Performance audit provides map toward city school savings

The hard cold fact of a perfor- mance audit is that it’s only worth the paper it is printed on unless those who are in charge commit themselves to changing the way they do business.

Say what you will about the Youngstown City School District and its financial problems, but the district did a pretty good job of implementing the recommendations in its last performance audit, which was issued in 2008.

Through wage freezes and job cuts, the district was able to save millions of dollars. It implemented more than 75 percent of the recommendations in that performance audit.

Now, Auditor of State Dave Yost’s office has released an updated performance audit and it suggests ways the district could save more than $6 million.

The audit analyzes areas in which Youngs–town schools continue to spend above the average for goods and services.

Pay discrepancies

It should be noted that one area in which the district apparently is not overspending is in teacher salaries. The report notes that after freezing salaries for three years, the average for certificated employees was 8.2 percent lower than those for what the audit described as “peer districts.”

Office and clerical employees, however, are paid 15.4 percent higher than in peer districts; technical and professional staff, 9.3 percent higher, and maintenance and mechanics, 25 percent higher.

Those categories represent nearly 30 percent of the district’s employees, so bringing their compensation into line represents healthy substantial savings.

The performance audit gives the school district new benchmarks for reducing the number of employees in and outside of the classroom, The audit suggests requiring a greater level of participation by employees in paying for health coverage, as well as reduction in the use of sick time, which averages 10 days a year for certificated employees and 11 days for classified employees.

Some of these savings fall in the realm of low-hanging fruit, some will be more difficult.

The revenue challenge

But the larger challenge facing the Youngs–town district is one over which it has even less control, and that is on the income side of the ledger. The district’s emergency 9.5-mill levy that was approved by voters in 2008 will have to be renewed by 2013 or it will expire.

There will be no more federal stimulus money to bulk up the bottom line, and state funding is being cut at the same time that the state plans to expand the charter-school and voucher programs that have been chipping away at enrollment and income.

In that respect, the school officials are taking aim at constantly moving targets.

The spending cuts in the performance audit provide, however, dozens of clearly defined targets for the board and superintendent. For that they can be thankful.