Local administrators give cost cutting ideas to committee chair

Administrators from two Clermont County Schools were given a chance to talk finances with the chair of the Ohio House of Representatives education committee, Representative Gerald Stebelton and District 88 Representative Danny Bubp Tuesday, Jan. 25.

Bubp invited Clermont Northeastern’s Superintendent Neil Leist and Treasurer Brian Switzer, and Williamsburg’s Superintendent Jeff Weir to speak with Stebelton in Columbus. Brown County Educational Service Center Superintendent Jim Frazier also attended the meeting.

“We discussed ways to the help the schools here in this austere environment,” Bubp said. “We have no shortage of challenges right now and the school districts are facing real problems with double digit cuts in the forecast.”

Bubp said he has been very impressed with Leist’s efforts to save CNE hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last few years. Leist recently published a book about his out of the box ideas to partner with local businesses and community leaders to provide materials for the district. Bubp said the ideas in the book deserved to be shared with the rest of the state.

Leist said the meeting was an opportunity to open the lines of communication between Columbus and southwest Ohio. He detailed his efforts to bring the CNE administrators, teachers, and community members together to collect tangible items like computers, office supplies, and furniture from companies and organizations that no longer have a use for them and bring them to CNE. He also emphasized the importance of forming partnerships with local businesses and leaders to involve them in the educational process. Leist said Stebelton was very interested in gathering cost saving ideas to spread to every school in the state.

“Mr. Stebelton said he was a school board member for 12 years and one of the things he noticed is when a superintendent or a district thinks out of the box that idea tends to stay within the district,” Leist said. “He wants to make sure these ideas go statewide and maybe even nationwide.”

Leist said Governor John Kasich’s administration is interested in not only sharing ideas across district lines, but also services, something Weir said Williamsburg has been doing for several years. Specifically the school district works with Batavia Local School District to share transportation costs, and Bethel Local School Districts to provide gifted programs.

“We talked about some of these low hanging fruits like transportation that will be easy to accomplish, but we also talked about some more difficult issues like collective bargaining,” Bubp said.

Williamsburg contracts with Batavia for its bus maintenance. Weir said his district does not have the facilities for bus maintenance and by contracting with Batavia the district does not pay a retail mark up on costs. Batavia also saves money by offsetting some of their overhead costs in the form of employee salaries and bulk purchases.

“In practical terms it has allowed us to develop a much better relationship,” Weir said. “We are able to share buses and now we help each other out. If our district is inundated with trips or a bus is out of service we can use a Batavia bus. We just slap Williamsburg on it and go.”

He said the relationship has paid off in ways neither district anticipated. Weir said Batavia has a student that attends the alternative school in Owensville but lives on the edge of the district. Weir said it is more convenient for a Williamsburg bus to pick up and drop off the student.

Leist said Kasich is not pushing for district consolidation, but is interested in the consolidation of services such as transportation.

“He wants to develop shared services between districts, to gray the line between districts and open them up so we can work harder together,” Leist said.

Weir said the hard economic times that have affected all budgets have put a strain on everyone, but he sees the collaborations as a good example of some positives that have been the result.

“This is nothing districts have historically had any interest in,” Weir said. “Folks see the absence of funding as very bad, and I’m not saying it isn’t, but I think we can take the circumstances and turn them into a positive.”

Weir said Williamsburg worked with Bethel to apply for a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math grant that allowed the districts to build a special facility at Hill Intermediate School in Bethel for gifted students. The Clermont County Educational Service Center provides teachers and the students from both districts come together to spend one full day each week in the facility.

“It’s designed around (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) disciplines to help gifted students,” Weir said.

Bubp said it is very important for district share ideas on saving money and increasing efficiency, especially when the anticipated budget cuts go into effect June 1.

“When the cuts come schools had better be prepared and have some ideas to deal with them,” Bubp said.

Bubp said the the General Assembly is currently waiting for Governor Kasich’s recommendations for the biennial budget.

“We’re not sure what it contains yet but the one thing I would like to see is different levels of cuts,” Bubp said. “Every district in Ohio should not receive the same cuts. Some districts have a higher poverty level and some have their own funding through levies.”

In addition to sharing ideas, Leist, Switzer, and Weir also talked to Stebelton about the things the legislature can do to ease the burden on districts across the state. Leist said that discussion revolved around two words that have become notorious in the education realm – unfunded mandates. Unfunded mandates are any number of requirements established by the General Assembly, the governor, or the Ohio Department of Education with no direct line of funding. House Bill 30 was introduced on Jan. 18 to eliminate a number of unfunded mandates established with the evidence based model education reforms introduced by former Governor Ted Strickland.

“We talked about unfunded mandates and how tough they make it on our budgets,” Leist said. “This administration will work hard over the next few weeks to eliminate some unfunded mandates.”

Leist said the local administrators gave Stebelton a list of a number of mandates they would like to see dismissed.

Stebelton gave Leist a personal invitation to return to Columbus in the next few months to share his book and ideas with the entire House of Representatives.

“This is huge for CNE and for southwest Ohio,” Leist said.

Bubp said the meeting went really well and he is looking forward to continuing the conversation in the future.

“This is the first of many future efforts to let those guys know the problems we’re having down here in southwest Ohio,” Bubp said. “And these are problems schools are having all across the state.”

Leist said he was very grateful to Bubp for the opportunity to speak in Columbus and share his book with a wider audience.

“I would like to see school districts across the country benefit from what we’re doing here at CNE,” Leist said. “And it’s not just about me. This is a process we put together and about all of the community stakeholders jumped on board.”

Leist’s book “Superintendent Savings Strategies: Stretching the Taxpayer’s Dollar in Your School” is available at www.neilleist.com.