Bad News Costs a Lot

When Iowa City Community School District Superintendent Steve Murley unveiled his budget blueprint for Fiscal Year (FY) 2015, the blueprint highlighted where the district will have to make up its shortfall. In order to illustrate this, administration staff contracted with a printing company to produce a heavy cardstock, glossy, four-color, 20-page document presented in book form.

I took this document to several printing houses locally and was given estimates to produce 300 copies of anywhere from $900 to $1,500 to print this bad news. So whatever we’re short, we’re also short whatever it cost to print this report, which will get thrown away in a couple of months.

The administration has to learn that when you’re in a hole, you have to stop digging and put the shovel away. Wasting money to report that we have no money wastes more money.

Note to superintendent: STOP WASTING MONEY!

--Phil Hemingway