Sycamore Taxpayer

Are they talking about the same district?

Reading the Sycamore School 2008-09 Annual report and the www.Sycamoretaxpayer.com weblog leaves a person thinking they must be talking about two different school systems.

There seems to be general agreement about the effectiveness ratings, but the efficiency and financial performance aspects don’t match.  Both agree that Sycamore has attained the Excellent with Distinction rating, but the weblog site goes further and points out that so has 113 other Ohio districts. In addition, Sycamore spends considerably more per student than 106 of those districts. The annual report fails to put its good ratings into perspective with a comparison of other similar rated Ohio districts. The report does list the data of some regional schools.

The Comparative Data section of the annual report is listed in alphabetical order, making it difficult to compare the data. The weblog seems to do just the opposite, comparative data are ranked high to low or low to high depending upon the particular measure. The district name is just an afterthought.  

It’s interesting that some of the actual data doesn’t match. For example, the Sycamore annual report shows 5,569 total enrollment, while the weblog lists it at 5,413. The report is “based on October 2008 Count Week data” and the other is the average daily membership used by the Ohio Department of Education.  

Another significant difference between the report and weblog is that the time frame of each is noticeable different. The annual report focuses primarily on the 2008-09 school year, while the weblog presents the reader with a higher scale perspective by focusing on a longer time frame past, present and future. This difference is particularly noticeable when viewing total expenditures. The school’s annual report doesn’t mention the expenditures will increase $4.5 million this year, the first year of a five year forecast. The weblog shows the expenditure trend over an eight year period.    

The school’s “Where The Money Goes” section breaks down the expenditures by eleven categories of operation. The weblog doesn’t mention these categories; instead it focuses on line items reported in the Five Year Forecast. For example, compensation and benefits are two separate items and account for 85 percent of total expenditures.  The weblog seems to emphasize the significance and importance of staff levels, wages, benefits and union contracts, none of which are mentioned in the annual report.

In summary, both focus on effectiveness. The www.sycamoretaxpayer.com weblog seems to focus on efficiency; while Sycamore’s Annual Report never mentions the word efficiency. Finally, the report’s primary focus is one year and seems to be more of a sales document, while the weblog presents trends analysis for better decision making.