Financial Foresight: Jefferson R-VII - Personal Property/Missouri Legislation - Spring 2024 Budget Preparation - Part 3

Discover the undercurrents shaping our educational landscape as David Haug, Superintendent of Jefferson R-7 School District, joins us to navigate the choppy waters of school budgeting and the legislative tides that could reshape our children's future. With a $2.5 million shortfall looming and the closure of the Ameren Rush Island plant threatening to rock the boat, this conversation is an urgent rallying call for proactive community engagement. As we extend heartfelt thanks to Senator Elaine Gannon for her dedication, we also honor the legacy of the late Glenn Kiepe, whose wisdom casts a long shadow over our district's path forward. Prepare to confront fiscal challenges head-on, understand the importance of open dialogue, and consider the potential of open enrollment and vouchers in this intricate dance of educational economics.

This episode is a masterclass in navigating the complexities of education policy as it stands on the precipice of transformation. The shifting tides from local control to higher authorities, the balancing act between public and private educational institutions, and the burgeoning realm of virtual learning in Missouri are dissected with precision. David Haug's reflections on servant leadership in education administration underscore the critical importance of listening, persuasion, and collective growth. Tune in to grasp the subtleties of steering a community through uncharted legislative waters and fostering an environment where every child's educational voyage leads to a horizon of limitless potential.

Transcript

David Haug: 0:06

I'm David Haug, Superintendent of the Jefferson R-7 School District. Thank you for joining me in the third podcast and video for this series for our budget prep for next year. If you could forward this to anybody in our community that maybe doesn't have a copy of this, I'd appreciate it, as with all of the other podcasts, to keep our community informed of what's going on. And also, this is going to take a little bit of time today because there's so much going on with it, but I will start off pretty quickly here what the main point is and then just kind of move into everything else, because there's a lot to cover. First of all, in the position that I'm in, I believe my job is to advocate as a public servant for our kids, for those that don't have a vote, those that can't speak, and I get concerned if you go back to the first podcast. I talk about the future for our kids. How are they going to afford a house, how are they going to afford a car, pay for college or anything along those lines, and not incur a ton of debt and also just the federal debt they will incur? I really worry about our kids because they don't have a voice in that right now, and that's a big motivating factor for this is that, speaking on behalf of those that can't, we have great partners in that and a lot of different areas to move forward.

David Haug: 1:20

I did want to take just a moment, kind of having a background in football. There was a saying called you are what your record says you are. I wanted to thank Senator Elaine Gannon for her entire career, starting as an educator, then moving into public service as it currently is our senator, and thank you for taking care of kids and making sure that our voices are heard and looking out for our kids. With everything you've done, you truly had an impressive career and I thank you for that. The second thing is for those of you that are part of the Jefferson R-7 community you know one of the individuals that really had an impact on this school district for many years was Mr Glenn Kiepe. I remember Mr. Kiepe coming to a board meeting in June of 2019 to address the board on the behalf of the community and I remember his statement and he said this community does not like surprises and that I don't agree with that, but it resonates with me and I think about that statement a lot and I've thought about this podcast a lot and how this message would come out to you, because at some point I had to do a fair evaluation and, as I stated in previous podcasts I think it was number two about the Amherst situation.

David Haug: 2:30

I kept stating if all things are equal as far as Missouri School funding formula and the anticipated growth, this district will be able to withstand the Ameren closure, no matter how that looks or plays out. This podcast addresses something more and it's not something that would happen tomorrow but in the coming years, and it's related to the Missouri legislation and some things on the floor right now that would have a dramatic impact, particularly with the Ameren closure. So I'm going to read this statement here. It says if the Ameren Rush Island plant closes and through legislation this spring, personal property is reduced, along with our inability to recuperate funds from the Missouri state funding formula, Jefferson R-7 School District stands to lose an estimated $2.5 million from school budgets in the near future On its own. The Ameren closure. I think we can withstand that. I don't know that we could withstand this and I don't even know how that actually would look, but I think it's time we kind of look at that possibility as a community and see what we need to do to prepare for it at many different levels. I know myself and the Board of Education have already taken steps to do that. We've discussed those with some of our board meetings, if you want to go back and reference those.

David Haug: 3:46

But you know, kind of moving forward to this podcast, I don't like being disingenuous and crying wolf all the time. I do remember that story as a kid and I hope all this breaks the right way and none of this is an issue in the future. I can tell you one thing if the district has things go the right way, we'll have nothing to complain about. If the funding formula stays the same or we're able to recoup funds from our local budgets and we catch a break on Ameren and we still can maximize funds through that, whatever they have going on down there, whatever is decided through securitization you also have the Buzzi Unicem plant and you have the future James Hardie Industries and other growth We'll have nothing to complain about For the short term here over the next few years.

David Haug: 4:28

What could be really direct tough on us is if there's a series of events, and I want to stress, I don't want to say that all these ideas are bad and I'll kind of get to that in a minute. But I think there needs to be an honest discussion with a lot of different people about what's best not only for our kids, but also making sure their futures are bright and we don't create issues for them. Moving forward I always consider myself a problem solver and I found this quote from Ronald Reagan that I really like and I think that's the message I want to move forward is that I don't want to stand in point fingers at people because I don't know that I understand all the issues that are going on, but I would like to see what I've seen the last couple months here at Jefferson's Many great groups coming together to work together for kids and the community and the county and I've seen a lot of great things. But Ronald Reagan stated I believe a lot of trouble in this world would disappear if we were talking to each other instead of about each other. I think that's so critical and we talk about what kids and to do that with humility.

David Haug: 5:28

The main point I want to stress going forward is I encourage public servants that's include school leaders, elected officials, state leaders to come together to look at every option to benefit kids. That would include open enrollment and the effects of that on the state, vouchers, personal property, some of these things. I'll give some examples. As we go through this, they kind of take a life form of their own and maybe they have unintended effects. If we could come together to make sure we create a smooth path for our kids, I think it's where we need to be as a state.

David Haug: 6:00

The main point, my main concern, is to look at all resources in the state for kids. Let's not and don't make decisions in the silo like this is the best thing that will fix this, but it has an unintended effect over here. Don't make decisions in a silo that cause other schools I want to stress this is making one decision that cause other schools who are doing well to fail. We want to help all students, but we want to make sure nobody falls off because we're making changes. I'm going to make some assumptions in here, because I believe that the decisions I'm making I think people have the best interests of kids at their heart at any level and I sometimes wonder about the decisions, but I'm not looking at their intent and saying they're trying to do any harm to kids or anything, and I want to be upfront about that and let everybody know. When I look at this stuff, I see reasoning as to why they're trying to help things, but I don't want other things to kind of fall and I've got some stuff I'll talk about later.

David Haug: 6:55

The second thing is this is really more to parents. I believe that you have the right to choose for your kids. I would love to have every student that resides in the Jefferson R-7 School District attend this school, but I also understand it's more important. The parent has the right to take care of their kid. I want to be viewed as a partner and not that we know everything all the time. We have great resources here for kids, but parents have a right to choose public education, private education and homeschool.

David Haug: 7:24

I did want to talk about homeschool for a second, because I'm going to talk about some virtual stuff down the road. When I reference homeschool, I'm talking about the true homeschool planning, that the families are actually engaging with that process and we're not just going down the path of having a kid just do the virtual program, because I've seen a lot of concerns with the kids at home only on the virtual and not engage with the family. I hope you can respect that opinion, don't ask you to agree with it, but those families that choose to homeschool and be really engaged with families. I admire what you do. I admire anybody that takes an interest in their child's education and I just want to get that out of the way. And also, two, to the Jefferson R-7 School District. We're somewhat insulated from this.

David Haug: 8:05

What's going on maybe in other areas? I think number one is the enrollment. The day-to-day enrollment, when I'm talking about the number of kids in our district, has not really changed since COVID. That number has been very steady and stable. We've not seen an influx of kids leave our school district after COVID, as has been seen across the state in some areas, and actually our day-to-day attendance is actually tending back to pre-COVID numbers. We were almost at 95 percent student attendance just before Christmas break just before Christmas break, which is really impressive, and also know that we went one to one in 2013. We were really ahead of the game as far as virtual options for our kids, and that'll make sense.

David Haug: 8:52

As I kind of keep going here, I'm going to take a moment to regroup and then I'm going to start the next part of this. So I want to change gears for just a second here and talk specifically about maybe some thoughts, perspectives from the education side. This is just comments and thoughts that I hear different individuals making the business that I'm in, but also kind of talk about the impact of legislation and some historical information from other areas that have made changes. I think the first thing, talking specifically about the viewpoint, is that if you ever heard of the analogy about the boiling frog, if you boil water first and then throw the frog in, it reacts and tries to jump out. It's a very chaotic scene for the frog trying to survive. But if you take the water, put the frog in it and then start boiling it, the frog doesn't really realize what's going on until it might be too late. And I think some of this legislation, as you begin to see it, kind of keep changing and morphing over time the effects it's having on education. A lot of that centered really on student attendance and I'll get to that in a minute.

David Haug: 10:00

And then quite honestly, probably the most controversial thing I'll say today is that I kind of feel like sometimes our state legislature when you're just listening, ok, and I understand I'm not down the weeds and understand exactly what's going on. None of us really are in the business. We're kind of looking from the outside end that sometimes our state legislature. It seems like the message is that the public schools are no good, and that's a tough message to hear repeatedly, over and over and over again. And I kind of liken it to the St. Louis Rams. The Rams were kind of in charge of their own product right and in 2010, they knew they were going to L. A. That's all been played out in court and so what did they do? They decided to run their product in the ground and let their product get terrible and then turn around and blame the fans for not coming and saying we need to leave because you're not showing up now.

David Haug: 10:51

And I kind of see some similarities with what's going on in education because you have the legislature and there's so many statutes and guidelines that come that guide our public schools and really the design of the public schools in Missouri was always the local boards being in charge of their districts. So that power is kind of left and it's gone a lot to the state and even the federal government. So at some point in education you're kind of like OK, we're playing by the rules and in front of us the standards keep changing, the APR stuff keeps changing and you're not really given a solid ground to which to kind of build from, and any time you kind of get rolling with it, it kind of changes again. I know that's just part of being in education, but it does get a little frustrating. So, as we kind of get pointed out as being failing, sort of, the answer I'm seeing now is to move money out of the public sector into the private sector, whether it be charter schools or the privatization of schools. And to my thought and I think I've got a little bit of standing here when I say this if that's the case, if the solution is to have less oversight on the school, that makes it better, why don't we just do that for all the schools and kind of cut out the middleman? If that process is what's better, allow us to use that. Maybe empower the boards of education a little bit stronger, because I can tell you this I don't know how many people are aware I know people in my community kind of know this I speak with, but I started actually to private school my first four years in education and as a teacher when I made the transition out of the private school setting into the public.

David Haug: 12:24

I'll be honest, I was pretty embarrassed sitting in our first few staff meetings, specifically when we were talking about content. I finally had to grab a teacher and just say, hey, I am lost here. I don't even know what's going on Because really when I was at the private school I was handed the book, kind of told what would need to be done. I had a lot of resources I could use but really given the autonomy to be in the classroom, in fact there's a ton of oversight. And you come into the public sector just tons of oversight and you know what's going on. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but there's a lot of paperwork to it and it can be a little bit laborious at times with all the curriculum teaming and mapping. You're doing all the review of test results. It was just a whole different world. So if the answer is less oversight, let's make it so for all districts. I want to kind of shift a little bit to state legislation and kind of that how it, how things start and how they're ending up and give us perspective.

David Haug: 13:15

I've been administration 20 years now. Specifically, I'm going back to our virtual program in Missouri. There used to be something called both of them and I felt like it was kind of hard for kids to get into and who's going to pay for it and it wasn't a real smooth process getting in and in. Just before COVID couple years for COVID something came called mocap came out, which is our current provider, and, to my recollection, the intent of that, which I didn't disagree with. Having worked at small schools, I know that small high schools, rural high schools in Missouri, can't always provide the same course options, curriculum, particularly in grades 11 and 12, is, say, like large school counterparts that have different resources, and that was kind of the way it has been in Missouri for a long time. But then the Chromebooks came into play around you know, a lot of school districts shifted to Chromebooks around 2015. And suddenly and this is where Jefferson, I think, was ahead of the game is that we put a lot of courses online during that junior and senior year. That really beefed up our curriculum and a kid wasn't taking PE two or three times a day during their senior year or having too many classes that really didn't challenge them.

David Haug: 14:28

And so the original part of mocap as I jump back to that was to help encourage small schools through legislation to make sure they're filling gaps and that they would be providing virtual courses that kids may not have access to. I don't necessarily disagree with that. I think that's a good, healthy thing. I would tell you about a year into it, though, as a practitioner in education and a principal at the time and meeting with area principals in our meetings. Again, the intended effect was to help small school fill holes where kids were sitting in person. But they might come down to library to an online class and go back to their normal schedule. The kids would stay in person but have access to those courses. What the principal's noticed was suddenly there were pockets of kids at large school districts that were going full time virtual at home, even though the school districts had a lot of those options for them there. So that was sort of this unintended consequence of mocap was kids start to leave, go virtual for the full day. And again, this was just before COVID hit and it's kind of a different world now. And really the regulations and guidelines at first when MOCAP came out, the schools had a lot of say where they felt like the kid, the student, would have a great chance of being successful in a virtual class. They could deny it, the family could appeal. That's all gone now. Basically, the families just choose where they want to go, and that's why I differentiate between homeschool the families truly engaged during the curriculum or having a kid at home on a virtual program full time.

David Haug: 15:56

I am very concerned about that. I would like to see data from the state of kids that are in those online programs and the things that I'm seeing, as no only principal and superintendent now across the state, is that kids are leaving the system, their public school system, and going into a virtual system. I don't think the scores are great. I also know that I think of kids struggle there. They aren't coming back to any sort of education and if you really think about the burden that this state could be facing in a few years with the student population is not being educated, that's catastrophic. That could take effect in you know, eight to 10 years. We could really see the true effects of that. So I'm going to say the quiet part out loud. I'm very concerned about the number of kids that are not, that may not be getting an education in Missouri, that may be sliding to the cracks For whatever reason. Whether you agree with how we do business at a public school. We've got to make sure our kids are getting an education because the numbers are down across Missouri in public school kids attending. But I know in our area private school numbers are down. Where are the kids? Like I said earlier, I don't parents are in charge of their kids' education. If they're as long as you're getting the education they need, great. But I'm concerned about a group out there that is struggling to get an education right now because of kind of the system we've created. So that's long and short of MOCAP.

David Haug: 17:22

Another example is like kind of what concerns me about that frog boiling model of having to change legislation year to year and keep you keep sort of just changing it. Well, senate Bill 190 last year. I'm not going to talk about the content or question what was going on. It was related to personal property. The legislature decided that to provide relief for senior citizens on personal property. Except it really wasn't dictated by the state how it was supposed to be done. It was very confusing language. It was actually placed back into the counties to make those decisions and if you start looking at how this is being passed county to county it's vastly different. It's very confusing to read. I know this spring they've come back and I know there's been one round of vote on it to date to try to correct some of that language. But that's kind of how government is supposed to work. It's not supposed to be clean because the power is supposed to lie locally. And those are just examples that, as things are decided at the state, what is the true impact that's having on education?

David Haug: 18:20

I'm going to give some examples of legislation that has other effects and this is like pending, open enrollment, voucher, charter school and personal property. I will own any, any information that's incorrect and I'm welcome anybody to sit in here with me and offer critique or anything, because I like to have a better understanding of it. It's impossible for myself and a small school district, along with the staff, that we have to fully research this all the time. But I can tell you this as you look at the history of open enrollment across the country, specifically to Iowa, one trend does happen. I think this state really has to ask the question, specifically on small schools, and I'm a small school district and I believe small schools are great for the state. I great for education. Do we have weaknesses? Absolutely, do we know what our strengths are? Absolutely, but I believe it's a great environment for our kids. But I do know once you flip the open enrollment it's really hard on small school districts. If you look at Iowa as an example, their small districts just almost disappeared and went to larger school districts within each county.

David Haug: 19:24

And this is kind of alluding to the personal property stuff that if we reduce personal property in Missouri without something to backfill it, small schools are going to get kind of tattooed again as far as that goes. But in Iowa there's like a 5.4 per 100, a thousand dollars evaluation. That's for the real state. That's every school district starts with that number and then school districts. It appears to me from everything I'm reading online they kind of go in individually and kind of cherry pick different taxes. It appeared that on the real state tax in Iowa it was running anywhere between 8% and 16% per school district and per school district depending on their needs. If I'm wrong on that I'll stand corrected and allow somebody to kind of correct me on that. But that's what I'm reading.

David Haug: 20:08

And I've kind of heard some other advocates in Missouri talk about this Voucher and charter schools again kind of selfishly. I mean, the rules are a little different for charter schools than what we deal with. Number one is that you know we're expected to have 100% of our staff certified. Number one on their list of what they've got to do for charter schools is only 80% of the staff need to be appropriately certificated and that's a difference. And so my question is if that's what's good and that's where we're moving money to help offset deficiencies, allow us to kind of follow those same rules.

David Haug: 20:44

I'm not advocating for going to 80%, but there is a difference between how the charter school functions and how public schools function and then also the redirection of public funds to help privatize schools. Again, remember we get about $2,000 a kid here at Jefferson and those are in the prior podcast through the funding form and we can't recuperate any of that. That is system is so antiquated. But as I listen to professional in the business and the world of school finance, it appears that if some of those charter schools pop up in certain districts, per kid these schools will be reimbursed at $10,000 to $18,000 a kid. So that's a vast difference in what we receive here, based on the Missouri School funding formula. Again, I'm not sure how that plays actually in the privatized education as well. I do know charter schools are run like a business and I do know I've seen this not in the state of Missouri, but I have seen where a charter school operates, seen it firsthand, where students sitting there working on an online program with no certificated member in there it's basically a teacher's aid monitoring their progress. Online person does not hold a certificate, basically the kids being supervised in a virtual school. So I think there's a lot of questions when I look at charter schools and, again, if that's what's best for kids, let's make that an even play field for everybody.

David Haug: 22:07

I'm going to take just a moment here and shift gears again and close this out, so you'll see me in just a second. Thanks for being patient with me here. Of course, it probably seemed pretty seamless when Stevie gets done editing this. I want to take a moment as I close this out. Again. I remind you to share this with anybody.

David Haug: 22:23

I go back to our main concern, to Jefferson R-7 School District and I think it's really great to bring people to the table to look at all avenues and resources possible. I go back to Mr. Kiepe's words this community does not like surprises. The combination of the Ameren closure, some state legislation that could be coming, could really put this district in peril when we can't get any state funds. That's in the coming years, that's not for tomorrow, that's not for next year's budgeting. But we've got to have those honest conversations as a community. I want to get that word out there. I will also tell you that I believe I'm a problem solver, but it's not just me, it's getting great people in the room to do this. I see this happening. I wanted to thank Representative Bucheitt Courtway recently met with us back in December. Really, I think, if you look at that model where her group came in, met with us, met with the mental health side to look at the different resources we have in this county and trying to share some of those stories with the state of Missouri, it's been a very healthy process and that's really what we need to be doing for our kids is meeting to see what we can do for all the kids in Missouri together and not allow people to fail that shouldn't be failing or that haven't been failing because of the decision we're making, but those that are struggling to definitely reach our handout and help them. It's my goal and again I think Representative Bucheitt, Court way for opening that opportunity earlier in the school year.

David Haug: 23:49

Just real quick. I know, as a leadership strategy here at Jefferson we look at servant leadership and there's 10 terms. We focus on three. That's, first of all, listening. I know our administrative team really works on listening to our community and seeing what we can do to make it better if it's reasonable. The second thing is persuasion. Let's be honest, people in life don't want to be told what to do. But if you take time, like I'm doing today, to explain our point of view, I am happy to sit down with anybody and discuss what's great for kids and maybe I'm going to have a better understanding of their point of view. And persuading individuals that this might be a better path is really part of servant leadership. And finally, the one that's most important to me is the commitment to the growth of others.

David Haug: 24:29

Sometimes in business, in this business, we get a little bit jealous of others and we want everybody to be successful because ultimately, our country's a better place, our state's a better place, our county's a better place, our community's a better place, our kids receive a great education. They're great people. I've yet to be to a school district where there were just bad kids. I have yet to see it. I've worked in a couple different. I've been to Jefferson at 13 years. Prior to that, I've been to a lot of different districts, kind of working that administrative chain up, the food chain up and teaching chain up. Every place I've been has great kids and we need to make sure we remember that. So my last and I go back to the main point from the beginning. I encourage public servants, school leaders, elected officials, anybody that has a stake in this, to come together. Let's look at all the resources we have and do a try for our kids. Thank you.