Mayor Jackson On State of Montclair Public Schools

1. What kind of people are these that are in charge? Was it a surprise attack by accountants that alerted them to the fact they keep overspending? And then the mayor tries to absolve all of these tax-payer funded sloths with this horrid statement: “I have an abiding faith in the people and the promise of Montclair. Let’s get to work!” Let’s get to work indeed. Fire the incompetent boobs. Jackson included. And if they can’t be fired, well take all the millions in expected new taxes out of their salaries and cancel any of their hiring abilities. Enough already! Montclair’s “promise” is being sucked down the municipal drain every year.

2. Thank you brigattista, I couldn’t type fast enough!

3. let’s bring in the energy companies…fracking here we come.

4. How much are we in the hole? I agree with brigattista, let’s start by firing all of the people that Penny McCormick brought it to help create this mess. From what I hear, they all have pretty fat salaries so we should be able to recoup at least half a mill from that alone. Three years ago, the school was running a surplus and now it has a deficit. Was this their intended consequence? Who the hell was doing the budget for the last 3 years? There was a BOE meeting at the High School on Monday about this but I didn’t know about it. Did anyone happen to attend? How did this all play out?

5. Without question, I like the Mayor better when he doesn’t speak to a script. He might also change his advisor(s).

   I can’t speak for the public sector, but when a crisis arises in the corporate world and a key executive jumps/gets pushed out of the boat, the last thing that is done is to communicate appreciation to the departing executive for services rendered.

   I would have liked his message to be more personal as to his role & responsibility. He appoints the BoE, he chairs the BoSE and he has been in the job long enough where this is one of those times to recognize these things as part of the message.

   Lastly, he can’t have the same degree of surprise as most of us as I believe someone must have given the BoSE a heads-up last month. To compound matters, the community’s only heads-up came from assessmentgate last week on Bnet.

   I expect the Mayor will issue a follow-up communication this week that hits the right notes better.

6. Hang on to your wallets! Here comes another big tax increase.

7. toofedup – It’s all here . . .

   https://montclairlocal.net/2015/02/montclair-board-education-ponders-possible-budget-crisis/

8. Briggatista there is a good post over on the BOE article breaking down that this is not from overspending, it’s because a large budget surplus was used in a plan that invested the money so as not to lose it because of state policy. Several other factors coincided to create this deficit. I could cut and past but I suggest you go over and read it.

   https://montclairlocal.net/2015/02/montclair-board-education-ponders-possible-budget-crisis/#comment-408312

9. Thanks Sam. Luckily I don’t mind doing the ctrl-c/ctrl-v

   @brigattista
   @toofedup

   Obviously this is an emotional issue and there can be a tendency to make attacks without having all the information. Like Sam said a number of factors went into moving from a large surplus to the deficit we face today.

   From The Times in 2012:

   “‘The big part of the fund balance was really unexpended health care, unexpended unemployment, unexpended tuition reimbursements to outside districts, transportation costs and energy savings,’ Sarinelli told The Montclair Times.”

   There was a lot of money that was allocated but did not end up being used (note healthcare is in there).

   “Sarinelli said the surplus was reduced on July 1; the first day of the district’s current fiscal year to $8.2 million when $5.7 million of the surplus was applied to the district’s 2012-2013 budget. A further $3.2 million of the surplus will be used in the district’s 2013-2014 operating budget.”

   The expenditures Fleischer referenced were planned three years ago, in large part because any surplus over 2% is by law returned back to taxpayers.

   “Under state law, school districts are allowed to carry a modest surplus limited to a 2 percent. Districts are required to use any surplus funds in excess of the 2 percent cap on tax relief in future years.”

   We knew the surplus was coming down and used the money to make great investments. What we didn’t know was the massive scale of healthcare cost increases and other upcoming expenses. Fleischer followed state policy and MacCormack used the funds on, save the limited outlays for testing, projects the community supported.

   Link: https://www.northjersey.com/news/montclairs-school-budget-surplus-hits-13-9-million-1.488632

10. I suggest you all read Upside Mom’s new blog post. It is a non-partisan entry on Penny’s resignation and the role of social media here in Montlclair.

    https://upsidemom.wordpress.com/2015/02/25/a-reflection-upon-the-recent-montclair-superintendent-resignation/

11. Upside Mom’s post is lame. It says nothing.

    How she stepped down so conveniently is very interesting. Either she knew things were going to hit the fan or she was asked to leave.

    The Mayor’s letter was quiet inept.

    As far as the health care… 
    They didn’t know about the massive increases in health care? That’s ludicrous. Who doesn’t plan for health care to constantly go up and up and up? We live in America, after all! What do you think this is, Switzerland?

    As a vote of no confidence, we are taking our kids out of PARCC. Let them rot.

12. Start cutting, no new taxes, taxes are always their answer. Montclair BoE has 975 employees, 100 of them make over $100,000.

    Let the cuts begin ….

13. martylorne, et al – If those responsible for making spending decisions would have been more prudent and fiscally responsible for certain frivolous and non-essential line items, ie a Chief Talent Officer, etc, there would at least exist a lower deficit. Correct?

    A Chief Talent Officer? Ridiculous! Who ever heard of such an excess in a public school system? Perhaps our former superintendent was pondering the old leadership success adage, “hire people around you who are better than you.” Alas, ironically enough, even that didn’t work.

    If this kind of pathetic and inexcusable budgeting occurred in the private sector, they all would have been given pink slips by now.

14. Upside Mom makes a very valid point that instead of focusing on our kids and what is best for the schools, a really large amount of energy was spent humiliating and degrading the superintendent. To what end? She arrived and worked in good faith to bring our district up to par technologically and address a number of maintenance and personnel issues.

    She used the resources available when she got here in the way that was outlined by our priorities and the limits of laws written in Trenton. In return she was attacked relentlessly. Upside Mom’s post is relevant and we should keep it in mind when the new superintendent arrives.

15. For crying out loud….

    They didn’t know?? They have teacher’s salaries and benefits right in front of them and THEY KNOW the teachers are in a Tier 4 next year of the state mandated health care contributions. They didn’t know???? What are they there for then? Oh right, to not know.

    At this point, I didn’t expect anything less from this mayor. He’s a politician, after all. If he wants his legacy as mayor to be tied to a BOE and Super that destroyed the public schools…well, that’s his decision. But he, of all people, should know the consequences of that: real estate depreciation.

16. Btw, the attacks on the superintendent WERE due to a focus on kids. But, that would require some analysis of the points made by those against her. Her educational philosophy is that of a one-size-fits-all, standardized model (dare I say, corporate). I’d say any “humiliating” that you perceived, was largely aimed at benefitting children so they don’t have to go through what she desired to have them endure.

17. I think have become the tiresome poster of presentations and slides. Sorry about that but I think revisiting the history is important. If you review ’13-’14 budget documents, which are on the District’s website, you will see that not much of this shortfall is honestly new news. Individuals can decide if our representatives ignored this info or made decisions based on it, but to me, it doesn’t look like anything significant was “hidden” from the Board of Ed the Township Board of School Estimate. The rate of rise in healthcare costs for ’15-’16 IS new According to the District’s insurance experts, nothing historically suggests the increased utilization experience this year, which is leading to the likely (and significantly) increased premium next year. They were a reminder that 3 budget options/levels were presented to the BoE by the Administration last year and the consequences of fund-balance spending (“surplus”) on recurring operating expenses was noted and discussed in the meetings. If anyone has any other additional background, please share. Will certainly help the discussion/comment for the 3/2 budget workshop.

    1. ’15-’16 prelim budget info with COO commentary fr Monday night — that summarizes the fund balance spending
    https://www.montclair.k12.nj.us/WebPage.aspx?Id=2461

    2. Historical budget documents from ’06 – current. Of particular interest are the 2/24/2014 slides that discuss the “dilemma” of last year’s budget and the issue of using the fund-balance surplus on recurring operating expenses
    https://www.montclair.k12.nj.us/WebPage.aspx?Id=2281

    3. Audit report of ’13-’14 budget
    https://www.montclair.k12.nj.us/WebPage.aspx?Id=2281

18. Silverleaf –

    The fiscally responsible thing to do with the $14 million WAS to budget it out over the next three years. If we didn’t, the state would have taken the excess and reapportioned it back to the public. Millions of dollars in upgrades never would have happened.

    Put yourself in their shoes: it is 2012 and you are looking at a $14 million surplus. If you don’t use it, 98% of the money will simply disappear. What is your next step?

19. Is it ironic that Upside Mom’s comments claiming the Super was degraded by her critics, are degrading to the critics by claiming that don’t care about their schools? Gotta love it.

    “I’d be hard pressed to believe that many of the most vocal opponents actually care about improving the Montclair education system or the education of our children.” That’s funny, because I know even the Super’s most ardent supporters do actually care about improving the Montclair education system. It’s something I learned from the troubles we had here in Bloomfield – if parents are passionate enough to stand up a speak for their kids, whatever side they may be on, they obviously care and deserve to be heard.

20. martylorne – My next step? I guess increasing the cost for medical benefits to $5 million.

    Do you see where I’m going with this?

21. I’m not sure that I do. Put $5m into healthcare back in 2012? The costs still go up and we are in the same boat.

22. Certainly whoever was negotiating the teacher contract took this into account and did not agree to leave the health benefits exactly the same while giving out a 2.85% raise. Isn’t one of the ways to reduce health care expenses to change benefits (e.g raise the deductible). Isn’t that what negotiators do, trade off giving something for getting something.

23. Pete and mtclrsown have said it perfectly. What is it that we are supposed to have gained from that blog post?? I’m not seeing an answer to the issue at hand but I am seeing a cheerleader for a person who walked away from our town days before this bombshell was dropped on us. Many would be hard pressed to say the superintendent of a district left due to being pushed out by vocal activists who care enough about our kids and schools to speak out against the reforms she sought to bring to town. You don’t have to demonize her or the board but pretending that she was purely a benefit to the district , the kids, the teachers, is really something only someone who has either some ties to her or who would benefit from her having stayed would be saying.

24. The Upside Mom blogger seems like one of those people who gets their news from happynews.com. Really, there are people out there who do that! Anyway, she or he (I don’t really believe that the blogger is really a parent) is a paid fan of Penny. There’s just no way she was hounded out by the public. That’s just smoke and mirrors. It’s too much of a coincidence that she disappeared at exactly the same time as the deficit hit the fan.

25. The 95 percenters are hoisted on their own blue petards. If you like your Obamainsurance you can keep it. If you like your resultant deficit you can keep it.

26. The woman resigned on the eve of the PARCC. She resigned and didn’t even show up to deliver the bad news about the budget. She came did what she wanted to do aided by the BOE and their rubber stamp to approve everything she wanted. Those are the very simple facts folks. The Principals obviously had a problem with what she put into the budget report, it said so in their letter and even Dr. Putrino, the head of the Principal’s union, yelled out at the BOE meeting that they didn’t agree to ANYTHING. There you have it. A woman who left a town to pick up her mess, she needs to be out immediately.

27. So basically all you Republican rich crazies – most of whom don’t even live in Montclair! – believe that we should cut all the teacher’s salaries?

    Hello, it’s obvious that Penn screwed up the budget and then left WITHOUT EVEN COMING TO THE LAST MEETING as @qby33 says. Has nothing to do with Jackson. As for Jackson sounding like a politician – this is a written statement, not a speech, did you want him to throw some “ums” and “you knows” in there to sound more folksy? He stated the facts and tried to bring people together at the end.

28. MACCORMACK UPDATE: she’s not going anywhere, at least not for a while:

    https://www.northjersey.com/opinion/opinion-letters-to-the-editor/the-montclair-times-letter-by-chris-mcgoey-superintendent-and-her-budget-must-go-1.1278374

    Will she punish the teachers and principals who spoke out against her?

    Will she seek to have Fleischer implement the Deutsch-approved cuts (physical education, art, music, middle and elementary school electives, sports, books and supplies, paraprofessionals, speech/occupational therapy, teachers) throughout the district and keep her bloated Central Office budget in tact?

29. By “tough choices and sacrifices,” the Mayor really means “increase your taxes to pay for our oversight.”

30. “…and keep her bloated Central Office budget in tact?”

    please advise on how bloated the central office budget is? Is this wasting $500,000, $2MM, $5MM, $10MM? I think that the central office should be bare bones and that the teachers deserve more of the pie here, but what does that actually mean? How bloated is it and where do you find those numbers in the budget? PMAC and the BOE gave the MEA raises for three straight years in the +2% range and that should add up to way more of the cost because this is a really large component of the entire budget. So not sure how much of a dent the central office bloat (as you put it) is adding to the budget and if someone could quantify that it would be helpful.

    ALso, in reading all of these posts (here and FB), it is apparent that most people don’t know how to do an organizational budget and especially if that budget must conform to state guidelines (and I really don’t either). But it looks like the BOE and PMAC were giving most people what they wanted for the last 3 years and spending that surplus seems to have been done over giving the money back to taxpayers since the state seems to mandate it to go back if not used properly. They didn’t cut much of anything and tried to save money with a new health carrier which maybe blew up in their faces.

    I also think that if PMAC or the BOE were putting real cuts on the table with the long-term view in mind, and said the present pace is untenable, the same group of people would have been entirely against cutting anything and still acting awful to the BOE members in public so it was a no-win situation.

    That doesn’t excuse the BOE and PMAC from not just cutting the central office anyway as a show of leadership, but again, you have progressives arguing with progressives about fiscal management so I don’t expect anything other than what happened. Nobody wants to make a sacrifice except the idiots like me who pay ridiculous property taxes thinking my kids will be better off being in a more heterogeneous community.

31. Oh please, Assessmentgate. You lost me at Felice Harrison for Superintendent. The same Felice Harrison who couldn’t count 85 Kindergarten students at Watchung last year and showed zero leadership in resolving that situation. People are advocating putting her in charge of a $110M+ budget? If that’s the best that Montclair can do, let’s just all throw in the towel now.

32. Hello? Deutsch-approved cuts? This forum should not a be creative writing seminar. This clearly continues to be serious and people are serious about wanting and wading through real information. You know nothing is “approved” — but I can see with a hole that big to fill, much will be considered and that is legitimately of concern. The ’15-’16 budget process kicked off (quite spectacularly) on Monday — it will go on for most of the next month. We need careful, thoughtful review and analysis as all prepare for the public budget workshops and BOSE meeting. Share your point of view and the facts and sources that support it. We all appreciate that. A lot. The phrases inserted for dramatic impact? There’s enough drama already.

33. Destroying the Washington Street Y building to build the multimillion Bullock School was a huge expence and mistake.

34. In hindsight, the 2%/4%/6% options presented last year was a serious mistake in judgment.
    The MacCormack (I refuse to abbreviate an official’s name), the BoE, and the BoSE should not have considered the 6% option. That was crazy as it allowed the township to not tackle the recurring expense and reoccurring expense exposure.

    A steady stream of 4-7% annual school tax increases will make the township less heterogeneous. But, we can’t undue the recurring expense issue in one year and need to spread it out. This will take a new level of discipline & leadership along the lines of what we now have on the municipal side of township finances.

    So maybe we bring back an inverted variation of what was proposed last year for the next 3 budget cycles – 6% this year, 4% next year and 2% in FY 2018.

35. In hindsight, keeping the school taxes flat for three years, as opposed to implementing small increases each year, was a mistake in judgment, too. If there was a hope that the taxpayers of this town would somehow remember and/or appreciate that gesture, surely that hope was misplaced. And as a practical matter, those three years of flat school taxes coincided with a slow but steady rise in the district’s recurring personnel costs, so no one should ever have expected that the bill wouldn’t come due.

36. The Mayor’s leadership is about as inept as his statement.

37. Amen njgator. I spit up my coffee when I read that letter. The author must be a relative of Harrison’s. Of course the NAACP wants her. Maybe it should go ask any of us parents that had the misfortune of sending our kids to Nishuane when she was the “principal.”

38. In response to montclairdad. Our children all went through Nishuane when Felice was the Principal and she was GREAT. I have no opinion as to her appropriateness for the interim Superintendent slot, but as a Principal she was terrific.

39. We must remember which BOE members were on the BOE when MacCormack was hired. All of those members were former mayor Fried’s appointments. Check out the voting of the BOE since Mayor Jackson’s appointments. One BOE did not vote for last years budget, and he has voted repeatedly against the personnel reports which sought to hire all of the overstaffing at Central Services.

40. Not quite sure what we really expected from Dr. MacCormack or from Mr. fleischer, when they were hired for Montclair Superintendent and Business Administrator,opps Chief Operations Officer. MacCormack was hired without the proper certification when she came to Montclair. She had to obtain the proper certification once she was hired. The BOE claimed that MacCormack’s lack of certification was only a technicality, since she did not reside in New Jersey. That is not true. MacCormack was never a school superintendent, anywhere, before coming to Montclair. She was a supervisor in Conn. She had NEVER worked on or put together a school budget before Montclair. MacCormack was hired as a Trainee, with no superintendent experience. THE SAME IS TRUE FOR Brian Fleischer, he has never been a school Business Administrator before Montclair. He was an accountant in NYC. Chief Financial Officer, no such title exist. Ours was the first budget he has ever done. Did not get his certification until recently. He too was hired as a Trainee, with no school business administrator experience. And yes, the BOE knew of their experienced, or rather lack of experience. Yet they hired them anyway.
    They don’t know budgets, so what did we get from our Trainees? Very little knowledge, but that was all they had to offer. We were had, we were hoodwinked, by our own BOE

41. How about hiring an experienced Superintendent from a smaller district in NJ? You’d get an experiened Super, and could actually offer them a raise since Christie’s Cap actually sets smaller salary limits for smaller districts.

    Just pulling names out of my hat, how about Alex Anemone? Principal and AP experience in Montclair at Glenfield and Hillside (as best as I can tell he was very well respected here). From the salary data available online via NJ By The Numbers or APP Data Universe, his Harding Salary is only $135k…even if that is a year or two out of date, the Montclair Super Salary would represent a significant salary increase over what the Harding BOE is able to pay him. He’s been Super in Harding for 3 1/2 years. https://patch.com/new-jersey/montclair/alex-anemone-resigns-as-glenfield-principal

42. Crap. Anybody who has lived in town over the last several decades knows the school budget is the same old/same old spending machine. It was part of evolving the magnet system into a competitive differentiator for the brand called Montclair. The only issue this year is that the district broke the pact with the community with this shortfall level being outside the norm.

    Last year’s was a $8mm shortfall …and the parents were still divided about should whether we spend more $2mm more in recurring expenses!

    So, this year is a $11mm shortfall, thanks to the health care industry. So, our heath insurance just served to crowd out other spending choices. If it was $7mm shortfall, we would be talking about adding Pre-K, lowering class size, and immersion programs, expanding writing workshops, etc. etc. Montclair just loves to spend and while magnet schools might offer more than the traditional model quality-wise, it is a premium expense model because each school is unique.

    Looking back at the school levy starting from 2001 through the current year and throw out the aberration years of 2012-14.
    Montclair’s average levy increase was 6.4%. The average increase was over $4.1mm. Yes, let’s slap some hands for breaking the pact. But, in the end, we will pay the difference to get back to our usual ways and that will be that.

    Personally, if Ms Harrison seems to be an acceptable choice. She knows the district, we know her, she knows us. I’m not looking for leadership from an interim superintendent, I’m looking for a damage control expert that can execute tactically in a very brief 6 month rein. We can also afford her. Who knows, we might end up liking her for the permanent role if she succeeds.

43. agree w/ FrankR. If you go back and read the stories from this time last year about the 2014-2015 budget, they WERE talking about all of this and it seems that the only material surprise was much higher than expected health care costs. For people to be up in arms over the budget has to do more with ignorance and/or dislike of MacCormack/ individual BOE members as opposed to fiscal ideology. The majority on both sides want to spend, spend, spend and concessions and sacrifices are something for the other guy to deal with.

44. I just read the Montclair Times Letters to The Editors. The union leadership need to throttle back on their rhetoric and meaningless questions & distractions. Their primary mission is to serve their members, not the children…unless they changed their charters.

    As to today’s letter…

    One of the MEA’s biggest concerns is a budget category (legal costs) that is 0.0025, a quarter of a percent, of total expenses! Quite amusing!

    There is no way I would let the unions have a say in picking the next superintendent. Crazy talk! Doesn’t the superintendent negotiate contracts with the unions? Let’s see what the MEA asks for in the upcoming contract negotiations that is part of expense categories that are 83% of the district’s expenses.

    They can’t have the high ground on this mess…if there is any.

45. “For people to be up in arms over the budget has to do more with ignorance and/or dislike of MacCormack/ individual BOE members as opposed to fiscal ideology.” – cspn, do you honestly believe all the people who have posted detailed comments here over the last few days, discussing the misplaced priorites, needless homngrown assessments, the spending on non-essentials like PR people and “talent officers”, they don’t really have a fiscal or personal interest, they’re just haters? How does having some vague awareness about the possibilty of a budget hole last year mean that people who are pissed about it now must not like the MacCormack or individual BOE members?

46. Frank, I thought a committee designated by the board does the negotiating?

47. We had two very different experiences then townie. However, it’s not debatable that they took Gail Clarke – who built Watchung into the excellent middle school of choice that it became – and thrust her into Nishuane to fix the mess left behind in Harrison’s wake. In fact, it wouldn’t hurt to look at Gail Clarke for the position. I know the NAACP wouldn’t be on board, but if it’s making the decisions about whom should be running the Montclair schools, then there are even bigger issues in play.

48. The contract parties are the MEA & the BoE.

    Yes, the BoE has a committee responsible for the process and sends to the full BoE for approval. However, the reality of who is on point has changed along with who informally has discussions.

    “Shepard added that she continued informal negotiations with School Superintendent Dr. Penny MacCormack until February 14, and she again insisted that at no point did the union file an impasse.”

    Also,
    https://www.northjersey.com/news/montclair-boe-hires-labor-negotiator-management-consultant-1.334972

    Note the part about the MEA uses negotiators from the NJEA.

49. SSP – “How does having some vague awareness about the possibilty of a budget hole last year mean that people who are pissed about it now must not like the MacCormack or individual BOE members?”

    Go back to what Frank R posted – “Last year’s was a $8mm shortfall …and the parents were still divided about should whether we spend more $2mm more in recurring expenses!”

    If the shortfall was $7MM or $8MM or $2MM or $3MM, the talk would have been about “where to spend” not “whether to spend.” Go read the rants when we had a surplus and wanted to cut a school to save for the long-run. Nobody on either side wants to make the needed cuts to make this more tenable to the middle class for the long-term – our taxes, if it hasn’t already happened, will make the rich subsidize the poor and drive out the middle class from this town.

    The only difference between the camps is a dislike for the admin – otherwise both sides here want to spend. There may be a few people who would like to see this become tenable for the long-term, but most calling for resignations at the BOE meeting would be facing the same short-fall but for different reasons if the tables were turned and they were in charge.

    And from what I have read and see in the slides, “misplaced priorites, needless homngrown assessments, the spending on non-essentials like PR people and “talent officers””….those costs are not what has put us in this large of a hole – maybe $1MM of the $11MM shortfall (someone correct me if I am wrong). While it all adds up, these costs are small relative to the salary and benefit costs for the in-school staff. Many of the same people who are shocked and ranting and raving, weren’t calling for any cuts of material size after these issues were brought up this time last year – they just wanted to see CC and PARCC go away along with MacCormack and called her fiscally irresponsible but only for trying to implement the state mandates and being ambitious with the technological part of implementation. If PARCC and CC actually adds $2MM or $5MM, its still only 1.5% – 4% of the total budget and our shortfall is around 9% – 10% of the entire budget. Would it help to not have these things – sure somewhat, but it wouldn’t solve the problem that is longer-term in nature and which nobody it seems has the desire to address.

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