Delaware Builder Takes Aim at School Funding

By Elizabeth Scheinberg

Reybold wants their share of school funding back... Or at least a legislated change in the Voluntary School Assessment formula - a non-voluntary assessment that helps fund additional classrooms when new neighborhoods are built.

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012201220342

Jerome Heisler, of the Reybold Venture Group, said in the suit filed Dec. 28 in U.S. District Court that the state's Voluntary School Assessment is flawed because the amount of the fee is the same whether the new housing unit is an efficiency apartment or a seven-bedroom McMansion.

"The Voluntary School Assessment, calculated on a per-unit basis, is discriminatory in that it ... burdens basic freedoms by limiting the selection of areas in which low-income persons, the majority of whom are ... minorities, can purchase new housing," the lawsuit says.

Department of Education spokeswoman Alison Kepner said she couldn't comment on the specifics of the suit.

The assessment on face value is probably unfair. It is overly burdensome for builders who target housing for the middle class and the poor. But, then, it's a safe statistical assumption that most builders pass that assessment cost onto their buyers. And that's the crux of the Reybold argument: A buyer than can only afford a $30,000 mobile home will have a tougher time finding the same $6,000 that the buyer of the McMansion foots.

However, Reybold's suit is asking for something more than legislated changes to equalize the assessment:

The suit asks the court to declare the Voluntary School Assessment "discriminatory and/or unconstitutional, and therefore unenforceable." It seeks an injunction that would halt the collection of the fee and force the state to refund the fees collected to date.

I can go along to get-along with most of the argument - but this is where Reybold loses me. The builder is suing to force the state to refund the fees collected to date. So, off the top of my head, I find myself asking:

Let's be clear here - If the management at Reybold truly thought this fee would hurt their clientele, they would have filed this suit back in 1999 when the Assessment hit the books. It's curious that they've waited 13 years to object. Perhaps this is a response to the recession and Reybold has seen their sales decline? I'm just saying that the motivation as purported by the suit is not the true motivation of the builder, but just an ancillary fact that bolsters their argument...
Say this suit gathers steam: If the court orders a refund, who gets it? The builder who likely passed the fee down to his buyer? Or the buyer who may have paid the fee without even knowing they were funding schools?
If the court orders a refund, what's the impact to tax payers? From the DOE spokesperson:

If that were to happen, Kepner said, the school- expansion costs to accommodate the students who live in houses that paid the fee would have to be funded another way.

"All taxpayers in the school districts would have to pay the costs associated with building capacity to serve the new subdivisions," Kepner said.

That's DOE speak for we spent that money and we don't have any to refund, so we'll find away to push that along to the tax payers.

That's part and parcel with the Governor's plan for fiscal responsibility and it's just scary. Delaware's Gov has raided education spending for three years to balance the state's budget. He's eliminated programs such as the one that provided reading specialists in our schools, moved dedicated education dollars into the general fund where such monies can be spent on things other than education. Though he was rebuffed in year one in regards to transportation funding, last year he did manage to push off a substantial chunk of transportation costs to the local districts. It's already been forecast that when the Gov. releases his next proposed budget that there will be more money diverted away from education. So just how would the Gov raise enough money to reimburse the builders for the not-voluntary Voluntary School Assessment Fees?

Let's just hope that some of our legislators keyed into this News Journal story and will act to equalize the fee before the DOE has a chance to lose the lawsuit with Reybold.

Category: Raiding education funding to balance the budget and the Reybold Challence 2 comments

2 comments:

dissertations said...: Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it.; January 30, 2012 at 8:19 AM
Elizabeth Scheinberg said...: I couldn't agree more. But, there are two complicating issues in play right now that prevents this suggestion from being the norm:

1)Even by graduation, most children do not recognize that they are not experts in anything academic. In fact, developmentally-speaking, many teens simply have not neurologically matured enough to recognize their own deficits.

2)The federal and state emphasis is on standardized testing and college and career readiness. The emphasis on readiness leaves students with the the impression that they know everything they need to know by the time they leave school. The push for testing further solidifies the message.

Schools, because of federal and state mandates, are not able to teach students to be intellectually curious. They must teach students to pass the test instead. And now that teacher evaluations will be tied to the success of student testing, there will be even less of a desire to impart a love of learning to students.

The state and feds have corrupted education. The question that remains to be answered: Will education survive the latest attack?

That said, it's still morally responsible for builders to have to help support the schools that will serve the kids in the communities they build.; January 30, 2012 at 9:41 AM