Intel's new Strategic Investment Program
Last Wednesday, Intel announced that it will request Washington County to discuss a new Strategic Investment Program (SIP). In 1999 the county agreed to a tax incentive specifically for Intel that would pretty much eliminate property taxes for all the equipment in the Intel manufacturing fabs in Oregon, limiting the property taxes to the land and building. On the county web site there is a page on the
1999 SIP that seems to be rather biased in Intel's favor. It shows how much more Intel would pay in property taxes on its land and buildings, but it does not mention (at least not directly) the fact that over the 10 year period of the agreement Intel would receive an estimated 70 million of tax reduction on the equipment.
The press release issued by Intel last week shows that the company only invested 7 billion of the 12.5 billion originally planned. The new program promises 25 billion in investments through the end of the next decade.
Is it worth it? If we continue with inadequate funding for education, safety, and a number of basic services, in a decade we won't have the educated workforce necessary to operate the advanced equipment in the new fabs, and people won't be interested in moving to our community to live and work here.
The city of Hillsboro will be in the red this year and next, mainly because of the limited revenue coming from the high tech companies. Oregon is already the most business-friendly of all the western states, and the percentage of state revenue coming from business has declined dramatically since measure 5. It is time for businesses to do their share.
I worked as an engineer and as a department manager in the semiconductor industry for many years. High tech companies will fight tooth and nail to get even a fraction of one percent in savings. But the truth is that the tax incentives are only a small part of the decision on where to start a new fab. A company I worked for invested hundreds of millions in a development manufacturing line in the Bay Area in the late 1990s, even though the labor costs were high, property taxes were high, and earthquake safety requirements were extremely expensive. A big reason for the choice was that there was an existing base of highly skilled workers in the area.
If we keep "bribing" companies to create jobs here, we will reach a point where they will not have a reason to invest here, regardless of the amount of the tax incentives. Let's think about it.
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Surprises
I really look forward to this little campaign. I want to talk with ordinary people and listen to their opinions and ideas. I am betting I will be very surprised by what I learn, like I did a few days ago.
Last week I attended an event organized by the Chalkboard Project here in Hillsboro. Attendance was pretty low (around 20 people).
One pleasant surprise in the two hour conversation was hearing many people say "I would be in favor of a sales tax if I knew that the money was going to fund education". This was not one of the limited number of topics that the organizers wanted us to talk about, but it kept coming up in what people were saying about stable funding for education and parental involvement.
My feeling is that there is a strong level of support for public school funding among the general population, in spite of the successes of measure 5 and other revenue limiting initiatives in the past two decades. A proposal that were easy to explain and that specifically funded education (and the Oregon Health Plan, if I had my say) would have a good chance of passing the scrutiny of the voters. So why do our elected state representatives and senators consider this type of idea toxic and carreer-limiting?
The other surprise in the conversation at the Chalkboard Project event was the very strong opinion against parent involvement expressed by one teacher who attended the meeting. She basically said something along the lines of "I am a teacher and I know that I am doing, and I don't like having parents come into my school and volunteer because they are not trained professionals and don't know what they are doing". Clearly it was not the prevailing position among the people who attended. Not surprisingly, since parents who care enough to attend this type of event are probably people who value parental involvement. But this surprised me nonetheless.
In my mind a greater level of parental involvement (both in terms of quantity and quality) in a teacher-led school environment can provide great benefits and help reduce the achievement gap. It is not a matter of using parent volunteers as a replacement for teachers in a limited funding environment, but rather of learning from some of the successes of the parent-led homeschooling model, and of making education a responsibility of the community, not just of the teachers. While I am not a trained education professional, I am perfectly capable of helping a first grader practice her reading. I do it at home every day, I am sure I could do at my local elementary school.
But I can see that this idea may be a tougher sell than I had imagined.
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The web site of the Oregon Department of Education includes the 2005 version of the Quality Education Commission report and a three page executive summary of the same document. Both can be found
here. If I understand correctly, the report is mandated by the Oregon constitution, and it is supposed to be a planning tool that tells us what activities we need to do and what level of funding we need to provide in order to achieve a high percentage of students (90%) meeting state standards.
I highly recommend reading at least the summary and looking at the tables at the end of the full report that list the assumptions for the current baseline and the fully implemented model. The gap between them is significant, and we are losing ground with each passing year.
The idea of coming up with a vision and a plan to implement it as a tool to drive policy implementation and funding sounds like a reasonable approach. It is not rocket science.
Yet the issue of funding public education is extremely divisive and partisan. There are those who still feel that we are being too generous with our spending on public education in spite of the facts, that we can only afford a declining public education system.
I respectfully disagree.
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English learners
I was born in an Italian-American family, and was lucky enough to learn two languages well enough to earn a living from translating between them. And I was exposed to two wonderful cultures, the one of my parents and grandparents, and the one of the country I was born in and where I live.
In our schools here in our community we have many students who live in families where English is not the primary language, who have daily contact with the rich cultural heritage of other lands. We have kids from Asia, from Eastern Europe, and many Hispanics. They are sharp and hard working, but in the early years of their education many of them seem to be at a disadvantage in their reading level, and that may have an impact in their overall academic accomplishments later in life. I am not sure if the reason is that English is not the primary language in their household, but on average English learners (at least Hispanics) have a significantly lower average in the assessment tests in both reading and math.
We spend significant resources in ESL education, but I can't really see that the results match our efforts. I would like to see an assessment of our programs for English learners to see if they are effective and if we can improve them. Perhaps we should fund a volunteer program where people help a child read once a week, or maybe we should start a bilingual program in one elementary school or two where there is a significant percentage of ESL students, modeled on similar programs in a handful of schools elsewhere in the state. And maybe we should have a parent/family involvement program specifically tailored to the needs of the bilingual communities.
In any case we need to narrow the learning gap for English learners, and involve their families and their community leaders to identify a strategy and a plan of action. The upcoming strategy sessions that the School Board will organize in the coming months may be a good opportunity to start this dialog.
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On my calendar
Thursday February 17, Salem, Oregon PTA Legislative SummitThe Oregon PTA brings public school citizen advocates to Salem for a day of discussion and training.
Citizen's for Oregon's Future will present information on school funding. The
Chalkboard Project will show the results of their surveys of all the public schools stakeholders that details the perceptions about Oregon education and ideas for improving it. The
Oregon PTA Legislative Team will guide particilants through the process of being an effective advocate at the Capitol.
Monday February 21, Salem, Rally for School Funding - You are invited!The event is sponsored by many associations, including
Stand for Children, the
Oregon PTA, the
Oregon Business Association, the Hillsboro Education Association and many others. I hope you can come and join thousands of Oregonians to show your support for stable and adequate public funding for K-12 education. If you are interested and would like to carpool, please contact me.
Tuesday February 22, Hillsboro, School Board MeetingWednesday February 23, Hillsboro, Community Forum MeetingGlenn and Viola Walters Cultural Arts Center, 527 E. Main Street, 6:00-7:30 PMOne of 7 meeting organized by the district "to hear community input that will help guide budget development and long-range planning". This specific meeting will be held in Spanish.
Thursday February 24, Hillsboro, Chalkboard Project Town Hall Discussion - You are invited!Hillsboro High School, 6:30-8:30 PM
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Of tests and metrics
In one of the meetings I attended last week I was given an advance copy of the Hillsboro School District scorecard for the year 2003-2004. There is a lot of interesting data in the four pages of the scorecard, some of them quite eye-opening for someone like me who is still learning the ins and outs of the district.
My family lived in Texas in the late 1990s. My wife's older daughter did her last three years of high school in Arlington. The educational system in Texas revolved around the standardized TAAS test, to the point that nothing else mattered. Funding was linked to the results of the test, and this meant that test preparation took precedence over any other educational activity. Funding was cut to the schools when a student was absent, and to make sure that they would get their monies, students had to make up lost days by spending their Saturdays at school in detention. When my daughter was home sick (and contagious) for a week, she had to spend the following five Saturdays doing nothing at her high school. And those students that for one reason or another were out more than a few days were strongly encouraged to drop out for the rest of the year. If they were no longer in school their absences would not count against the school, which would keep the district's metrics high so that they would keep their funding.
The result is that the Texas students do extremely well in the TAAS test, better that students in other states do on their own state's standardized tests. But when compared on the same national college admission tests, Texas students do very poorly compared with other states. To me, this means that they are learning how to pass the test, but they are not learning the academic and reasoning skills that the test should be based on.
I fear is that over the long term we will be forced to turn Oregon education into the failure that is Texas.
As a parent I have to admit that I like to see metrics that tell me if the school district and my child's school are doing their job. But the results should be the basis for some healthy discussion on educational strategies and improvement, not just a way to punish schools. And we should be able to measure our progress on metrics that we choose based on our state and local educational goals and our vision for our public schools. I would like us to find measurable ways to track our goal of greater parent involvement, for example. I would like to see metrics that show that our teachers are not just qualified but that they are allowed to spend enough time each year to further their own education and stay up to speed with the challenges in the classroom.
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An article in today's New York Times titled
Utah Bill Mounts Challenge to Federal Education Law (free membership required) talks about a bill passed 72 to 0 by the Utah House of Representatives that would give higher priority to state educational goals when they are in conflict with federal mandates, and would prevent school districts from spending more than they receive to implement those programs. The bill now goes to the Utah Senate, where it is likely to pass.
"No Child Left Behind is one of the most important issues of federal intrusion in state affairs that we've faced," said State Representative Kory M. Holdaway, a Republican, speaking for [State Representative] Dayton's bill in yesterday's debate. "This is a message bill. We want to send a message to the federal government that Utah has a great education system and we know best how to manage it."
My virtual applause goes to the gutsy Utah House. Here in Oregon we have the same unfunded federal mandates that force us to take money from learning activities and use it for testing. We are told that our way of educating our students is not right (and that our schools could be considered "failing" because of that) even when it is considered ideal by experts and educators nationwide (for example when we use a team approach in our middle schools). We know how to educate the next generation of Oregonians, and I wish Salem would tell that to the federal government loud and clear.
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Stable and adequate
I worked in the semiconductor manufacturing industry for 8 years, and at each of the companies I worked for, the mantra was always "don't tell me why something can't be done, tell me what you need to get it done". It is one of the pillars of successful businesses. Don't just look for reasons and excuses for not meeting a difficult but important goal, find ways to accomplish the goal.
What does this have to do with education in Oregon and here in Hillsboro?
During his state of the state speech a month ago, Governor Kulongoski basically said that his 5.0 billion proposed budget for K-12 education is inadequate, but that there is nothing we can do about it because we can't have a stable and adequate revenue stream for education, health care and other basic needs of Oregon. I was at a town hall meeting last night, with state representative Chuck Riley (disclaimer: I volunteered in Chuck Riley's campaign), and it sounds like the idea that there is nothing we can do this session is pretty much everybody's opinion down in Salem (at least the opinion of Rep. Riley, who is on the House Revenue Committee).
It sure looks like those oregonians who want and benefit from public services and don't want to have to pay for them (the moral equivalent of shoplifters) have won because the people who should be fighting for all of us have given up.
But things can be done, it is just a matter of getting enough support. Personally I like the proposal in
SB 382, which would cut income taxes in half and replace them with a sales tax that would roughly bring an equivalente revenue stream. And the money collected from sales tax would go towards K-12 education and the Oregon Health Plan. Section 145 of the bill:
Moneys in the Sales Tax Fund are dedicated to funding:
(a) Kindergarten through grade 12 public education in this
state; and
(b) The Oregon Health Plan and other health care needs in this
state.
We have found in the past few years that funding education mainly from the very volatile personal income taxes lead to significant changes in funding year to year. This is the wrong way to fund long term investments like the education of the next generation of oregonians, or other important services that need more funding when the economy and the revenue for income tax are down, such as the Oregon Health Plan. With SB 382 we have a proposal on the table, signed by both republican and democratis senators and representatives. We should work on getting the support of the business community and the public opinion behind this or another proposal that would stabilize the sources of funding for K-12 education.
Let's stop finding reasons why this will fail, and work on finding ways to win.
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