The 2012-2013 budget proposal for Pittsford increases their benefits by just over 4%, or $1.2 million.   Pittsford Budget

Why the difference?  Is Canandaigua a microcosm of increased benefits costs?  How can a district with 54% more students, and an equivalent pupils to teacher ratio have a lower total dollar amount increase in benefits than our district?  (See  Business First – Buffalo for student numbers and pupils to teacher ratio.)

Apparently the benefits cost increases are driven by something other than market forces…

Some interesting statistics on the two districts based on Business First – Buffalo 2011 Guide to Rochester Area Schools:

Victor Central Schools is ranked #5 of 67 school districts, or the 93.9 percentile.
Victor has 212 pupils per administrator, and 13.6 pupils per teacher.
Student enrollment 4,112

Canandaigua City School District is ranked #7 of 67 school districts, or the 90.9 percentile.
Canandaigua has 150.6 pupils per administrator, and 12.3 pupils per teacher.
Student enrollment 3,873

Canandaigua has 6.2% few students that Victor, yet our proposed budget is 16% higher.

What are the key drivers for this difference?  The Superintendent has suggested a number of factors including busing and a higher percentage of special needs kids.  He has suggested that the special education population in canandaigua (12.9%) is responsible for over $5 million in difference (victor’s population is 7.2%).  Taking the number of students above, canandaigua has 500 special needs children while victor has 296.  The difference is 204 students.  Using the Superintendent’s numbers, that equates to $24,509 per student; a believable number.  But where is the additional $4 million?   Several factors were suggested to explain why Victor is more efficient.   Perhaps those could be used as guiding principles for the Canandaigua School District to reduce budget, rather than justification for a higher budget.

Finally, the regional per-student-costs are often quoted to highlight that Canandaigua is in the middle of the pack.  The underlying, misguided assumption here is that the status quo is correct.  We need to challenge the concept that educating our children should cost on average $16,915.   Our entire region has budgets that are too high and clearly unsustainable.

We need leadership from our Superintendent and our Board of Education.  Canandaigua should become the model system for annual reductions in overall budget.  All funding provided to the district, local and state, is provided through our tax dollars.  Time we started treating it as our money, rather than someone else’s.

You can also go to the seethroughny.net site see the data and salary increases since 2008.

For details on the Superintendent’s contract, go to this site contract.

Key data:

The Superintendent’s reported pay has increased from $206,701 in 2008 to $223,332 in 2011 (up 7.8%).
The contract link above is dated July 1, 2010.  His reported pay in 2010 was $219,570.
His contract includes exclusive benefits as outlined below:

• 22 days vacation, 13 holidays for a total of 7 weeks
• 20 sick days (4 weeks) with ability to accumulate 240 sick days.  He was credited with 50 sick days (10 weeks) at start of employment
• Health insurance flat payment of $10,932
• Health reimbursement fund of $3000
• Contribution to supplemental retirement program of 7% salary ($15,633 at 2011 salary numbers from seethroughny.net).  Note that this is in addition to the standard state program that currently pays $135,000 annually to the former Superintendent.
• Tuition allowance
• Disability insurance up to $1600
• Dues for membership in professional organizations approved by the board
• A vehicle allowance of $650/month ($7800 annual)

His contract states a salary in 2010 of $190,000.  These additions, would take the salary above the recorded $223,332, however all may not be counted as taxable income, and some (e.g. healthcare) may be expended for the stated purpose.

A few specific examples will highlight the extent of the problem. These are from the listing sorted by retirement benefit.  They are directly from the this link at Canandaigua Retirement Benefits.   (Be sure to accept cookies when going to the site).

These are the annual payouts of RETIREMENT benefits in rank order from the site.  Where possible to link the names to former positions online, the position titles have been provided.

$135,414  Retired Superintendent
$81,513   Retired Principal of Elementary School
$77,869  Retired Special Education Director
$75,357  Retired Director of Pupil Personnel Services
$74,203  Retired Primary School Principal
$73,915  Retired Primary School Principal
$72,540
$72,244
$71,848
$70,081
$66,930  Retired Elementary Teacher
$66,660
$66,480
$63,848

The list continues with 446 payments totaling $19,378,072 over the period 2008-2011.

If you would like to see how large your pension would be under the public pension system, go to timebomb.  This allows you to enter in the years of service, retirement age, and salary at time of retirement and it will calculate both the annual pension you would receive, AND the amount of cash you would need to have at the same retirement age to purchase a guaranteed lifetime annuity yielding the same income as the pension.

Inflation as represented by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has been 23% over this period.   CPI Calculator 

Personnel cost increases as represented by the Employment Cost Index (EPI) have been 38% overall, and 42% for state and local governments over this period, outpacing inflation.  (Data extracted and compiled from Bureau of Labor Statistics).

Tax levy increases have been 62.1% over this same period.   School tax levy data

Coupled with this the enrollment in Canandaigua has decreased by 9.6% over this same period.

The April 5, 2012 budget figures have 72.7% of the budget supporting personnel (2012-13 budget).  So if we assume 73% of the growth in costs is associated with personnel (at a EPI state gov’t rate of 42%), and 27% of the growth in costs is due to other factors driven by inflation (at a CPI of 23%), we would expect the increase in tax levy to be 37% over this ten year period.

Over the past decade, inflation has been 23%, personnel costs have increased by 42%, the student population has decreased by 9.6% while the tax levy (school budget) has increased by 62.1%.