Cutting School Funding to Ease Budget Woes

The City Council of Memphis, Tennessee, has voted to cut school funding while giving property owners a tax break, as reported in this article (as well as in many other local news outlets). I think it’s about time!

For years, Memphis residents have had to pay for local schools twice, through Memphis City property taxes and through Shelby County property taxes. The result was one of the highest property tax rates in the state, and a tremendous exodus of residents from Memphis  and Shelby County to nearby Tipton and Fayette counties in Tennessee, DeSoto and Tunica counties in Mississippi, and Crittenden county in Arkansas. So as the property tax rates increase, we have seen a tremendous shrinkage of the tax base in the city of Memphis and in Shelby County.

At the same time, Memphis City Schools have been rocked by financial scandal after financial scandal. The Central Nutrition Center for the school system is the target of a state grand jury investigation (read the story here, here, and here), after an annual audit revealed more than $4 million in misused funds, including

• 243 tons of frozen food was incorrectly stored, so it spoiled and had to be thrown away (~$800,000, plus an additional $9000 to transport it to the landfill.)
• More than $121,000 worth of food was donated to the local food bank, including peanut butter and jelly sandwiches ordered against the dietician’s advice. While I applaud the idea of donating near-expiry food to the food bank so that it isn’t totally wasted, it’s still wrong to spend taxpayer dollars on food that isn’t needed. What genius ordered PB&J in today’s allergy-ridden environment? Against the dietician’s advice, at that! To top it off, the food was ordered shortly before the winter break, and would have expired during that break. Can’t these people read a calendar?
• Breakfast and lunch for the nutrition staff every day ($100,000)  Does your boss give you two meals a day at the office? Mine doesn’t. I’m supposed to eat breakfast before work, and use my break to eat a lunch I’ve provided for myself.
• $2.3 million in “emergency” food purchases that bypassed the bidding and approvals process. How does one have an “emergency” need for food at a school? Don’t we know when we are going to be open and how many students we will have to feed? Or is this related to that improperly stored food that spoiled?
• Furniture bought outside of the mandated bidding process. ($104,000) This includes $83,000 in custom-made furniture and a DirectTV subscription for the director’s office — wouldn’t you like those kinds of perks at your office?
• Travel and “professional development” for select employees ($86,000)
• Banquet for employees ($36,000)
• Marketing costs (~$32,000) Marketing? It’s the school lunch system! What do they need to market for? They have a captive audience! I could see maybe a few hundred for photocopying the monthly menus, but not $32K!
• Fancy party (~$6,000)
• Free lunches given to any student, rather than to those who qualified for the program. There are more than 112,000 students in the MCS system, so even if those lunches cost only $1 per student and only half that number of students were incorrectly given free meals, that’s a loss of $56,000 a day, or $280,000 a week, which totals more than $1 million per month!

That’s more than $3.5 million in fiscal irresponsibility (without counting the free lunch fiasco), and it’s only a small sampling of the questionable items uncovered in the audit. (To read the 20-page audit report, follow the link and scroll down the page until you see the link to the audit file in the left-hand column. When you click the link, it will bring up a PDF file of the report.)

And the “CNC Scandal” isn’t the first financial scandal to rock the Memphis City Schools in the last decade or so. There’s some question about MCS transportation contracts, and a former director had to resign after making $10K in purchases for the director’s office without going through the proper process.

Finally, the Memphis City Council has heard the protests from the over-burdened taxpayers, who question the continued subsidizing of a school system that clearly has out-of-control spending and rampant waste. City school workers need to realize that they are not private-sector employees; they are publicly funded employees, and the public won’t tolerate extravagance and waste.

I work for a privately owned company, and we are careful with our resources. Reuse, Repair, Recycle is the motto here.

• Finished with a 3-ring binder or file folder? Put it in the supply closet so that it can be re-used by someone else.
• Print on both sides of the paper.
• Use paper clips whenever possible, and reuse them when you’re done with them.
• The boxes our paper comes in? Use them to send old files to storage.
• Buying food for a company function? Keep it under $20 per person for dinner, $15 per person for lunch, and $8 per person for breakfast. Non-perishable leftovers should be brought back to the office and stored for the next meeting. Perishables should be shared among the staff.
• Instead of buying a new typewriter, have the old one cleaned and refurbished.
• Need a desk, chair, or bookshelf? Order the least expensive but most durable item possible. No $15K desks and $500 chairs here. Mahogany or marquetry work? Don’t be silly.

My point is that if my company, privately held and financially sound, can practise frugality and good stewardship, how much more should a publicly funded organization be expected to do so?

So I think it’s about time that the City Council told the school system to get along on what it has.

Tags: budgeting, Education, good stewardship, Politics, schools