Good Faith and Accountability

If CPTs do cause health problems however small, we should see decline in standardized test scores and also in attendance. It will take only one day absence per student for the school district to lose the funding equivalent to the $25K per year from AT&T's leasing SMS's school grounds. As test scores tumble, so will property values which will be lost income for the city.

I have also read of some neighborhood petitioning for tower owners to pay for increase in liability insurance and the decrease in property prices if  CPTs are proven harmful in the future.

It will be interesting for the school district to do a long-term study to determine that the well-being of the students, in terms of student perceptions, health and test scores are not affected at all by the presence of CPT at SMS. We also need to study the health, well-being and performance of teachers.

To get a clear picture, we must first establish a history of these variables before the CPT. Then we can study the effects. Students need to be tracked in terms of reasons of absence, location of classrooms, time spent in the open field, location of residence, etc. Variables for teachers run along the same line.

If we track the same students from grade 6 all the way through grade 8, and do these each "batch studies" of students for 10-15 years, we will be able to convince ourselves that the CPT is either safe or harmful.

Additional funds, that is, beyond the $25K per year, must be put aside by AT&T so that the school district and City of Sunnyvale can hire independent organizations to do such study.

We also need a way to make AT&T turn off the antennas and remove the antennas if we find that something is causing problems at SMS or if switching off is part of the study. To do that we need to add conditions to AT&T's lease to make sure we can review and renew AT&T's lease every year or every couple of years.

This study is for good-faith and accountability. I am sure AT&T will win support if it agrees to these terms and actually carrying them through.


Calculating ADA (Example on San Diego Unified Schoo District)

Overview
The state of California funds school districts based on student attendance, also known as Average Daily Attendance (ADA), at school. ADA is calculated by dividing the total number of days of student attendance by the number of days of school taught during the same period.

Example:
Michael has perfect attendance, calculated this way:
142 days attended ÷ by 142 days of school taught = 1.0 ADA

Hannah attended 136 of the 142 days taught, calculated this way:
136 days attended ÷ by 142 days of school taught = .96 ADA

How Does ADA Generate Revenue for the District?
A student like Michael, with perfect attendance, generates $5,786* in revenue for the district. It is calculated this way: 1.0 ADA x $5,786 revenue limit per ADA = $5,786.

A student like Hannah, who may miss several days, generates less revenue. In this case, ADA is calculated this way: .96 ADA x $5,786 revenue limit per ADA = $5,554
In this case, there was a loss of $232 in possible revenue.

Irregular attendance also affects the revenue the district receives from the lottery, and for Special Education.

Lottery
1.0 ADA x $118 = $118
.96 ADA x $118= $113

Special Education
1.0 ADA x $643= $643
.96 ADA x $643 = $617

Learn more about the history of California's revenue limit.
Learn more about lottery funds.

What are the financial effects of lost ADA revenue?
If all students attended daily, the district would have approximately 117,556 students (excluding Charter Schools) counted toward ADA. When ADA drops, revenue dips accordingly.

Perfect Attendance    117,556 x $5,786 =    $680,179,016
Estimated ADA at 95.0**    117,556 x $5,786 x 95.0% =    $646,225,032
Lost Revenue         $33,953,984

* Estimates for 2007-08 as of 3/13/08
** Data is according to 2007-08, the most current year for which data is available. This figure is averaged, as different grade levels and different tracks generate different rates of ADA.