Saratoga News

The schools really need your help

By Chip Florence

How many times have you heard people say, "They ought to run schools like a business"? Well, I'm a businessman, I run a company; so five years ago as I sat through school meetings and wrestled with the issues of an oncoming financial jam, I said to myself, there's got to be a better way.

Within a week I had joined the Saratoga Education Foundation. It was there I began to work directly with the financial issues the schools were facing, and through three and one-half years of volunteer work I helped launch an initiative to bring new technology tools to our children.

Along the way, I worked with the schools directly on revenue and expense planning--the things businesses normally work with. I watched the responsible new administration come in and swiftly deliver expense cuts; I watched how they pulled together monies from available sources; I listened as they dealt with unpredictable Sacramento, the "parent" corporation. Through it all, the schools demonstrated a financial regimen and fiscal discipline that would make any boot-strapped software start-up envious. More important, they stayed focused on the key goal: delivering a very high-quality educational opportunity to our children.

Back then, in 1992-93, they locked in and forced expense reductions. They cut the fat, class size grew, and then the district grew. We now educate more than 2,200 students, up from 1,700 five years ago, and we spend $4,400 per year on each student.

The parents and community, through SEF funding, have long since outpaced the lottery (thanks, Sacramento) in annual revenue contribution to the schools. To complement the great teachers we have, the parents and community pour in thousands of volunteer hours each year.

The whole $4,400 goes to cash flow. Thanks to the annual SEF funding, some $300,000, the schools reach "break even." There's no money to fix the 70-year-old regurgitating plumbing, the boilers whose parts have been discontinued by the manufacturer, the three-outlet schoolrooms that predated the overhead projector and the Mac.

By the way, the technology initiative worked! Through the generous help of community businesses and local companies, we got some brand-new computers for the kids. And they worked great. Until the January storms thundered in, when the rain dripped through the roofs onto the computer-lab desktops below...

This sounds like a business, right? Wrong. How would you like to run a business where: Your parent corporation (the state) doesn't allow or provide for capital expense budgeting? Your revenue sources are extremely unpredictable? You're not allowed to "cut" product lines that are not "profitable"? You deliver the highest-quality services, and your customer achievements are among the highest in the corporation, but your owner (the state) funds your sister companies before it funds you?

In short, our schools are not a business. Thank goodness. Our schools do what we hope they will do. They manage expenses as responsibly as possible, strictly maintaining those high standards for our children and our future. They work to erase all possible doubts and inhibitors to our future competitiveness in the world.

We are doing a good job. We've exhausted all other avenues of funding. I don't like taxes any more than the next person. But Measure D would cost only $39 per $100,000 of assessed (not market) value, and it's tax-deductible.

Finally, there's leadership. If we, as a community, don't do this, it won't get done. Let's step up on this one. Erase any doubts. It's for our children and our future. Vote Yes on D.

Chateau Drive resident Chip Florence is president of Parallax Graphics Inc., Santa Clara.

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