaving town and didn't even take a last day of school count as a basis then the projections made at that time are all wrong.
I submitted written comments and asked that the BOC include them verbatim in the written record which they failed to do. I also asked that the BOC take a look at this web site. So I hope that you are a BOC member reading this.
Below are some salient news reports with a little introduction that I wrote.
For the first time in 25 years, Rulffes said, enrollment growth is expected to be almost flat, perhaps growing or declining by 1.5 percent. http://www.lvrj.com/news/27267954.html So why did the board just order the construction of 4 new elementary schools? http://npri.org/publications/to-build-or-not-to-build
http://npri.org/publications/blueprint-for-a-bailout
After all the time I’ve
spent complaining to the Bond Oversight Committee and thinking that the BOC
could do anything about the underhanded dealings… Some time only recently I was
told that the BOC doesn’t have ANY authority at all. It would take a legal opinion to say. Somewhat surprised I thought about it and it
makes some sense. You see this is a
military stile procurement system.
Naturally there would be a false target for complainers to go to. Any naturally the people on the BOC would
probably not know the whole story. Well
the week of 08-21-09 the REAL committee that oversees (approves) the selling of
bonds met. I went and said my usual 3
minutes worth. Of course I spent almost
as much time justifying that I should be allowed on the issue that I came to speak
on! http://www.lvrj.com/news/54107072.html
BOND PROGRAM: School district seeks $249 million more.
School district seeks to issue new bonds
Filing to get another $250 in bond money. Because of
the $3.5 billion that the public thought that it approved they already drew
down $4.9 billion... and spent 4.5 billion.
There is a meeting regarding this on August 21 2009.
Document1
Document2
Document3
Architect selection process
for the prior 2007 to 2009. No need to
shuffle that deck my friend. The cards
are already in the correct order!
There are two easy straight
forward ways to bid rig a professional selection process:
One is to stack a small jury
with one or two persons who are told who to vote for and against.
The other is to prepare two
sets of criteria. Publish one to all
participants. Disclose the other to a
few friends. (Who probably don’t even know that they are getting information
that the others don’t get) Then do the
selection on the basis of the second criteria leaving the un-chosen out. Please enjoy reading
the attached and see what you think.
Remember voting in 1998 for what you thought was a $3.5
billion dollar bond election?
An article to refresh your memory... Well $4 billion of that money was spent so far! Help me with the math?
Continued from the first page. Ken's Comment: I'm posting some information given to me by Kevinn Donovan this week below. So before you start reading... I'll ask my questions: Why build 4 new elementary schools if what is said below adds up? Why not use the money to fix up the old schools in old neighborhoods to make them comparable to new schools in new neighborhoods?
Here are his back-up documents: Document-Enrollment Document-ES Document-MS Document-HS Document-Cost
-----Original Message-----
From: Donovan
Sent: Mon 8/31/2009 9:45 PM
To: ken
Subject: FW: Cutting Education Funds vs. Spending Smarter Part II
Some stuff for your website. Sorry it took so
long.
Dear
elected and newly elected officials,
Some of you may remember me from some emails I sent
last May and last December regarding poor zoning decisions CCSD made with
respect to my daughter's school. Since then I have continued to stay
involved and informed on a more global level and wanted to share a whole new
world of highlights I've uncovered. This is a little lengthy so grab a
glass of water, a small snack and enjoy. In the end you will see that
CCSD's budget problems are a result of an over built under utilized school
system with too many over paid administrators.
Ready, Set, Here We Go!
Attached are the capacity #'s for schools in the excel
files labeled 2008MS CAP, 2008ES CAP and 2008HS CAP. These files list
the capacities for every school within Clark County and are provided by
CCSD. Note that elementary schools have two capacities listed: 9 month
and 12 month. Note that not all schools have the ability to
operate on a 12 month calendar as noted on the spread sheets. What is
interesting is that if you go to the bottom of each sheet there is no
running total. Thus, they are limiting from your eyes the total
available capacity of each type of school. Another interesting note is
that a column is included for portable trailers. This column shows how
CCSD has added to the schools capacity. Also attached is a PDF showing
the 2008-2009 official school enrollments provided by CCSD. Everything
is itemized by individual schools and sub totals are given for each type of
school. What amazes me is that these two reports aren't combined to
share the information. I think that is done on purpose. When you
add subtotals to the Capacities Spread Sheets and combine the two sets of
data the result is SHOCKING!!!!!
Here is the recap of all this data:
ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS - Note, currently some ES's are year
round and others are 9 month:
9 month elementary school capacity is 134,835 (not including trailers)
12 month elementary school capacity is 174,153 (not
including trailers)
Current
elementary school enrollment is 148,680.
If you convert all elementary
schools that have the capability of going year round to year round CCSD
would have 25,473 empty seats and have NO NEED for portable trailers.
Let me repeat this. If you go year round at all elementary schools ALL
portable trailers become obsolete and entire schools would be EMPTY.
With the average elementary school having a year round capacity of 582
students, CCSD could close almost 44 elementary schools just by converting
those that could to year calendars and re-zoning the entire district to fill
the seats. There may be some increased bussing costs associated with
this move, but closing 44 schools and consolidating/removing staff would
certainly offset the cost. As an example, the CCSD average operating
cost
of a school (not
including teachers) is averaged at $1,242 per pupil per the 2007/2008
Accountability Reports (this is the average of ES, MS and HS).
Multiply this time the average capacity of a 9 month
school of 451 (I'm using 9 month capacities for conservative purposes) and
the average cost to operate a school yearly equals $560,000 on the
conservative side. Now multiply that number times the potential of
shutting down 44 elementary schools and the savings per year simply by
utilizing existing seats at the elementary level equals $24,640,000.
This is being ultra conservative and this number does not include offset
costs from transportation costs, the consolidation of teachers, librarians,
administration and so on. Basically the savings will be higher.
Remember that every portable trailer will be removed to. Imagine the
energy savings from those things.
To go further, here is the data at
the middle school level. Note, no middle school currently utilizes
year round schooling so all data is based on 9
month:
Total middle school seats 81,030
Total middle school students 70,894
Net equals 10,136 empty seats.
Average capacity is 1,447. You could close 7 middle schools.
Average operation cost savings not including teachers would be $12,580,218.
Additionally ALL portable trailers are removed.
Finally, here is the data at the
high school level. Note, no high school currently utilizes year round
schooling so all data is based on 9 month
Total high school seats 92,011
Total high school students 84,180
Net equals 7,831 empty seats.
Average capacity is 2,000. You could close at least 3 high schools.
Average operation cost savings not including teachers would be $17,388,000.
Additionally ALL portable trailers are removed.
As a recap, if CCSD converts all
elementary schools to year round calendar (which a lot of elementary schools
are already on anyway) and rezoned the valley to utilize all available year
round seats and rezoned all junior high and high schools to utilize all
available seats, CCSD could shut down a staggering 44 elementary schools, 7
middle schools and 3 high schools. The result would yield an
operational cost savings of at least $54,608,218. The impact to the
education of the children and dollars spent in the classroom is $0.
The only inconvenience is that some children will have a little longer bus
ride to school. Personally, I grew up in a rural area and had 10 to 20
mile bus rides to get to school. Another 5 or 10 minute ride will
hardly impact the students. Please note the following too:
There will most likely be an add to
the transportation budget, but it could go the other way too. If the
radius requirements for a bus route are increased to 3 miles rather than 2,
transportation costs would most defiantly go down.
Additional cost savings will be
yielded by removing excess, librarians, secretaries, PE teachers, art
teachers, music teachers, janitors and so on at all the closed schools.
54 less librarians yields an annual cost savings of $2,916,000 at a salary
and benefits package of $54,000 per year.
Once the staff has been removed from
the closed schools, the amount of managers, middle managers, administrators
and so on can be reduced as well as there will be less people in the pool to
manage.
Further monies could be found by reviewing the salaries of the school
administration. Starting at the top with Superintendent who makes over
$300,000 per year. This is more than twice the amount of the Governor
of Nevada. Almost twice of what US Senators get paid. His
salary is more than the entire Henderson City Council and Henderson's
Mayor's salaries combined! In fact, he almost makes more than
the President of the United States. The CEO's of GM, Ford and Chrysler
all just lowered their salaries to a $1. It's time for the
administration of CCSD to do similar action.
Probably the most important thing
noted is that 1,737 portable trailers in the CCSD inventory are NOT needed
at all. These could be sold for profit or used as affordable housing
for teachers on land that CCSD already owns to lure and recruit new and
better teachers. The operational savings of removing these is probably
immeasurable.
The empty schools could have multiple purposes.
Keep as inventory. Use them to consolidate operations that are
scattered throughout the valley. Sell them to create revenue.
Retro-fit them and lease the space. Convert them to dorms for
affordable housing for teachers. Make them a shelter of some sort.
Start a CCSD Pre-K program and charge for it to create revenue. The
opportunities are endless.
CCSD still has $748 Million Dollars left in their bond
fund. This money could be used to build expansions onto existing
schools that would remain open in the most crowed of areas to create even
further efficiencies.
Let me know if you have any questions, but I think this
is the solution to CCSD's budget issues. CCSD is simply over built
just like the Clark County housing economy. What is sad it that I
mentioned these figures to the Board of Trustees at the meeting this
morning. It was like they didn't even care and not surprisingly wanted
it swept under the rug. I'm in further amazement that some local hot
shot news reported hasn't "Dug Deeper" into CCSD to report these issues and
make a name for him or herself.
At any rate, I think most parents in
Clark County would rather drive a little further to school and/or go year
round before losing Librarians, Custodians and programs such as Sports and
other Extracurricular Programs . I think once a mass
re-zoning/re-distribution of students to fill seats is fully analyzed with
open books you'll find that CCSD could easily reduce it's operating budget
by well over $125 million dollars without impacting the dollars that go into
the classrooms. You may find that you're left with extra monies to
infuse in the class rooms, "oh the humanity". Please use this
information when you meet with Jeff Weiler, Joyce Haldeman and Dr. Walt
Rulffes today and ask them why they haven't looked into this.
Sincerely and respectfully,
Kevinn Donovan
702.219.5944
PS
The last attachment, copy of cost estimate report 2008,
shows what I tried to explain the last time I contacted you. CCSD
finally sent me the bussing cost impact as a result of the 2008/2009 zone
changes that were approved by the board of trustees last year. The
result was a $400,000 add to the state transportation budget. They
zoned kids that could walk to school to schools 3 miles away thus creating
additional bussing needs rather than bussing children already on a bus 1
mile further. To add insult to injury there are current zone changes
proposed for next year that do the same thing. To my knowledge the
transportation departing is not reviewing the costs of the proposals.
What is really amazing is that a proposal was made a Board of Trustee
meeting to hire an independent consultant to rezone the entire district and
enforce the 2 mile radius rule but the board said no. The felt the
current staff and AZAC board could do this. I argue that if they could
you wouldn't have the problems you have now with such high transportation
costs.
PSS
For the individuals that are copied on this email that
are appalled by this information and gross miss-management, simply hit
"reply to all" on your browser, type your comments, hit send and your
comments will go to all elected officials in Nevada.