Money Watch

TRIANGLE BUSINESS JOURNAL BUSINESS PULSE SURVEY:
"Is the Wake County Schools diversity-policy controversy hurting the area's reputation as a good place to live and work?"
...52% of respondents call it a "huge blow to Wake's image" 
We have just heard about the painful budget cuts our school system must endure for the upcoming year. Yet this school board has decided to spend:
  1. Change the bell schedule--new signs needed. Cost $15,000!
  2. In addition to the millions of dollars lost by abandoning the Forest Ridge HS site, more money is being sunk into the new Rolesville HS site. In the newly approved budget: another $5.6 million approved to pay for "offsite improvements, site adaption to the new [Rolesville] site, and opening in 2013.  See item #20 on the meeting agenda.
  3. An extra $15.4 million in costs because of the delay in constructing the Forest Ridge High School, READ MORE.  And those costs are just the tip of the iceberg. READ MORE.
  4. More than $100,000 has been spent on extra lawyers, including one to conduct an audit of legal services that showed the District was getting a great value for legal services. The Board also retroactively voted to approve an unspecified amount of funds to pay attorney and former Raleigh City Councilman Kieran Shanahan to help defend the School district in the recent Open Government lawsuit. It was revealed that Mr. Shanahan was unilaterally hired by Chair Margiotta, who consulted with Board attorney Ann Majestic and other staff, but not with any other Board members. READ MORE.
  5. An extra $14.1 million additional construction costs to make up for capacity lost by converting Leesville Elementary and Leesville Middle School from year-round to traditional calendar, READ MORE.
  6. The estimated $15,000 apiece that it will cost to recruit and hire teachers, to replace those that flee from the high-poverty schools, READ MORE.
  7. The millions in Federal MSAP magnet school grants that we will lose because the grants are contingent on promoting diversity, READ MORE.  (REVIEW THIS)
  8. $145,550 to pay Supt. Del Burns to do nothing for the rest of this year, rather than work full time, READ MORE.
  9. An undetermined amount of money it will cost for the massive reassignment to a zone system, and the new schools that the zone system will require. (Estimates are very rough starting with a low of $500 million).
  10. Mr. Margiotta stated that he knows there will be a lot of lawsuits due to "change in leadership" and their new policies.  The bill for these lawsuits will be paid by Wake County taxpayers (Cost is Unknown). READ MORE.
  11. A huge undetermined amount of money that it will cost to carry out Margiotta's intentions to divide the school system into separate districts or autonomous zones, and hire duplicate staffs for each district or zone. READ MORE.
  12. The board needs to come up with some sort of language within the next month affirming its intent to avoid "minority group isolation" or it risks losing f in federal money it was already awarded. Failing to replace the language about diversity will also make it more difficult to obtain future grants. READ MORE.
  13. An additional $4.3 million--just for the land--to site a new high school in Rolesville, 12 miles from grossly overcrowded Wakefield HS (built for 1800 students, serves 3,000).  $2 million in due diligence for the location originally approved is out the window, and we'll likely have to sell the old site at a loss, not to mention the increased cost of busing students further away from their neighborhood...delayed construction costs, additional funds to rework plans for the new site...our bills are mounting. READ MORE
  14. An additional $82,500 plus unspecified expenses to hire the most expensive firm under consideration to lead a search for the next Superintendent.  Chicago-based Heidrick & Struggles offers limited experience, with only two superintendent searches under its belt.  The board majority refused to consider using the North Carolina School Board Association, (cost: under $15,000) or another national firm-Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates-with 600 successful public school searches to its credit and whose fees were half that of the firm selected.
  15. In response to increased criticism of their policies, the new Board has spent 31 times more money on security - $14,000 in a five-month period compared to $451.58 for a five-month period by the previous Board-and this includes at least four armed police officers and more than six security officers at a regular meeting attended by fewer than 50 people in April.
  16. At its July 20, 2010 meeting, the Board voted 5-4 to convert Leesville Middle and Leesville Elementary school to traditional calendars, at a loss of $14.1 million in classroom capacity. It is now estimated that the Northwest region of the county will be at above 110 percent capacity for middle school seats and above 100 percent capacity for elementary school seats in 2013-14.
  17. More tax dollars for lawyers, less for classroom education...a new request that an additional $25,000 be added to the amount that attorney Kieran Shanahan can bill the school system. Shanahan's law firm is reaching the $25,000 limit set in a contract approved Aug. 10. READ MORE
  18. $80K wasted on a parent calendar survey. Ron Margiotta said "We want parents to be polled...to just turn around and say ‘we want schools to be converted back to traditional' to do that would be just as bad as what we're criticizing the former school board of doing. What we want is parents' input. We want parents to be polled." Watch video.