Issue #18: The declining population at the elementary schools has a long-term effect on both the Hebron BOE and RHAM budgets.
We have recently received the New England School Development Council (NESDEC) data for anticipated school children at the Hebron schools. It’s important to understand the effect of this declining school population on the current and future budgets for both Hebron and RHAM schools.
First, what is NESDEC? According to their website, http://www.nesdec.org/about/index.htm, part of their mission is to provide “valuable planning tools and beneficial information needed to make informed management and facilities' planning decisions.” One of those tools is school population predictions; NESDEC data has been used for at least 20 years in Hebron. Sometimes, past Administrators said the data was wrong (OK, it was off by 2 students that year), but by and large, NESDEC student population predictions have been fairly accurate.
As you will see on http://www.nesdec.org/planning_mgmt/enrollment.htm, “As a benefit of affiliation, NESDEC prepares more than 250 enrollment projections and updates each year for school districts throughout New England. These ten-year projections are designed to provide our affiliates with yearly, up-to-date enrollment information that can be used by boards and administrators for effective planning and allocation of resources. This service is free to affiliates.”
Therefore, the data is available to school administrators who subscribe to NESDEC, but is not available online to the general public.
We will try to get a copy of the 10 year NESDEC projections for Hebron, but until then, we can report the following data that we DO know for Hebron Elementary Schools (HES) for grades pre-K through 6th grade:
Current population of HES (FY 2009-10): 1,172
NESDEC prediction for HES FY 2010-11 (current budget discussions): 1,142
NESDEC prediction for HES FY 2011-12: 1,117
NESDEC prediction for HES FY 2012-13: 1,043
IMPORTANT NOTE: NESDEC predicted 116 Kindergartners for FY 2010-11; the current count of registered Kindergartners as of 2/26/10 is 103.
That is a difference of a negative 129 students from this current year’s student population to just three years from now. Statistically, that’s an 11% decrease in “customers” (students) in just 3 years.
Let’s take this current year’s budget discussions for FY 2010-11. There is predicted to be at least 30 less students, and possibly 43 less students than the current year. Let’s take the medium, and call it 36 less students. That’s a decline in “customers” (students) of 3.07%. Yet the Board is asking for a 3.99% increase, which includes a new initiative (ADK).
This seems to explain why ADK has become such a passionate “can’t let go” topic for some Administration and Board members. When your student population (your customer base) is starting to significantly plummet – 3.07% immediately rising to 11% in just three years -- you have to find a way to protect what you have.
Let’s look at a simple scenario in the real world, the private sector, where many Hebron residents work. Let’s say you’re a manager in which you are responsible for manufacturing 100,000 wheelchairs (based on sales projections – “customers”), and you have 30 employees that are needed to manufacture those 100,000 wheelchairs. With equal distribution, each employee would be expected to manufacture 3,333.3 wheelchairs each.
Then, sales projections for the next year’s wheelchair customers comes in at 96,030, a 3.07% decline. Automatically, your boss says: “You can probably manufacture the number of wheelchairs needed with 2 less employees. Your budget is going to be reduced by the total cost of manufacturing 3,970 less wheelchairs, which includes employee salaries, benefits, office supplies associated with fewer employees, parts [textbooks and supplies], and space.”
Now, do you go out and just automatically fire two people to meet the budget goals based on supply and demand? Maybe, but probably not. There is a common practice of using “attrition” to ensure that jobs are secured, but goals are met. Attrition means enough people retire or take different jobs that layoffs aren’t required because at the end of the year, you have the required number of employees needed to still effectively manufacture the projected customer sales of 96,030 wheelchairs. So you've saved the employee headcount and benefits through attrition, AND you SHOULD still have the additional cost savings from parts [or textbooks and supplies], space, etc. needed to manufacture 3.07% less wheelchairs.
Your boss doesn’t want to hear your ideas on new programs like salad bars at the company cafeteria, or gym facilities for your existing staff, to retain your existing budget. “Oh, and by the way, Frank, if you give me an additional 3.99% budget increase, I can create new programs even though we have less customers, and hey, you don’t have to “really” pay for it – just increase the cost of the wheelchairs to cover all the things I want.”
This is what a “real” budget cut looks like in the private sector. It means less budget money than you were given the previous year to accomplish a goal because you have fewer customers. Less customers = less products = less employees = cost savings. There are at least 3, and perhaps 5, teachers retiring this year. There’s your attrition so that no one loses a job.
And in terms of paying for all the bells and whistles by just increasing the cost of the product? Well, you know what happens in the “real world” when you do that…and in the real world, you have sales projection figures several years out, and you start planning NOW for that 11% decline in customers.
How does all of this impact RHAM? This decline in student population has been predicted for at least 10 years. There was a “bubble group” – meaning a very large group of children who entered the school system 5 years ago. They are now in 4th grade. So while that large “bubble group” will be moving through the RHAM system over the next 7 years (increasing our proportionate payment to RHAM), keep in mind that the declining student population is closely following, meaning that over time we will be sending less and less students to RHAM, as will Marlborough and Andover.
The reality is: Hebron taxes have “priced” many families out of moving to our town. (That’s just in case you hadn’t guessed that from the number of “For Sale” signs that have been up for well over a year.)
Don’t expect NESDEC’s predictions to be wrong in the declining student population – customers for the BOE’s services. It’s become too expensive for young families to move to Hebron, which, if our taxes weren't so high, would provide new "customers." They're just not flocking to Hebron, as the saying goes.