Mr. Morgan:

Date: 2/26/2013

A formal request (2nd)

Supply the below data and publish this on Patch.

Number of FTE’s (Full Time Equivalent) Teachers and the number of Non Teachers (Overhead) by year, each year from 2005 through 2013. Separate numbers if you will.

I consider this a key piece of data that any School Board Member, Chairman or Superintendent should have readily available. This would be a pretty basic managerial statistic for any well run organization.

Taxpayers would need this as well, considering the constant requests for ten of millions if not hundred of millions of dollars

Thank You

The internet is a mysterious place. Sometimes things just disappear into the ether, like the response I made to this posting under a different article on Monday. I’ve emailed Michael Ryan and asked if he could find it. I find that direct emails don’t tend to get lost in the ether. If you’d like to email me, my address is pmorgan@sau57.org. Meanwhile, here’s a re-cap of my earlier response.

I don’t have complete data on enrollments and teachers from 2005-2013. This is, however, public information and anyone can get it by making a formal request through the Office of the Superintendent. The district may, under RSA 91-A:4, recover the cost of reproducing the information. Please understand that an anonymous posting on Patch is not a formal request.

I do know that over the years 2007-2011 enrollments in Salem declined by nearly 1,100 students and the number of employed teachers declined by 32 teachers. So in fact as enrollments declined, so did the number of employed teachers.

This information was also in a previous blog post that you can find under my name in the Patch blog archives. It was posted June 20, 2012 and discussed some of the reasons why costs don’t necessarily decline with enrollments. Feel free to review the posting and email me any questions you have about it.

Going from a Student/teacher Ratio of 16 in 2006 to 12.8 in 2012 has been the largest driver of School Costs "Being Out Of Control"

Why has nobody talked about this, am I missing something? Did I miss that meeting?

Where was the School Committee in disclosing this to the voters?

Where was SOS in disclosing this to the voters?

Where was the School Superintendent in disclosing this to the Voters?

Where was the Union in disclosing this to the voters?

Why does someone like me have to do the research myself on such an important matter?

Casino Revenues

The only bright side of our School Infrastructure funding issues is the possibility of a Casino in Salem. The millions of dollars that it would provide the Town would lessen that very serious blow to Taxpayers. Taxpayers do have monetary limits, a fact which has always been ignored by the competing factions.

Good planning would have prevented this but we must deal with where we are now.

I would remind the Unions in the Town that these monies should all be earmarked for INFRASTRUCURE.

VOTE YES next month on CASINOS.

THE SOCIAL COSTS ON THOSE WHO PAY THE BILLS IN SALEM

Retired people and people without children are those who foot the bills of Salem****. Those with children and Unions are a significant burden on them.

Does anyone think this MONEY burden does not ADVERSLY AFFECT THEIR LIVES. The “Self Centered” view that Casinos carry Social Costs ignores the financial burdens (Social Costs) of the people that support and pay for this Town to operate.

Vote Yes next month on Casinos. The people I am talking about need the help.

**** This was discussed and proven quite a while ago and I will reopen the issue if needed

Mark Twain popularized the saying "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Underwater Couple, your post falls into this category. You want us to be shocked by this meteoric drop in class size, but did you take the time to see how we compare to the rest of the state? I did.

Using your same information.
As At………Student/Teacher Ratio.....Salem Ranking in NH
10-1-12………………12.8......................138/161 (86%)
10-1-11………………13.2......................139/161 (86%)
10-1-10………………13.8......................149/161 (93%)
10-1-09………………14.0......................154/162 (95%)
10-1-08………………14.5......................154/162 (95%)
10-1-07………………15.6......................158/162 (97%)
10-2-06………………16.0......................159/162 (98%)

So currently in the 2012/2013 school year there are 137 schools in NH with smaller class sizes and 23 with larger class sizes than Salem which puts us in the bottom 15%. This is hardly the grand excess that you want us to believe. Instead, Salem School District class sizes have merely progressed from horrendous to really bad. Moreover right or wrong, this is one of the things that people look at when moving to a town and when they see aging decrepit schools and high class sizes they tend to move on to the next town.

Love NH, Your quote applies to you as well. Statistics beget statistics? When my husband and I moved to Salem I can tell you we looked at tax burden, school test scores, graduation rates and % attending a 4 year college. In that order. We did not look at class size, becuase as Mr. Linehan pointed out, that is not an indicator of a well performing school district (unless it is at the younger ages and our small classes are at the HS level, not the elementary) or quality education and we did not drive by or go into any of the schools. While it is not statisically significant, I can tell you that there is not one of my friends that did either. Since we moved to town, our tax burden has sky-rocketed and our test scores have dropped. So we are spending more money but i'm not seeing the return on that money in a better education for my children.

Mark Twain on Fools

Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Let us be thankful for the fools; but for them the rest of us could not succeed.
- Following the Equator; Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar

If you send a damned fool to St. Louis, and you don't tell them he's a damned fool, they'll never find out.
- Life on the Mississippi

If all the fools in this world should die, lordly God how lonely I should be.
- Letter to Olivia Clemens, 1/23/1885

The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.
- More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927

Ah, well, I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, and all His work must be contemplated with respect.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

Whatever happened to that $800,000 Slush Fund that was not a Slush Fund. Anybody know?

Underwater Couple- Is there anything you like about Salem or for that matter is there anything positive you can say about anything. I think the question you should ask is why don't you move out of the town you obviously dislike. You really don't have your facts correct, basically on anything, you just shoot venom about everything. Leave Town if you are so unhappy. People are trying to make Salem a place the citizens can respect and all you do is degrade those that are trying.

Oh BTW again Tom Linehan doesn't have his fact correct. Tom please stop pretending you are the authority on everything. You must be exhausted.

There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing and be nothing. Aristotle.