A complaint that just about everyone has at some point in time is that reporters just get it wrong. Usually this is most obvious when the issue is complicated and the reporter lacks extensive experience on the topic at hand. This appears not to be the case for Kyle Olson over at BigGovernment.com. Olson is “Founder and CEO of Education Action Group Foundation,” but his knowledge of the basics of school funding processes in California is woefully inadequate.

Olson takes a report about a school district in Riverside, Calif., being unable to open a new school because they don’t have funds to pay the administrators and  classified employees (read: janitors, cafeteria workers, etc.) to staff it, let alone the utility bills, and turns it into evidence of greedy unions and fiscal mismanagement.

Did the Alvord  district need to spend the equivalent of 70% of its annual revenues on one single high school?

If so, did the school board try to control construction costs by asking the state to waive unionized construction-only requirements that only jack up costs?

Now that the school board realizes that it doesn’t have the money to staff the school, has it asked its teachers union for contract concessions that might allow them to hire more employees?

I understand the school district passed a bond to fund the building and they are technically separate pots of money, but it shows an extravagance that is unsustainable.

So, you understand the school district passed a bond, and they’re technically separate pots of money, but you wanted them to do what exactly? Break the law? Use one-time funds not for the use voters approved, but for ongoing costs? Anyone want to make a bet that Olson (and area taxpayers) would be screaming bloody murder that bond funds had been shifted to the teachers’ union if that had occurred.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Let’s not let the facts get in the way of a good story. And we on the right complain about reporters with an agenda?

The mere fact that this was a bond issue puts most of Olson’s arguments to rest. Even if they had cut every corner that Olson wanted them to cut any leftover money would still have to be spent on capital improvements rather than personnel costs. Has the teacher’s union in that school district given contract concessions? If they haven’t they’d likely be the only ones in the state not to.

This is truly shoddy “reporting.”

For the record, the comment I left on his post is below the jump.

ILuvSnoopy is correct. You make a false connection when you say the district spent "the equivalent of 70% of its annual revenues on one single high school." School construction in California is typically funded by bond issues. Funds from bonds cannot be spent on recurring expenses of running the school.

I don't live in Riverside, but I have no doubt that this school has been in the planning stages for a decade or more and that the contracts to build it were issued before this financial crisis hit. Even if the district trustees had seen this coming (which means they should've been running major banks and not some school district in SoCal), the only thing they could've done was stop building. They couldn't have used the bond funds to hire more teachers, or even to construct temporary classrooms on the campus--that would've been illegal and a breach of their fiduciary duty.

This had nothing to do with poor planning or a failure to "stand up to the unions."

You know how we on the right often like to point out reporters' ignorance on complicated issues. Well, you just proved that it's not limited to the mainstream media.