Debunking Two Big Lies about Initiated Measure 15

I voted for Initiated Measure 15, the extra-penny sales tax to fund K-12 education and Medicaid. I'm not deeply enamored with IM15. There are decent arguments against this regressive tax. Whether IM15 passes or not, we will have some serious legislating to do to make our state taxing and spending more just and effective.

But I can recognize bogus arguments made against Initiated Measure 15. Two of the biggest fibs about Initiated Measure 15 are the following:

1. IM15 is the biggest tax increase in state history.
2. IM15 dumps much more money into education and Medicaid than has been cut.

The first one is a matter of mathematical interpretation. The dollar figure, $180 million in new revenue, may be correct. But raw dollar figures over time and inflation are bogus. Percentages matter. Jon Walker lists changes in the sales tax in his November 4 article on IM15. We implemented a state sales tax of 2% in 1935 (in the midst of the Depression and the Dust Bowl, no less!). In 1937, we upped it to 3%. Adding that extra penny increased the net sales tax by 50%. In 1969, we added another penny, a 33% increase in the sales tax. In 1980 and 1987, we implemented brief extra-penny increases, each of which was a temporary 25% increase. IM15 proposes to increase the state sales tax from 4% to 5%, a 25% increase. That's a lot of money, but proportionately, it is not the biggest tax increase in South Dakota history.

The second claim above is also untrue, at least in terms of K-12 funding. Jon Walker provides the following numbers on our state per-student allocation for K-12 education:

year	per-student state aid	change	PSA if  increased by 3%
2006	$4,238
2007	4,365	3.0%
2008	4,529	3.8%
2009	4,665	3.0%
2010	4,805	3.0%
2011	4,805	0.0%	4949.15
2012	4,390	-8.6%	5097.625
2013	4,491	2.3%	5250.553

I added the fourth column to show what would have happened to the state per-student allocation if we had followed the funding formula in 2011, 2012, and 2013 and increased education funding by 3%. We'd be at $5,251 per student. That would be $760 more than we are spending this year per student.

According to this year's sales tax revenue and K-12 enrollment, Initiated Measure 15 would increase state spending on K-12 education by about $720.

In other words, Initiated Measure 15 restores 95% of the funding that schools should have received if Pierre had not reneged on the K-12 funding formula for three years in row. Under IM15, compared to where they would have been under the the fiscal policies preceding 2011, our K-12 system will still be running short $40 per student, or a touch more than $5 million statewide.

IM15 is a big tax increase, but it is not the biggest in South Dakota history. And it does not put back into education more than has been cut. It actually falls just short of filling the gap our legislators have dug in the last three budgets.

District 3: Dan Kaiser Would Eliminate State Funding for NSU

Last week I discussed Dan Kaiser's avid support for Ron Paul and the reasons District 3 voters might want to steer clear of his nullificationist libertarianism.

But if discussions of abstract and mostly ill-thought-out political philosophy don't get District 3 voters out of their chairs, let's try a bread-and-butter issue: Kaiser supports closing Northern State University, one of District 3's biggest employers.

Say what? Kaiser couldn't have said something so political suicidal, could have he?

I don't put it past Ron Paul supporters to say any number of crazy things. Kaiser hasn't said, "Let's close NSU!" in so many words. But let's look at Dan Kaiser's responses to the VoteSmart.org Political Courage Test, under "Budget, Spending, and Tax Issues" and "Education." According to VoteSmart,

1. Kaiser would "eliminate" higher education funding. (He would also eliminate state funding for health care and welfare. He'd give K-12 a "slight increase.")
2. Kaiser favors increasing tuition at public universities.
3. He opposes state funding for financial aid for college students.

Now Kaiser does contend later that he "will be a legislator for the poor and middle class." Yet by removing all state support from higher education, Kaiser would more than double the cost of the college education that is already beyond the means of too many poor and even middle-class families.

Would eliminating state funding immediately close Northern State University? Maybe not. But as Charlie Johnson explained down the road a piece at the District 8 forum last week, you can't keep your university open if students can't afford tuition. And if the state isn't supporting it, it's not really a "state" university.

No more Northern State University—just one more practical consequence of electing avid Ron Paul supporters like Dan Kaiser to the South Dakota Legislature.

Worth noting: neither of the Democrats running for District 3 House, Zachary Anderson and Bill Antonides, have completed the VoteSmart.org Political Courage Test. Republican David Novstrup has: he would slightly increase funding for higher education. Alas, Novstrup would ban abortion in cases of rape and incest.

Madison Central Charges Admission to Vote?

Madison Central School District held the first of its scheduled early-voting sessions this week. One local basketball fan reports that, contrary to the spirit of the 24th Amendment, to vote at Tuesday night's boys' basketball game, one had to buy a five-dollar ticket for admission to the game.

According to my correspondent, the polling station was located in the concession area in the middle school lunchroom. During games, the only way to access that area is through the northwest entrance to the middle school, where the ticket table for the game was located. There was no sign at the ticket table announcing that voting was being conducted on the premises, and my correspondent received no advice at the ticket table that one could enter to vote without buying a ticket. The only public notice of the active polling came at halftime, when the PA announcer, Mike Materese, told the crowd that they could go vote for the MHS renovation project in the lunchroom.

The polling station was managed by Monica Campbell, executive director of the Madison Central Education Foundation, which stands to gain new office space in the renovated high school if the bond issue passes.

Now I'm having trouble pinning this down in statute, since our district seems to be winging it on election law on this early-voting scheme. But if election day rules apply to early-voting sessions, publishing a schedule of early-voting sites online and in the newspaper isn't enough. Let us turn to SDCL 12-14-14:

On election day a sign, with a minimum size of eleven inches by seventeen inches, shall be conspicuously displayed outside of the entrance to any building in which a polling place is located to clearly identify the building as a polling place.

If election law allows early voting, election law should hold early voting places to the same standards to protect voter rights as regular election day voting. Individuals should not have to purchase tickets to access a polling place. The polling place should be conspicuously announced by a sign at the entrance of the building.

By the way, as we consider spending millions of dollars to build a 2500-seat gym, my correspondent reports there were plenty of open seats in the current 1200-seat gym.

Web Spinning, Media in the Tank for MHS New Gym

Some statistics of interest, Web and otherwise:

• 245: hits received by the Madison Central New Gym/Renovation Project website since launched earlier this month. Superintendent Vince Schaefer crows about this popularity on the front page of last night's Madison Daily Leader.
• not mentioned: number of those hits coming from the Madville Times.
• 700: hits received by the Madville Times yesterday.
  
• 163: votes submitted to the Madville Times online poll on the school bond issue in one week.
  
• 109: views of MHS Tour Intro, the most popular of the 18 videos I shot and posted of the MHS facility tour last month.
• 60: views of MHS Locker Room Toilet, the second-most popular video of the MHS series.
• 17%: amount of $16.98-million bond issue projected for new gym.
• 75%: possible understatement of actual new gym cost.
  
• 0: individual components of plan that cost more than the new gym.
  
• 9: paragraphs you have to read through before encountering Chuck Clement's first use of the word gymnasium in last night's front-page 12-paragraph article on the project.
• 16: paragraphs you had to read through to find new gym in Clement's October 8 19-paragraph article on the project.
• 2: times Clement said "screw you" to me last March in response to my criticism of his journalism.
  

MHS Publishes Early Voting Schedule: No Tickets Required

I see the Madison Central School District has posted a list of absentee voting opportunities. Permit me to post the schedule hear in clean and simple text to spare you the trouble of clicking on the school's needlessly bandwidthy PDF:

Date	Event	Location	Time
12/20	Middle School band/choir concert	High School Auditorium	7:00 p.m.
12/21	Boys basketball	Cafeteria	4:45 p.m.
1/7	Girls basketball	Cafeteria	4:45 p.m.
1/10	Boys basketball	DSU Fieldhouse	4:45 p.m.
1/12	Open voting	Elementary Commons	12:45 p.m.
1/13	Girls basketball	DSU Fieldhouse	5:00 p.m.
1/15	Gymnastics	Cafeteria	Noon
1/17	Forum	Cafeteria	7:00 p.m. after Forum
1/18	Open voting	Elementary Commons	3:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.
1/20	Boys basketball	DSU Fieldhouse	5:00 p.m.
1/21	Wrestling (Madison Square Garden)	Cafeteria	6:00 p.m.
1/25	Forum	Cafeteria	7:00 p.m. after Forum

Dang—I already missed a couple!

A couple things occurred to me last night about the school district's early-voting scheme. First, the school can't conduct early voting at a basketball game... or at least not on the other side of the ticket table. Suppose concerned citizens want to observe the voting, as they are entitled by state law to do. Suppose they're on a tight budget and can't afford a ticket to the basketball game. If school business manager and election officer Cindy Callies sets up a voting table on paid side of the ticket booth, she creates a barrier to poll watchers, not to mention potential voters.

There can be no price of admission to access any polling place. That's why, in the above schedule, the polling during high school games is listed at the cafeteria or the auditorium. But there still had better not be any electioneering near that voting table!

Note also that it's a bit tough to make to observe the polls when the school district doesn't include a closing time for its early polls. Keeping democracy honest is hard work, but on January 20th, for instance, it would be nice to know if voting will run for just an hour or if I should pack a snadwich and expect to be there for four hours.

Absent from the school's new gym/renovation information site is a list of workplaces that have requested early voting sessions. If any such sessions are scheduled, we should expect similar public notification.

Note, business owners, that if you invite Mrs. Callies to hold early voting at your business, you'll need to open your doors to any person who wants to come in and watch or even vote. That's our right. You can't call Mrs. Callies and say, "I have five employees who want to vote; please bring five ballots down." If folks on the street hear that you're conducting an early vote at your office, and they want to drop in and vote at that time as well, you have to let them in, and Mrs. Callies has to bring enough ballots for such a contingency.

The school district has already lost one supporter with its gaming of the vote. I hope the school will compensate for its questionable vote-stacking by keeping the process as transparent as possible.

Poll: MHS New Gym/Renovation Bond Issue Well Short of 60%

If Madville Times readers have anything to say about, the school will have a hard time passing its bond issue. In the latest Madville Times poll, I asked "How will you vote on Madison's $16.98 million new gym/high school renovation bond issue?" Your responses over the past week:

Yes	73 (44%)
No	74 (45%)
Still thinking	16 (9%)

Total Votes: 163

That's pretty tight, but given that it takes 60% to pass the bond issue, these numbers suggest the school district has some convincing to do.

Now of course, the margin of error for Madville Times polls is bigger than any gym MHS will ever have, so keep your grains of salt handy. For instance, back in September, my poll on the county commission race got the winners right, Pedersen and Wollmann, though in different order. On the other hand, my poll was way off on the local sheriff's race: the tie between Lurz and Wyatt wasn't too far off, but my vote totally underrepresented Sheriff Hartman's support.

But consider: I was off on the sheriff's race because I suspect my readership underrepresents the older crotchety crowd that likes the status quo. If my school bond poll underrepresents that crowd, then the bond issue is in real trouble.

Madison School Early-Vote Stacking Fine by Secretary of State

Vote now in the latest Madville Times poll:
How will you vote on Madison's $16.98 million new gym/high school renovation bond issue?
See right sidebar—poll closes Wed 8 a.m.!

Apparently my concerns about Madison Central School District's early-voting scheme are unfounded. Various Madville Times readers have contacted the Secretary of State's office to get the straight poop on whether our school district can...

1. deputize advocates of the school bond issue to hand out and collect absentee ballots,
2. conduct voting at basketball games and other school events, and
   
3. arrange early voting sites in workplaces at the request of employers.

According to Secretary of State Chris Nelson, all of the above are legit. One of my correspondents gets some more straight dope from Secretary Nelson's assistant, Kea Warne, whose responses to some specific questions about Madison's early-voting plans I summarize below:

1. Should Madison Central publish a list of early voting places and times? There is no statutory requirement for them to publish this document.
   
2. Will there be a voting booth to insure voter privacy? All voters (either voting in-person absentee or at the polling place on election day) must be provided a private area to vote (either voting booth or a table top voting booth).
   
3. What about folks wearing pro or con stickers/t-shirts at these school events? There cannot be any political material within 100 feet of any entrance to the location where absentee voting is being conducted.
   
4. How will poll watchers be arranged? Poll watchers have to be allowed to be present. A person who is wanting to be a poll watcher must identify themselves as such to the election board (on election day) or the business manager/staff conducting the absentee voting.

I still see problems here. Without a published list of early polling places, poll watchers can't find out where to go to observe the polling for irregularities. Whoever school business manager Cindy Callies deputizes to carry absentee ballots around town will need to carry a complete voter registration list and keep it synchronized with every other election deputy's roving list to ensure no one gets more than one ballot. We will also have a lot of ballots moving back and forth to different places in different pouches. The more moving parts to any system, the more chance there is for things to go wrong.

Workplace voting still strikes me as fertile ground for improper influence. When the boss waves a fistful of absentee ballots at employees on company time and says, "Hey! Who wants to vote for the school bond election right now?" there is bound to be some sense of pressure to vote.

And seriously: does anyone think it's fair to conduct a vote on a new gym in a gym while a basketball game is going on, while voters are surrounded by cheering fans clad in school colors? Madison High School is staging early voting at exactly those venues where they can implicitly say, "Look at the wonderful educational opportunities we provide for students. Can you really deny them a new gym and renovated classrooms?"

What's next? Should we allow Mike McDowell to invite the county auditor to ring absentee ballots to work for all of the Heartland employees the next time Senator Russell Olson runs for office? Should Scott Heidepriem get to arrange an early-voting site at his law office the next time he's on the ballot?

If that's just how the game is played, then so be it. But this early voting scheme is not about enfranchisement. It's about stacking the vote in the school's favor.

If incoming Secretary of State Jason Gant is worried about voter fraud, he should come to Madison to observe the most loosely conducted vote I've seen in this state.

Investing in Higher Quality Teachers Yields Economic Returns

Via Dr. Mankiw:

Eric Hanushek's work popped up earlier this month in our blog discussion of how the U.S. isn't producing enough smart kids and how spending more on teachers might boost our kids' math scores. Dr. Hanushek now offers a new paper that quantifies the economic good that may come from hiring better teachers.

According to Hanushek's research, an above-average teacher working with a class of twenty students creates $400,000 in additional student future earnings. Replacing the least effective teachers with just average teachers nationwide would add $100 trillion of value.

I welcome suggestions as to how we identify and recruit higher-quality teachers. But free market rules suggest that attracting quality is relatively straightforward: you get what you pay for. As I apply for jobs that pay $60K rather than $30K, I get the impression that I'm up against a tougher talent pool.

So just imagine: Suppose South Dakota raised its average teacher pay by $10,000 (which would vault us in our national ranking from dead last in teacher pay to 41st place). Suppose that pay boost drew and kept some better talent. If that increased incentive to enter the field replaced only one out of 40 average teachers with above-average teachers, we'd break even on our investment.

Daugaard Visits Madison Middle School -- Kids! Ask Tougher Questions!

Speaking of the budget, I learn from KJAM that the man making the state budget, Governor-Elect Dennis Daugaard, swung through Madison to address kids at Madison Middle School. They asked some tough questions, like what Daugaard is nervous about. Now if only some bright eighth-graders could have made him more nervous by asking which of their teachers Daugaard would fire to satisfy the 5% cut to K-12 education he is likely to support.

Regents Face Less Rosy Budget Picture

I noted last week that my current employer, the South Dakota Board of Regents, is projected to receive $54 million more in federal funding in the coming budget year. Under that headline, one may also note that Governor Rounds's otherwise austere budget includes $3.8 million more in state funds.

However, as Bob Mercer reports, those numbers are deceptive. The public university system will likely be tightening its belt (or are we at the budget-cutting point where strait jacket is the more apt metaphor?) just like everyone else. According to Mercer, the governor's plan expects the Regents to take $10.6 million in stimulus dollars and sock it away for FY 2012. As was the case with Rounds's entire budget address, his proposal offers no vision of how or whether the state will make up that funding shortfall when those stimulus dollars finally run out.

Mercer also notes that Governor Rounds included in his budget proposal the 2% pay increase the Regents requested. Our university profs, grounds crews, and other staff would be the only state employees getting a raise. I can certainly make the case for giving our university staff the raises they have foregone for two years... but don't expect anyone in the Legislature's Republican majority to do so.

In their budget discussion last week, the Regents apparently got a timeline for our next governor's budget. Board president Terry Baloun tells Mercer we may see Dennis Daugaard's budget proposal around January 19. Set aside some blog time for that date!

Online Poll: Vote Now: MHS New Gym/Renovation!

Hey! Click through Twitter or your RSS reader and vote in the latest Madville Times poll. I'd like to know "How will you vote on Madison's $16.98 million new gym/high school renovation bond issue?"

As always, the Madville Times encourages educated voting. Learn more...

1. ...by taking the video tour filmed by yours truly on November 22;
2. ...by reading Madison High School's Renovation Project page;
3. ...by checking out the MHS Facility Project Facebook page;
4. ...and by browsing the best (and only!) local blog coverage of the project, including counterproposals from concerned citizens who are just as interested in boosting the quality of Madison education as anyone else.
   

Poll runs until Dec. 22, Wednesday morning breakfast time. Share the link with your fellow Madison Central School District registered voters and click now!

Madison Central Violating State Election Law?

The more I think about Madison Central School District's proposed early voting scheme, the more uneasy I get. Beyond creating the awkwardness of voting on a new gym while surrounded by maroon-clad Bulldog basketball fans, the school district may be arranging early-voting that violated state election law.

The school district is offering four means of early voting in the upcoming bond election (I quote verbatim from their PDF):

• By mail
• At the business manager’s office in the high school at 800 NE 9th St.
• At many events and community locations prior to the election.
• Anyone who wishes to have early voting conducted at their business for their employees can contact the business office at 256-7710 for more information.

Vote by mail? No problem.

Vote at the school business office? Probably not a problem.

Voting at a school event? Problem.

Voting arranged by bosses for employees at workplaces? Big problem.

First, the school offers no reliable list of early-voting polling places. When and where exactly are the school events where voting will be possible? Will Cindy Callies have ballots on hand at every public event at the school? Or will the school district only break out the ballots at sporting events when they see lots of backers of the 2007 new gym project? Will the school avoid setting up a voting booth at, say, the public one-act performance in January, where they might encounter a number of arts supporters who feel the current $16.98 million plan still puts too much emphasis on athletics over academics?

Same with community events: when and where? Given South Dakota's overwhelming concern with protecting the secret ballot, perhaps a concerned citizen would want to observe the balloting to ensure voters' rights are protected. How can a poll watcher keep track of the voting if the school is doing it in undisclosed locations?

Arranging voting sessions at employers' requests at workplaces smells bad, if not worse. State law entitles employees to two hours off work to vote. Letting bosses arrange in-house voting skirts that requirement (mark your circles, then back to work, slaves!). Worse, it opens the door for all sorts of workplace intimidation: Imagine the boss walking in, saying, "O.K., who wants a ballot to vote on the school bond issue?" and then conspicuously noting with a scowl those who don't take a ballot, presuming to exercise their right to vote in private.

And imagine, just imagine, that employer were Madison Central School District. Principal calls a staff meeting, says, "Hey everyone! Cindy's here so you can all vote!" and hands out ballots.

I don't think principals Knowlton, Koch, or Walsh would do such a foolish thing. I hope every boss in town is that prudent. If employees want to vote, employees can request their absentee ballots individually or come to the polls on their own, on official leave as permitted by state law. Their bosses should have no involvement in their voting.

I support early voting and absentee voting. I support government efforts to get more people to vote.

But I also support following the spirit and letter of election law to protect voter rights and ensure complete fairness. The Madison Central School District needs to clarify and likely scale back its early voting plan to ensure its compliance with election law.

And remember, fellow voters: no Bulldog jackets at the polls.

Statute relevant to early voting in the school bond election:

• SDCL 12-18-1 requires that "All voting at the polling place shall be in private voting booths or compartments and, except as provided in § 12-18-25, shall be screened from observation."
• SDCL 12-18-3 says that, at a polling place, no one may "display campaign posters, signs, or other campaign materials or by any like means solicit any votes for or against any person or political party or position on a question submitted or which may be submitted."
• SDCL 12-18-9.2 authorizes and requires election officials and the cops to remove any materials violating SDCL 12-18-3 and arrest anyone committing such violations.
  
• SDCL 12-18-9 dictates that "Any person, except a candidate who is on the ballot being voted on at that polling place, may be present at any polling place for the purpose of observing the voting process." Rather difficult to do unless the school publishes a complete list of places, dates, and times where the voting process is taking place.
  
• SDCL 12-19-2.1 has a couple of goodies on absentee ballots:
• To get an absentee ballot, you "may apply in person to the person in charge of the election." That means one person, Cindy Callies, can legally hand you an absentee ballot. KJAM is reporting Monica Campbell will have ballots; I'm still looking for the statute that authorizes an "election assistant" to distribute absentee ballots.
• A third party can deliver an absentee ballot is if the voter (a) is confined "because of sickness or disability," (b) applies in writing, and (c) designates an authorized messenger to carry the ballot.
  
• SDCL 12-19-7.2 makes it a Class 2 misdemeanor for any authorized messenger to, "in the presence of the voter at or before the time of voting, display campaign posters, signs, or other campaign materials or by any like means solicit any votes for or against any person, political party, or position on a question submitted."
• SDCL 12-1-2 says that all of these Title 12 provisions "apply to township, municipal, school, and other subdivision elections unless otherwise provided by the statutes specifically governing their elections or this title." I haven't found any exceptions for school bond elections in Title 13.
  
• SDCL 13-7-14 says "Absentee voting shall be permitted in school district elections, including school district bond elections. The school board, with the approval of the county auditor and board of county commissioners, may permit absentee ballots to be voted at the county auditor's office in the county of jurisdiction."

MHS Bond Issue Early Voting Open! But Don't Wear Your Bulldog Jacket....

KJAM reports that early voting has begun in the $16.98-million new gym and high school renovation bond issue placed before us by the Madison Central School District. (Worth noting: one of KJAM's main media personalities, Matt Groce, is also leading a committee advocating passage of the Madison Central school bond issue.) The early voting information is also available (in annoyingly unnecessary PDF format) on the Madison K-12 website. (Who at MHS seriously thinks it's easier to publish a simple text notice as a PDF? What are you teaching those kids?)

The school is going to great lengths to make voting as convenient as possible. You can vote by mail or by dropping in to business manager Cindy Callies's office at the high school. Callies and Madison Education Foundation exec Monica Campbell will also have ballots handy "at many events and community locations prior to the election." Callies will even arrange to bring ballots to your place of employment so you can get all of your employees to vote.

Wait a minute. I'm all for universal enfranchisement. I'm all for absentee ballots. But voting at "school events" and other "community locations"? How do we arrange poll-watchers for this kind of everywhere, anytime voting?

This activity falls safely within the rules for absentee voting. I know in 2008 when I was out walking for Obama and other Dems, we could offer to deliver absentee ballots for interested voters.... Update: but as I review the Secretary of State's guidelines on absentee balloting, I am reminded that the only time we did that was in case of voters who were homebound by sickness or disability who would authorize a messenger in writing to convey their ballots.

But if the school district is organizing voting at events and workplaces, the school might want to take a look at SDCL 12-18-3, which governs electioneering and other conduct at polling places:

12-18-3. Electioneering, offices, distracting communications devices, and signature gathering prohibited near polling place--Violation as misdemeanor. Except for sample ballots and materials and supplies necessary for the conduct of the election, no person may, in any polling place or within or on any building in which a polling place is located or within one hundred feet from any entrance leading into a polling place, maintain an office or public address system, or use any communication or photographic device in a manner which repeatedly distracts, interrupts, or intimidates any voter or election worker, or display campaign posters, signs, or other campaign materials or by any like means solicit any votes for or against any person or political party or position on a question submitted or which may be submitted. No person may engage in any practice which interferes with the voter's free access to the polls or disrupts the administration of the polling place, or conduct any petition signature gathering, on the day of an election within one hundred feet of a polling place. A violation of this section is a Class 2 misdemeanor.

Read more relevant statute and cause for concern about Madison Central's early-voting scheme in my follow-up post on this topic.

I know the county courthouse takes the sanctity of the polling place seriously. I walked into the auditor's office once with a campaign t-shirt on. Absentee voting was going on in the office next door. The gals in the auditor's office immediately told me I had to cover up that shirt.

If the school district intends to establish polling places at concerts, ball games, and various workplaces around town, they had better ensure the integrity of the vote. If the school district is handing out ballots for people to mark at basketball games, they had better be on the P.A. system before the game alerting everyone that state law prohibits any discussion of the school bond election, pro or con.

Arguably, the school may have to ban Bulldog jackets, buttons, and signs at school events where voting is offered. If the "Vote Yes for MHS Committee" adopts any MHS logos or slogan for its campaign, if they adopt school colors maroon and gold for their advertising, then the presence of such school paraphernalia at polling places could well qualify as electioneering that could sway votes.

Open voting is great, but the school will need to work to assure the public its rolling polling places satisfy South Dakota election law.

------------------------------
Possibly related: I learn from Monica Campbell that Jon Hunter is getting into webcasting with live streaming video from Madison Bulldog home basketball games on the MDL website, starting Thursday night. No word yet on whether the school district has designed an accompanying Web widget that will let listeners vote on the bond issue electronically.

Rolling Homework: Web Buses!

I don't know if this project is a money-saver or not. But for all those kids around South Dakota with long rides to and from school, maybe we can maximize our educational impact by transforming all of our buses into rolling Web classrooms:

One school bus in Arkansas’ Pope County has been transformed into a mobile classroom equipped with computer screens mounted to the ceiling, earphone jacks, wireless Internet access and a separate scanning device to record bus activity.

The five 19-inch customized computer screens stream math and science content from PBS, NASA, the Discovery Channel, CBS News and the Smithsonian Institution for students to watch on their hour-long rides to and from school. The screens also include video-conferencing capabilities [Lauren Katims, "High-Tech School Bus Teachers Students on the Road," Government Technology, 2010.12.14].

I know DSU athletes get to travel on a Web-capable bus. Does the tour bus the MHS boosters bought for our athletes have that capability? Kids could travel to games during the day and still watch class via webcam!

Web buses could have application beyond giving the kids a chance to do homework and web-chat with teachers on the way home. Perhaps we should start up a Web bus service for commuters from Madison to Sioux Falls. Just hook up some satellite wireless and let all the adults enjoy a couple extra hours a day of laptop productivity while the bus driver keeps things between the ditches.

New Gyms Sprout in Smaller Schools

The Madison Central School District may face some challenges justifying building a new gym when it is faced with the prospect of making up a 5% cut in state aid to education. Asking local voters to make up another $275K in the annual budget might require giving up the $2.9 million the district says the new gym will cost.

Then again, if we're being quoted $2.9 million for a 40,000-square-foot facility with a 2500-seat gym, we might want to run with that bargain. Shopping around the neighborhood, I learn Wolsey-Wessington just built a new gym that cost $2.2 million. As a Class B gym, I would expect it is markedly smaller seat-wise than Madison's proposed arena. Highmore-Harrold just built a new gym, too. Superintendent Frank Palleria says that facility has just 300 seats. (Palleria, a former Madison super, also tells me a new gym for Madison is "long overdue.").

So $2.7 million gets Highmore-Harrold 300 seats, but $2.9 million will get Madison 2500 seats? I remain skeptical of the numbers we're getting locally.

Update 15:49 CST: I learn from MDL that my friends Matt and Penni Groce are holding an organizational meeting for the new "Vote Yes for MHS Committee" tonight at 7 at the MHS lunchroom.

Spend Less on Test Prep, More on Great Books and Teachers

Governor Mike Rounds is asking for a 5% cut in state aid to K-12 education, and Governor-Elect Dennis Daugaard says he is likely to support most of the cuts in Rounds's plan. The proposed $353.6 million in state aid to K-12 education represents 29.6% of proposed FY2012 state general fund expenditures. Pre-Rounds, K-12 state aid made up 39% of general fund expenditures.

Daugaard and I and everyone else agree that what matters most is not how much we spend on education but the results our kids and teachers achieve. (There is some minimum cost of doing business, and Rounds has pushed local districts too close to that line, but we can argue that elsewhere.) So whatever amount the Legislature has the courage and foresight to invest in our children, we need to figure out how best to spend that money.

One place to start: ask the kids. A huge study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation finds school kids really do have a pretty good sense of which teachers are doing the job right.

Teachers whose students described them as skillful at maintaining classroom order, at focusing their instruction and at helping their charges learn from their mistakes are often the same teachers whose students learn the most in the course of a year, as measured by gains on standardized test scores, according to a progress report on the research [Sam Dillon, "What Works in the Classroom? Ask the Kids," New York Times, 2010.12.10].

One result that really stands out to me: kids who report that their teachers drill them a lot on standardized test exercises ended up not gaining as much on their state tests as other kids. That doesn't say that teaching to the test won't improve kids scores, but it does say that you can raise your kids scores even more by simply focusing on "the key concepts of literacy and mathematics."

So whatever money we get for our schools, this study suggests that we should spend less on test-prep books and special courses and more on great books and teachers.

Uncle Sam Promises $54 Million Boost for SD Universities FY2012

Please tell me Kristi Noem and John Thune won't send this money back: Governor Rounds's budget proposal has Uncle Sam giving $54 million more to South Dakota's public university system in Fiscal Year 2012. That increase is part of $248 million in total anticipated federal funding for Board of Regents programs. Essentially, Uncle Sam picks up 31% of the total $797 million Regental budget.

Some universities come out better than others under the proposed budget. Here's a chart of the net changes proposed from this year's budget to next year's:

	Proposed Changes from FY 2011 to FY2012
Location	State Fund	Federal Fund	Other Fund	Total	FTE
Total	$3,818,909	$53,823,221	$19,902,254	$77,544,384	227.5
Central Office	($6,026)	$0	$1,650,845	$1,644,819	0.0
Scholarships	$31,642	$0	$0	$31,642	0.0
Employee Compensation and Health Insurance	$3,051,208	$1,113,729	$3,181,609	$7,346,546	0.0
USD	$178,715	($2,737,138)	$0	($2,558,423)	0.0
USD Med	$106,310	($1,628,199)	$0	($1,521,889)	0.0
SDSU	$247,604	$4,807,787	$11,412,400	$16,467,791	136.5
SDSM&T	$80,969	$56,579,910	$1,930,000	$58,590,879	40.0
NSU	$48,780	($747,103)	$0	($698,323)	5.0
BHSU	$40,173	($5,710,280)	$477,400	($5,192,707)	11.0
DSU	$39,534	$2,144,515	$1,250,000	$3,434,049	35.0

The biggest chunk of new federal dollars goes to the School of Mines (Tony's probably building an even bigger laser to pop popcorn at the dean's house). The biggest jump in jobs, though, comes at SDSU, which gets 60% of the new full-time equivalents.

Dakota State University comes out o.k., with nearly three and a half million more in funding and 35 new jobs. That would make up nicely for the seven teachers the Madison Central School District would have to fire to make up for the $275K Governor Rounds wants to cut from their budget. Maybe we just need to graduate some kids early and send them to DSU.

Proposed Education Cuts Bad for South Dakota: Who Should Pay?

What's wrong with Governor Rounds's proposed budget for education? Aside from the usual GOP view of education as expense rather than investment and a determination to cheat our kids of educational opportunities, plenty:

1. While kids get a 5% cut, administration in the state Department of Education gets a 3.3% boost, $342K more than this year.
2. The FY2012 per-student allocation is $100 less than it was in FY2009. Rounds would set schools back three years.
3. The budget anticipates a 20% drop in students taking Advanced Placement courses. If we want competitive graduates, we should be pushing more kids to take AP, and backing that push with bucks.
4. The number of school districts offering post-secondary dual-credit courses drops from 20 to 6. If that's a local decision, that's bad. If that's a state budget cut, that's worse. And yes, the governor is proposing a quarter-million-dollar cut to dual-credit support.

While doing dishes last night, my wife posited two ways out of this budget mess. We can make our kids pay for it, by permanently hamstringing education funding and denying them the educational opportunities they need to compete for admission to the best colleges, scholarships, and jobs. Or we can make Wal-Mart pay for it by imposing a corporate income tax.

Our kids or our corporations: who should pay?

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p.s.: New Dept. Ed. data show fall 2010 K-12 enrollment at 123,629. Multiply those kids by the $240 per student by which Rounds would reduce the funding formula, and that's $29.7 million in cuts.

pp.s.: If you think a 5% cut from Pierre would save you money, think again: the SD Budget and Policy Project reminds us that your local school district (and health care providers) will come a-shifting those costs to you one way or another.

South Dakota Cost of Living Spikes Above US Average

Here's news to straighten your curls: South Dakota's cost of living is higher than the national average.

Say what? The last time I ran numbers on cost of living and salaries, I found that in Quarter 1 of this year, South Dakota's cost of living was 92.8% of the national average, the 13th lowest in the nation. When I checked my usual source, the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center (MERIC), I found South Dakota's cost of living jumped in the third quarter to 101.25% of the national average. That ranks us 32nd in the nation.

Hold on—really? I've been following these cost-of-living figures for some time, and South Dakota's has consistently floated around the 90% level. How did we suddenly, in just a couple quarters, boom up over 101%?

I emailed MERIC to find out if they could explain this strange stat. They replied (with admirable alacrity!) that Q2 saw "a huge increase in transportation, housing, and grocery costs" (dang—don't tell me Sarah Palin was right!) and that Q3 saw a big surge in health care costs. MERIC explains that sometimes some cities participating in the C2ER/ACCRA cost-of-living survey misreport or don't report for a certain period, while other experience some price volatility that mucks up the comparisons. MERIC says their own state of Missouri dropped out of its normal position in the top 10 for a couple quarters, then bounced back.

So what do you think, fellow South Dakota shoppers? Have we seen an unusual price spike in the last couple quarters that didn't happen in other states? Or is this sudden 101.25% cost of living just an artifact of gimpy data?

Just in case these numbers are legit, permit me to run my favorite cost-of-living calculation: teacher pay purchasing power:

State	Avg Teacher Pay (AY 2008-2009)	% US Avg	TP Rank	Cost of Living Index (2010 Q3)	COL Rank	Teacher Purchasing Power
SD	$35,070	64.56	51	101.25	32	63.77
ND	$41,654	76.68	50	98.59	24	77.78
MN	$51,938	95.62	20	103.4	34	92.47
IA	$48,638	89.54	26	94.51	16	94.74
NE	$44,957	82.76	42	90.78	6	91.17
WY	$54,602	100.52	16	99.61	29	100.91
MT	$44,426	81.79	46	99.43	28	82.26
US	$54,319	100		100		100

Short form: by current cost of living data, public school teachers choosing to live and work in South Dakota will have less than 64% of the purchasing power than the national average. If those teachers leave South Dakota for any neighboring state they will make more money and be able to buy more with that money. Even in Minnesota, with the highest cost of living in the neighborhood, teachers would enjoy 45% more purchasing power than they do in South Dakota... at least by Q3 numbers.

Local Supers Cool to Rounds K-12 5% Cut

The Madison Daily Leader gets three of our local superintendents on the record about Governor Rounds's proposed 5% cut to state aid for K-12 education. They don't sound happy, but they aren't jumping off any grain elevators yet. They list the cuts we'd face under the governor's plan to lower aid by $240 per student (with adjustments for the small-school formula):

• Madison: enrollment approx. 1150, cuts $275,000 (eliminate the new gym proposal, save $2.9 million, and we cover that shortfall for ten years, maybe more).
• Oldham-Ramona: enrollment 124, cuts $30,000.
• Rutland: enrollment 131, cuts $31,000.

Madison superintendent Vince Schaefer refers to the proposed education hacking as "just talk." He seems to be thinking along the same lines as legislative leaders who are waiting to see what revised budget Governor-Elect Daugaard will submit once he takes office.

Superintendents John Bjorkman from Oldham-Ramona and Dr. Carl Fahrenwald from Rutland both make the point that there isn't any fat left in their budgets. They've already been cutting academic muscle, eliminating programs like FFA and consumer sciences. Anyone who fantasizes that cutting K-12 funding 5% is just getting rid of darned gum'mint waste needs to visit these superintendents.

Update 08:55 CST: John Nelson juxtaposes the proposed cuts to education with news that kids in Shanghai are kicking our cans on math, science, and reading scores.