IB a good deal for Oberlin schools

Since today is tax day, we are especially cognizant of where our public dollars go. As a taxpayer and a public servant, I am particularly interested and sensitive to public spending. Recently a couple of citizens have asked about the cost of bringing International Baccalaureate to the Oberlin Schools, and the sources of the funds used to pay for teacher training.

Through last week, we have received $146,979 to support IB professional development. These funds are all designated for training, so we can't use them for anything else.

Also, none of this is local taxpayer money; the sources for all these funds are state or federal agencies. We have received these funds from the following sources: CORE, Title 1 School Improvement, Building Block Professional Development, Building Block data based decision making, Poverty Based Assistance Professional Development, Early Childhood Development Professional Development, State Support Team for School Improvement, and OISM. Aside from CORE, which provided $47,128, the rest of the grants range from $5,900 to $18,000.

I have a spreadsheet of these sources that I will share at the next board meeting. Several of these sources are potential sources for next year, too, so as of July 1, 2008, I expect the funding total (currently $146,979) to continue increasing.

To date, we have spent $79,576 of that money on teacher training for International Baccalaureate. That includes fees, travel, lodging, and meals for training.

IB deeply believes in the professionalism of the educators (as do I). One way the IB organization expresses that belief is by providing training only at a limited set of selective, top notch venues. Our teachers have gone to training in New York, Houston, LA, Savannah, Miami, and Kansas City.

In addition to the $79,000 spent on that training, we have spent another $8,000 on substitute teachers while our teachers have been away. However, the training generally runs Friday-Monday, so our teachers who have gone to this training have not needed subs for two of the four days (Saturday and Sunday). Oberlin's teachers have been wonderfully gracious about going to training on weekends, when they miss fewer days of school.

Finally, we have also spent about $3,000 on materials for those being trained. So as of today, we still have about $57,000 of training money from non-Oberlin sources left for IB teacher training, and as I noted earlier, we anticipate receiving more money from some of those same sources after July 1.

We are also writing an application for a highly competitive million dollar grant, which, while it is no sure thing, would be a huge win for us. But the bottom line is that no Oberlin taxpayer dollars have been spent on IB training.

There are two other areas of expenditures asked about with IB. One is the school fees. For each of the first two years, we will pay $13,300 in fees to IB. What do these fees cover?

These fees include unlimited access to IB curriculum resources, on site consultants to help us develop IB in Oberlin, phone and web support, and expenses. This is broken down as follows: $4,500 for the Primary Years Program, $4,500 for the Middle Year Program, and $4,300 for the Diploma Program. The fees are the same for year two.

In subsequent years, once we are fully authorized, the total bill becomes $22,000 per year for the entire district. To put it in perspective, that represents less than two one-thousandths of our annual budget. It also represents one student in each building who chooses to open enroll into Oberlin, or one student in each building who chooses not to open enroll out of Oberlin. I believe that fee will more than pay for itself, based on open enrollment feedback.

Finally, there are the fees for families. The cost for each family to have a child in the Primary Years Program (grades K-5) is...zero dollars. The cost for a family to have a child in the Middle Years Program (6-10) is ...zero dollars.

For a family with a child in the full Diploma Program (11th and 12th grade), if that child registers for all six Diploma Program exams, the fees will be $623. If that child is successful on those exams, he or she can receive up to 28 semester hours (one year) of credit at Oberlin College, Michigan, Ohio State, or many other selective institutions. The cost of a year at Oberlin College or other similar private institutions is approaching $50,000 per year.

A family that invests $623 can receive a value of $50,000. That sounds like a great investment. And we have already identified a source of funds to pay these fees for all of our low income families, so even the $623 won't be a barrier.

If there are further questions about the financing of IB, please feel free to contact me at the board office.