Transparency FIRST! Continued DISD secrecy stops any tax increase.

Dallas ISD urgently needs to increase taxation on Dallas property by 13 cents per $100 valuation to better support Dallas ISD schools. But first a significantly more complete DISD transparency must be provided to the public! The people of Dallas must first be able to secure any comparison they want of any DISD schools using virtually any of the 200 or so most critical variables describing and measuring achievement in schools.

A working Excel School Equity Spreadsheet: a spreadsheet with one row for every school and over 200 variables in the columns on each of those schools, including the 32 budget item allocation categories per student from the online PEIMS Financial Reports.  These 32 items identify where the money to run the school is coming from, and how much money is allocated from each source for each child.

Most questions can be easily answered by erasing school rows and variables columns that you are NOT interested in. Such rapid transparency will instantly answer questions such as the following:

1. Parents could instantly compare schools anywhere in DISD with each other, schools near their home, or near their work, or near their grandmother.  It could be done quickly by erasing all schools in other zip codes and all variables not interested in.
2. Parents could focus on any variable, such as average teacher experience, School Effectiveness Indices (SEI) in each school, as well as many student achievement measurements. 
3. Child advocates can focus on the range of per-student funding by school in each of these 32 sources of funding per child in DISD schools, as well as both student and teacher demographics including student poverty levels.
4. As events happen during the school year, parents and the public can go back to this data base to check out whatever the issue happens to be, comparing schools in manners never possible before!
5. Child advocates could see if schools with higher percentages of high poverty, English as a Second Language (ESL), or handicapped students, are receiving the full amount of supplemental funding they should receive based on federal formulas, without any reduction in "regular" funding?

These, and hundreds of thousands of other questions, could instantly be answered with one School Equity Excel Spreadsheet for each school year.  Currently the work required to answer such questions keep school comparisons effectively hidden from parents and the general public.

The fatal problem with current transparency within Dallas ISD is that the data is broken up into multiple locations and formats so that comparing schools is a very time consuming and consequently impossible process for most people.  That changes with all the data unified into one spreadsheet with all the data in the columns and each row dedicated to one school. 

Here is a start with 95 variables for the spreadsheet, but this will quickly more than double as variables are added:

Item #	DISD School Equity Excel Spreadsheet Column data - one school per row with one column for each following data item:
1	Date Data is recorded
2	School Year represented in this data
3	School Name
4	Street Address
5	zip code
6	Census tract
	Student Enrollment:
7	# in pk
8	# in k
9	# in 1
10	# in 2
11	# in 3
12	# in 4
13	# in 5
14	# in 6
15	# in 7
16	# in 8
17	# in 9
18	# in 10
19	# in 11
20	# in 12
21	total enrollment
22	total enrollment capacity
23	White student enrollment
24	African American Enrollment
25	Hispanic Student Enrollment
26	American Indian Enrollment
27	Asian Enrollment
28	Hawaiian Enrollment
29	Multi-racial Enrollment
30	Ethnicity not reported
31	Total Female Students
32	Total Male Students
33	LEP total
34	BE
35	ESL
36	Sheltered
37	DEN
38	Not Served
39	LEP SPED
40	BE not LEP
41	LEP exit
42	At Risk
43	Economically Disadvantaged
44	Special Education
45	TAG
	Teacher Information:
46	Total number teachers
47	White teachers
48	African teachers
49	Hispanic teachers
50	American teachers
51	Asian teachers
52	Hawaiian teachers
53	Multi-racial teachers
54	Total Female teachers
55	Total Male teachers
56	SPED teachers
57	Counselors
58	% teachers 0-3 years experience
59	% teachers with 11+ years experience
	Achievement information:
60	School Effectiveness Indices (SEI) for this school year
61	Percentage of students approaching standards in STARR
62	Percentage of students meeting standards in STARR
63	Percentage of students mastering standards in STARR
	Expenditures by Object (Objects 6100-6600) - Data from PEIMS Standard Financial Reports
64	Total Expenditures all funds per student
65	Operating-Payroll all funds per student
66	Other Operating all funds per student
67	Non-Operating(Equipt/Supplies) all funds per student
	Expenditures by Function (Objects 6100-6400 Only)
68	Total Operating Expenditures all funds per student
69	Instruction (11,95) * all funds per student
70	Instructional Res/Media (12) * all funds per student
71	Curriculum/Staff Develop (13) * all funds per student
72	Instructional Leadership (21) * all funds per student
73	School Leadership (23) * all funds per student
74	Guidance/Counseling Svcs (31) * all funds per student
75	Social Work Services (32) * all funds per student
76	Health Services (33) * all funds per student
77	Food (35) ** all funds per student
78	Extracurricular (36) * all funds per student
79	Plant Maint/Operation (51) * ** all funds per student
80	Security/Monitoring (52) * ** all funds per student
81	Data Processing Svcs (53)* ** all funds per student
	Program expenditures by Program (Objects 6100-6400 only)
82	Total Operating Expenditures all funds per student
83	Regular all funds per student
84	Gifted & Talented all funds per student
85	Career & Technical all funds per student
86	Students with Disabilities all funds per student
87	Accelerated Education all funds per student
88	Bilingual all funds per student
89	Nondisc Alted-AEP Basic Serv all funds per student
90	Disc Alted-DAEP Basic Serv all funds per student
91	Disc Alted-DAEP Supplemental all funds per student
92	T1 A Schoolwide-St Comp >=40% all funds per student
93	Athletic Programming all funds per student
94	High School Allotment all funds per student
95	Prekindergarten all funds per student

This data is freely available online on each school, but not in such a single spreadsheet format allowing fast and easy comparisons. This format with a row dedicated to each school, and 200+ data items in the columns, makes it very easy to compare equity between schools.  The possible inequalities between the schools are not easily transparent, not easily visible, using the currently fragmented transparency in Dallas ISD.

The general concept of the DISD School Equity Excel Spreadsheet has been approved unanimously at a meeting of about 70 NAACP members and at a meeting of the Our Community Our Schools Coalition.  Other groups concerned about equity in DISD schools are being approached and are asked to join in this effort, and/or provide ideas and direction for this effort to expose the equity or inequity between Dallas schools.

The effort to make this information visible is much bigger than any of us. The battle for equity, and the many other massive improvements urgently needed in Dallas ISD, will be pushed and monitored by such greater public transparency!  The infinitely greater ability for everyone to compare schools in thousands of ways never possible before will drive Dallas ISD improvement! That will also improve Dallas!

Gains from 13 cent school tax increase with TRE

This morning, 7-8-18, on Texas Politics on Channel 8, Dr. Lew Blackburn stated wrongly that DISD would ultimately lose money from proposed DISD 13 cent taxation increase.  This was his statement:

“As far as the extra money that we receive from the increase in taxes: The first year we will end up with about $92 million extra.  The second year of the extra amount of tax dollars we are going to get we end up with about $20 million left over. The third year we are actually in the negative around about $43 million. So if you look at the amount of extra money we are going to get because of the 13 cent increase, on the third year we actually start to lose money.”

The above errors come from a DISD-made spreadsheet given to the trustees, copied below. It was used to provide the numbers that Dr. Blackburn quoted this morning. 

Sadly, this DISD spreadsheet fails to specifically distinguish the recapture that will be happening ONLY due to the 13 cent taxation increase. It gives current taxation recapture (line 7 under the $1.04 column only in chart at bottom of page below) and it gives recapture from BOTH, including the 13 cent increase, with the current proposed $1.17 taxation (line 7 in the $1.17 column).  

The problem is when the DISD spreadsheet NEVER does the simple subtraction of the figure in line 7 under the $1.04 column from the figure in line 7 under the $1.17 column.  That simple subtraction is needed to identify the recapture that will be required ONLY by the 13 cent increase (line 13 in chart at bottom of page below.) Without that distinction it is easy to focus on the "Extra Revenue Less Recapture" row (Row 8 in the last spreadsheet below) and make the error of thinking that all of the TRE 13 cent tax increase will be erased by recapture by the third year.  That is not true!  

Each of the next 5 years an average of $119,000,000 ($119 million) new dollars will remain (see lines 12 & 14 in spreadsheet at bottom of this page) from the money generated by the 13 cent tax increase each year after recapture is paid!  (This projected income was increased to $126 million for the handout in the 8-9-18 Briefing Agenda attachments on this topic.)(Click on the above image of DISD provided spreadsheet to see full chart, or go to the right.)

The DISD numbers from the spreadsheet above have all been inserted into the spreadsheet below in the same locations to replicate the DISD-provided spreadsheet.  The numbers from the DISD spreadsheet are the non-highlighted numbers in the first 10 rows of the spreadsheet.  The 5 lines of calculations were then inserted from line 11 on down.  

Line 11 is the amount of income that will be generated by both tax rates after the additional recapture generated is removed.

In the original spreadsheet DISD used the entire DISD recapture amount to calculate the "Extra Rev. Less Recapture" row and never singled out the recapture ONLY coming from the 13 cent tax increase.  That manipulative calculation leaves too many people with the false impression the income generated by the new 13 cent tax increase will ALL be recaptured by the third year and become a negative number. That is wrong! Yes, that does happen to the entire DISD budget, but the 13 cent tax will help lessen the damage significantly!

Recapture will grow every year with or without the 13 cent tax increase! Those numbers were not pointed out in the DISD spreadsheet, but they are in line 8 of the spreadsheet below, under the column for $1.04.

Spendable income remains for DISD children every year with the 13 cent tax increase!

I am glad to share the original Excel spreadsheet that produced this chart below, dated 7-28-18. If you want a copy, send an email at bbetzen@aol.com requesting such and it will be emailed to you. It is a very good idea for people to double check this spreadsheet for accuracy.

(Click on above image of spreadsheet to enlarge.)

I strongly support the passage of the 13 cent TRE, but only if one working Excel School Equity Spreadsheet is released for each year for the past decade, and from this year forward, for use by parents, child advocates, and the general public in exploring alternatives available in DISD, the progress in DISD, and identifying issues that need to be resolved.  See details about this increase in DISD transparency at:   http://billbetzen.blogspot.com/2018/04/dallas-isd-tax-increase-demands.html.

Dallas ISD History 2012-2018: Disaster & Progress

A few pieces of DISD History, 2012 to 2018, that tell a dramatic story.

In June of 2012 the Dallas Observer published an article titled "The North Dallas Plot to Take Over DISD" It is especially fascinating reading now 6 years later.  (Click on the title to read it.) June of 2012 was the last month before Mike Miles took charge as the DISD Superintendent.  This article describes the leaders that helped this change happen.

Sadly in June of 2012 I was not studying Mike Miles. I presumed he was a good selection.  That opinion changed just over a year later when he began to give problems to some of the best principals in Dallas who had some of the most rapidly improving schools in all of DISD.  By September 9th of 2013 I finished a study of his history in Colorado, a study that apparently nobody involved in his selection in Dallas had done. I discovered a tragic set of facts pointing to major ethical issues! See them at:
http://schoolarchiveproject.blogspot.com/2013/05/damage-by-mike-miles-in-colorado.html

By September 29th of 2013 other data had been gathered. A list of "Reasons Mike Miles Must Leave Dallas" was presented to the DISD Board. See
http://schoolarchiveproject.blogspot.com/2013/09/damage-to-education-reform-by-mike-miles.html for the nine reasons.  There was no response from the DISD Board to this documentation.

This happened at the start of the 2013/14 school year. DISD would finish that school year with 43 failing schools according to the Texas Education Agency, the largest number in DISD history! Miles remained for another full school year.

The good news is that Mike Miles resigned 6-23-15, three weeks after a 76 page complaint (click to read summary) filed 4-21-15 with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Education was well covered on the major Dallas news station.  The complaint was regarding the supplantation of federal funds away from high poverty schools (such as the 43 failing schools) to lower poverty schools and projects Mike Miles was funding. 

Dr. Hinojosa returned.  The well documented improvements in DISD during the first 6 years under Dr. Hinojosa resumed!  In the 2017/18 school year the number of failing, IR, DISD schools fell to 3, yes three!  DISD went from 43 failing schools to just 3 in just 4 years, but it required new leadership. The achievement gap with the rest of Texas has not yet fallen to 8 percentage points, but we are close. Teacher turnover is still in the double digits and that will not change until there are significant changes to the TEI evaluation and payment system.

We now are hopefully moving toward the highest DISD transparency (click to see plan) ever, and that transparency will help a tax increase of 13 cents per $100 valuation to pass so that DISD improvements will accelerate.

Policy Foundation for the Dallas ISD Racial Equity Office passed 6-21-18

Below are the four pages from the initial policy document for the Dallas ISD Racial Equity Office.  It was approved 6-21-18 by the Dallas ISD Board. This is a very good start!  

The last sentence of the third paragraph on the first page is priceless: "The district is committed to creating an environment where all student experiences are heard."

Such an environment would require positive students who are both self-aware and self-confident enough so as to both know and share all their experiences, as appropriate. This will create a significantly higher achieving, more positive educational environment with few, if any, negative student behaviors.  Such students will be more positively grounded, knowing both their roots and their plans for the future. These positive developments are more common in more DISD schools every year.

Such student confidence provides the foundation needed for making Dallas ISD the greatest urban school district in the Nation!