So the board changed the policy that they didn't see fit to follow to start with...interesting. Sort of like the child who plays basketball, brings the ball, doesn't like how the game is going and just takes the ball and leaves. Okay!

Well at least we save the $600,000 is this to be paid to a new Asst Superintendent or some other newly created position. That is correct to pay for a part-time person coming soon to take over the duties that our new sports director can't perform...wow..who didn't see the writing on the wall for this one!

Stew, if you're going to be such a sourpuss, at least get your facts straight.

First, the board is presented with a hiring decision by the administration. Some weeks, board members get a list of dozens of new hires. While legally, board approval is a part of the chain of events, as a practical matter it's expected to be a rubber-stamp process. Otherwise, the people who do the real work would be undercut by bard members who haven't reviewed the resumes, interviewed the candidates, and so on.

(The board hires and fires exactly one person: the superintendent.)

The administration found the person they considered best-qualified for the job and brought that recommendation forward.

There was no policy for the administration to follow or not follow. But the board was concerned with this situation, so it crafted a new policy for future use.

And then.... they modified the policy to give the administration more flexibility.

You may like the policy or not like it, but what happened doesn't remotely fit your summary or your metaphorical child with the ball.

Regarding the $600,000 savings: perhaps you should admit that there's good news once in a while instead of crafting a hypothetical gripe about it.

What made this $600,000 savings possible? A good bond rating, which comes from careful fiscal management. I can't resist pointing out that two board members running for re-election, Quigley and Dimmig, campaigned that they would attack one of the elements of that careful fiscal management, the fund balance (which they mislabeled a "budget surplus" in their campaign literature).

I don't like anonymous comments. My full name is John Schubert. What's yours?

Like Elvis!!!!! My real name is Stewy Griffin!!! So your following statement:
"The board hires and fires exactly one person: the superintendent."Does this mean that our new board will be hiring a new superintendent to replace Mr. Liberati? I realize that the $600,000 is a surplus, but the surplus is at whose expense? Why is that money earmarked? I believe that I have read in Board notes about funding the teacher's pension that was never funded properly. Haven't the teachers been paying their fare share as mandated by law..then why hasn't the school district dipped into their reserves and paid their share of retirement?

Mr. Schubert when will you answer my question? Why is the money earmarked? Is this to pay the districts share of retirement for all of the employees?
Stewy Griffin.....where is Lois?

My apologies for the delay in replying. Such a big Internet to keep track of....
Someone should do a better job of teaching the public about how school boards work. There's law, there's custom and there's best practice. State law constrains what boards can do; custom is local, best practice is perishable. A rule of thumb is that state laws passed before 1980 helped school boards do their jobs better, and state laws passed after 1980 have been for the express purpose of blaming local boards for the misdeeds of the state legislature, governor, and department of education.
Savings, surplus, and fund balance are three different things. Study them! In my next post, I’ll give you an abbreviated budget lesson:

-- The district had been obligated to make interest payments of X amount of money. By refinancing, it now spends X-minus-$600K. That's a savings.
-- Surplus would be if the board got tax revenue of, say, $60 million, and had expenses of $58 million -- which in real life isn't happening.
-- If it were to happen, the extra $2 million would go into the fund balance. That would actually benefit the taxpayers, because that money earns interest, and it gets used during points in the year when cyclical expenses peak and cyclical revenues are low.
-- No board racks up fund balance for long. But having a good fund balance is necessary to get a good bond rating. And Southern Lehigh has a very good bond rating, which is why it gets to save $600K.
-- A board that doesn't plan carefully to have sufficient fund balance is forced to borrow money -- and pay interest -- to make payroll, just like the Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit (CLIU) used to have to do. (The CLIU fixed that problem in recent years, I'm pleased to say.)

Local school boards have no say in any aspect of pension funding. For political reasons, the state raised pensions -- recklessly and irresponsibly, in my opinion -- in 2002 -- and NEVER funded them adequately. The state dictates the funding -- I mean, underfunding -- of pensions. So we'll get a spike in taxes to pay for ridiculously high pensions, and everyone in Harrisburg trying to blame local school boards for what was ENTIRELY fiscal malpractice by Harrisburg.
I doubt the $600K is earmarked. That's not how these things work.
-- John Schubert

So the surplus of money is actually money that was put away to be used as funding for school district employees retirements. What happens to the extra money when a teacher retires and is at the top of their salary schedule. Let me explain so that you might understand: Teacher A is paid $60,000 after 15 years retires and Teacher B is hired at $30,000 to replace Teacher A = surplus / savings of $30,000 that the school district then does what with? Oh, yes that is right the district builds up its general fund balance. So once again our teachers are getting the shaft by the same local people and the individuals in Harrisburg...WOW!! What a profession...

Mr. Schubert @ The following statement is problematic: "The state dictates the funding -- I mean, underfunding -- of pensions. So we'll get a spike in taxes to pay for ridiculously high pensions, and everyone in Harrisburg trying to blame local school boards for what was ENTIRELY fiscal malpractice by Harrisburg." If the state dictated the amount of funding or underfunding required of both the school districts and state then why hasn't the Southern Lehigh School District been paying their fair share all along? Wasn't this an executive order from the state? So let me get this straight, the school district employees have been paying their portion of the retirement but the following entities haven't been: Southern Lehigh School District Board of Directors and the Commonwealth of PA. Doesn't this mean our Board of Directors have been underfunding the retirement all along; thus there wouldn't be an actual need to increase taxes or incur a spike if the Board of Directors would have been paying their bills all along and not getting a general reserve in excess of $16,000,000. Although I appreciate the efforts of others to shed some light on the situation, the public actually would like the entire truth. The truth will set you free!!

http://www.slsd.org/administration.cfm?subpage=1422746&adminActivate=1

Stew, one could spend all day trying to untangle your questions and the misunderstood assumptions behind them. A short summary will have to suffice. The state determines pension funding. The state uses make-believe numbers about anticipated returns on investments to pretend that the funding is less bad than it really is. Southern Lehigh doesn't have any say in that. The teachers have no say in that.

@ careless fills: thank you for explaining what Mr. Schubert wasn't able to explain. So it all goes back to underfunding and careless planning on behalf of the district to not pay their bills.