My Response to "Concerned Citizens"

Read this column if you want the nitty-gritty detailed corrections for the false claims bond issue opponents included in their paid ads:

Bond issue funds can only be spent on designated projects. In her paid ad, Jane Dunbar complained about funding voters approved in prior bond issues for improvements at Bartlesville High School. She takes particular exception to the Bruin Activity Center, an indoor practice facility which she thinks is only for the football team, but is actually used by a variety of sports all through the year, as well as the marching band. She seems to think the funding for that facility could have been diverted to Central or Madison, but that would have been illegal. Neither Central or Madison were the focus of the recent approved bond issues, which targeted much-needed improvements at the elementary schools and included some high school upgrades. Bond issue funds, including unspent funds when a bid comes in lower than projected, can only be spent in the project areas approved by the voters. This restriction ensures that all bond issue funding goes to voter-approved project areas and cannot be diverted to other unapproved uses. Now that voters have provided funding for the much-needed improvements at the elementary schools and we have adequate facilities for juniors and seniors, dozens of community volunteers devoted months of research and planning to develop a comprehensive, cost-efficient, no-frills plan to improve our secondary schools for grades 6-10. Voting NO on 9/10 merely ensures major facility shortcomings at Central and Madison will NOT be addressed.

Bond issue funds cannot be used for school salaries and could not have kept Oak Park open. Ms. Dunbar also repeatedly criticized administrative salaries, even though bond issue funds can never be used for administrator or teacher salaries. Bond issue funds can only be spent on capital needs. While capital needs can include some annual purchases of materials such as textbooks, salaries are off-limits and must be paid for out of the district's other funds.

I represent Bartlesville teachers in annual bargaining, and know that her criticism of administrative salaries is misguided. A few years ago we could not attract qualified candidates to open administrative positions because our salaries were thousands of dollars below what surrounding districts were paying. Teachers know that having well-qualified and capable administrators is vitally important in a successful school district, and this is why the teacher organization supported targeted salary increases to ensure we could attract and retain capable administrators. This is especially important in Bartlesville, where we have a lower administrator-to-student ratio than any of our peer districts. We keep our administrators VERY busy and they earn every bit of their pay, which even with the raises is still below the peer average. Bartlesville voters get a great bargain in their schools - our administrators and teachers are paid below average yet perform far above average.

Ms. Dunbar also does not grasp the complexities of the funding problems which forced the district to close its smallest and least efficient elementary school. Oak Park Elementary was closed to save over $600,000 in annual operating expenses; those expenses cannot be funded by bond issues. The fact is that state aid annual funding to our school district has declined enormously in recent years. In 2012-13, the annual state aid formula funding had declined 17%, or over $3,000,000, from what it was in 2008-2009. Closing Oak Park was a key piece of our survival strategy in weathering these extreme cuts. Even with the savings by closing that undersized and consequently inefficient school, we still had to cut many positions and boost class sizes, especially in our secondary schools. If the Oak Park school had not closed, consequent staffing cuts would have caused many elementary classes throughout the district to spike into the high 20s rather than being held in the low-to-mid 20s, and we know that smaller class sizes are critical in the early school years. The proposed bond issue would further reduce annual operating costs, which will help us weather these continued lean times in state funds for school operations.

The paid ads falsely claim, "School Administration more concerned about High School Football stadium sound system than keeping Oak Park Elementary opened." The upgraded sound system at Custer Stadium was a bond issue capital improvement project approved by the voters for the benefit of all of the many events at the stadium, which eventually affects every student in the district. Bond issue funding COULD NOT be used to operate Oak Park Elementary school; that school was closed due to state funding cuts in the district's General fund, over 90% of which goes to staff salaries. So the district had to cut personnel expenses wherever feasible and simply could not use any bond issue funding for that shortfall.

Ms. Dunbar's ad also claims the district has been "dishonest" about how 180 students are bussed from Oak Park to Wilson now, whereas 270 students went to Oak Park back when it was operating. If she had asked about this, we could have explained to her that the difference is in students who did NOT live in Oak Park but were bussed to that small school to boost its enrollment. When Oak Park was closed, those students returned to their neighborhood schools and only the students who actually lived in the Oak Park neighborhood were bussed to Wilson, where they have performed very well as a small part of the 1,600 children, out of almost 6,000 students overall, who ride a bus to and from school across the district.

The conduit financing for the bond issue is a common practice for Oklahoma school districts and has been repeatedly outlined in the news and at public meetings. Most large school districts in the state have used the conduit lease-purchase financing this bond issue includes because it keeps costs low and allows projects to be completed more quickly. The adjacent Dewey and Caney Valley school districts have successfully used this financing method. Without the conduit financing, we'd have to wait most of a decade to get the projects completed. With the conduit financing, we can complete them in three years and take full advantage of the very low construction costs and interest financing of the current economy. Full details of the financing method have been repeatedly shared at the public school board meetings, and the method was outlined in newspaper articles dating back to at least December 2011, when it was part of the February 2012 proposal. It was discussed exhaustively at the public school board meeting in June, as detailed again in the newspaper. Ms. Dunbar falsely claims, "This was all made public only in the past few weeks...Why were we not told?" In fact, it has been public for years and repeatedly outlined in the newspaper.

Bartlesville Mayor Tom Gorman has refuted the claim by the bond issue opponents that the conduit financing means the city would be borrowing money and that could increase homeowner taxes.

Claims that the bond issue would increase busing don't make sense. The bond issue closes Madison, but merely shifts those students over to the adjacent Mid-High building. We would still have an east-side and a west-side middle school. Shifting freshmen and sophomores from the Mid-High to the High School would cause some shifts in which 9th graders and 10th graders would be eligible for busing, but does not mean a significant change in the numbers of students being bussed. In fact, we now shuttle by bus about 165 students each day between the Mid-High and High School for athletics and to allow some 9th and 10th graders to take classes we can only offer at the High School and to allow some 11th and 12th graders to take classes we can only offer at the Mid-High. Consolidating grades 9-12 onto one campus, with a separate but attached freshman academy, will actually reduce that busing.

There are no unnecessary projects in the bond proposal. The Long Range Facilities Planning Committee was very aware of costs and deliberately winnowed the bond proposal down to the essentials we need to provide quality secondary school facilities for our children. As it stands, we'll be shifting old furniture into new rooms to keep the costs as low as possible. There are no "frills" in the projects and no "wriggle room" - every penny of the funding is allocated to the estimated true costs of the projects. And to reiterate, if we do have some bids come in under the estimates, we'll of course follow the law and ensure that every penny goes to the project areas described in the ballot approved by the voters.

The dozens of community volunteers who labored month after month on researching, developing, and refining this bond proposal have made every effort to ensure it is, as member Ginger Griffin has stated, "A sound, frills free cost effective plan."