If schools had the same accounting systems as business . . .

In business accounting, there is the concept of the "Cost of Goods Sold." The purpose of COGS is to collect the cost of all of the inputs fairly attributed to an article of manufacture. This includes the direct cost of materials to make the article, but it also includes an allocation of some less direct but nevertheless indispensable items of cost: utilities, transportation of materials and finished articles, engineering, manufacturing plant space, et cetera.

A school district chart of accounts is set up very differently. Its purpose is to track the expenditure of funds as allocated by the school board and the state and federal Departments of Education. Apparently, there over 17,000 individual accounts in the state mandated fund accounting system for school districts, known as UFARS for short. This boggles Spot's mind.

Anyway, a committee of the Association of Metropolitan School Districts, headed by a Hopkins businessman, Ward Eames, has been working for some time on an accounting system for schools that mimics business accounting. Instead of COGS, the functional equivalent is called "Cost of Teaching and Learning."

COTL attempts to collect all of the costs directly related to educating a student. Classroom teachers are included, but so are paraprofessional and other support staff (such as counselors, psychologists, speech therapists, and media specialists, f/n/a librarians), employee benefits, transportation, building principals, building operations and maintenance, et cetera. Also included are curriculum and staff development expenses. Not included are the so-called top brass that everyone worries about so much.

What happens when schools and business go head to head, so to speak? Spot has only seen the business accounting model applied to the Minnetonka School District, another district that has fallen short of the readin', writin', and 'rithmic Republican stricture, by a similar amount as Edina. The result is illuminating.

Minnetonka is running an average 95% COTL. Ninety-five percent. Much better than most businesses, Spot assures you. And Edina's is likely to be similar.

Now, within COTL, cost items are going to float back and forth a little over the period of a year or couple of years. For example, school districts have been hit hard by rising energy costs for electricity, natural gas, and vehicle fuel in the past couple of years. As a result, as a percentage of total COTL, these items have risen, but they still have to be paid. Children first have to be transported to school, and then they can only learn if the lights are on and the place is warm enough to concentrate. The Edina school district also must provide some transportation for parochial school students in the district; did you know that? Moreover, the district has to provide special education services to the same private school students.

Similarly, the percentage of COTL attributed to teacher salaries will depend on where the district is in the contract cycle, retirements and new hires, and by unusual changes in enrollment from year to year affecting the number of teachers required.

Can people differ as to how to spend funds with in the COTL? Of course. But just to reiterate, these won't be and cannot be static numbers.

The Republican 65% solution is just a shell game intended to make the public think that public school are wasting a lot of money. This is not only wrong, but the timing of the introduction of the idea in the legislative cycle is odious. And Geoff Michel is playing right along.