Isaac Laquedem

Colonel Doctor Professor (and good friend) Samuel E. Kelly (1926-2009)

The United States Army that Sam Kelly joined in 1944, as an 18-year-old boy from Connecticut, was segregated, and the new Private Kelly was on the wrong side of the color line until President Truman desegregated the armed forces starting in 1947.  Despite a paper commitment to equal opportunity without regard to race or color, the United States Navy had only five black officers (out of 45,000 officers), and the Marine Corps had just one (out of 8,200).  The Navy had commissioned its first black officers only in 1944.  The Army had more black officers, but they served almost entirely in segregated units. 

Private Kelly was a good student and a hard worker.  By the time he retired from the Army 22 years after enlisting, he had earned two college degrees and a master's degree in history.  He had also become a lieutenant colonel.

The newly retired Colonel Kelly went into education, becoming a history professor at two community colleges in Washington.  Then in 1970, the president of the University of Washington recruited Professor Kelly away from the community colleges to become UW's vice president for minority affairs, a new position for UW.  He earned a Ph.D. from UW the next year, thus becoming Doctor Kelly, and was granted tenure in the College of Education.

Dr. Kelly, who died at his Seattle-area home on July 6, touched our area because of what he chose to do after he retired from the University of Washington in 1991.  He and his family moved to Vancouver, and he started to teach again, initially at Clark College and then at Rosemary Anderson High School in North Portland, where he soon became the executive director and principal.  He increased the school's programs, tripled the number of students it served, and oversaw a doubling of the school building.  He had a deep sympathy for students who could not succeed (many of whom he charmed, cajoled, or bullied into succeeding anyway), and none for students who would not try.  He also had a great fondness for the crab cakes at McCormick & Schmick's and for homemade Louisiana-style seafood gumbo, which he served to his guests with gusto and enthusiasm.

He and his wife Donna changed houses more often than most.  The one addition he insisted on making to each house was to add a flagpole, on which he proudly flew the flag of the nation that had told him half a century earlier that the color of his skin would likely keep him from becoming a colonel, a Ph.D., and a tenured professor.

Clackamas High School drops honors courses, renames itself after Salvador Dali

I invented the part about Salvador Dali, but it's something the school should consider, if I understood the first part rightly.

Clackamas High School is dropping honors courses from its curriculum because its leadership thinks that bright and hard-working students will do better at their studies if they sit in the same classroom with underperformers, the Oregonian reports.  Another reason the school is eliminating honors courses, according to its principal, is that the honors students don't match the school's demographics: not enough of the honors students qualify to receive free or reduced-price lunches.  The article continues, "To broaden access to advanced classes, Clackamas no longer requires students to meet certain standards, such as letters of recommendation or a minimum grade-point average."  I think that means that Clackamas High School doesn't think that doing well in introductory math is a prerequisite to doing well in advanced math.  I hope I'm misunderstanding what the school is doing, but I've read the article three times already and it comes out the same surreal way each time.

The brighter side of snow days

With school cancelled his week, parents have had to scramble to make alternate child care arrangements.  On the bright side, this spring the schools won't need to hold a "Take Your Child To Work" day.

School finance: a buck for the kids

Oregon's series of tax limit measures restrict the government, with some exceptions, from levying property taxes that are higher than $5 for schools, or $10 for all other government functions, in each case per $1000 of assessed value of the property.  The assessed value of property may be raised by no more than 3% per year.  Certain levies that the voters specially approve are exempt.

The $5/$1000 limit dates back to the enactment of Measure 5 in 1990 and Measure 50 a few years later.  Property values have risen in many parts of the state, but the 3% limit on increases in assessed value means that those increases in value haven't resulted in more money for the schools.  The problem is the worst in high-growth districts (think Beaverton, Gresham, and Hillsboro locally, and the schools in Ashland, Medford, and Bend).  Eugene tried to do an end run around the limit by enacting a city levy (not a schools levy), saying that it came under the $10 limit for non-school governments, and then sending 93% of the money to the local school district, but the courts rightly shot that scheme down.

It's time to update the limit.  Let's raise it from $5 to $6.  The effect on a house assessed at $300,000 (which is likely worth $500,000) is $200/year.  The effect on the homeowner is rather less because property taxes are deductible from income on our federal and state returns.  The campaign slogan -- "Give a buck for the kids" -- states the cost and the benefit.

The corollary, which I admit I haven't yet worked out how to turn into legislation, is how to ensure that the money goes to hire more teachers and reduce the student-teacher ratio in our most crowded schools.  My sense is that the voters are willing to pay a little more for better service, but they (we) won't believe a district's promises unless they're backed up by the force of law.

Metro should buy school sites before they're needed

The Oregonian reported a few days ago that in the next 20 or so years, the population of the Portland metropolitan area is expected to grow by about 1 million persons.  The article focused on where these people would live -- what developed areas would increase in density, and what undeveloped areas would be developed.  The thought that came to my mind was the more prosaic problem of transportation.  To what extent can our transportation system be expected to move our future neighbors from place to place?

Let's start by assuming that one-third of the new arrivals will use public transit to get to and from work.  That's 333,000 persons.  Can they all travel by train?  A two-car MAX train can hold about 200 people (that's a guess, not an official statistic).  It will take about 1,666 trainsets to carry the transit-using arrivals to and from work.  If the morning and evening commutes are spread over three hours each, that's about 560 trains an hour, or 280 each way on a double track. 

A MAX track can't handle 280 trains an hour; its capacity is more like 20 trains an hour at the peak, with everything working exactly right.  So a new light rail line can handle 60 trains each way over a three-hour period, meaning that if my assumptions about transit usage are right, we will need four new MAX lines to handle the demand.

That's not likely to happen in the next 20 years. 

Most of our freeways are jammed in morning and evening rush hour, so our roads aren't going to take up the slack, unless we increase our freeway mileage by 50% or so.  That's not likely to happen either.  (The story of the Mount Hood Freeway still reverberates here.)  And the area planned for the next spurt of growth, the new city of Damascus, has no freeway access; it's farther from freeways than almost any other area within the urban growth boundary. 

I don't yet have a solution for the transit problem, but I do have one small idea to offer for a different problem the article mentioned, which is planning for schools.  The writer suggested that Metro adds to the UGB, but the burdens of traffic, sewer, water, and schools fall on local jurisdictions.  In particular, school districts such as Beaverton and Tigard at the edges of the UGB have problems buying land for new school sites once it's come into the UGB.  Metro has been buying land for greenspaces in and out of the UGB.  I'd like to suggest that as Metro expands the UGB onward and outward, it allocate some of its funds to buy school sites in advance of UGB expansion, that it can then give to the school districts that need to build new schools.  It's a small thing, but one that can make a big difference.

Harvard's next president?

The ripples were small outside of academia, but within the ivied walls some earthquakes rumbled this spring, when Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard and a former secretary of the treasury, resigned under pressure from Harvard's governing board.  He had served five years as president, a shorter term than that of any president of the last 200 years who hadn't died in office, and had become as bedeviled by the faculty as he was beloved by the students.  Derek Bok, who was president from 1971 to 1991, was brought out of retirement to hold the fort for a year while the Harvard Corporation searches for Mr. Summers's successor.

Harvard invited its alumni and friends to suggest names of candidates for the job.  I have an odd theory, constructed at the inspiration of Mrs. Laquedem, that the school will offer the post to Condoleeza Rice, the secretary of state.  She has experience as an academic administrator (she was the provost of Stanford University), wide connections in the government, and a certain diplomatic nature that Mr. Summers lacked, or chose not to use, in his dealings with the tenured faculty.  By the fall of 2007 she will have only 16 months remaining as secretary of state, and will likely be thinking of what to do when President Bush's term expires.  If she isn't on Harvard's list, she should be.

The Fine Institution's $7 billion offers a lesson to Oregon

The Fine Institution that I sometimes refer to here has accumulated a gigantic endowment, the result of several centuries of thrift.  I recently asked its president to name the biggest decisions that his successor would face.  He said that his successor would have to decide how best to use the $7 billion to make a difference in the world.

I should note that the $7 billion isn't the endowment.  The endowment is much larger.  The $7 billion is merely the portion of the increase over the last 3 or 4 years that exceeded the budgeted increase in the endowment: that is, it's not even all of the appreciation; it's just the unexpected portion of the appreciation.

This brought to mind my post of a few days ago about Oregon's income tax kicker, the legislature's danegeld to the voters.  We haven't mastered, or even begun to study, the art of what to do with unexpected wealth.  When we have more than we expected, we give it back; when we have less than expected, we cut public services.  This "heads I win, tails you lose" model of financial planning gives us jails we can't open, schools with no music and art, and roads in disrepair. 

Although Oregon isn't attempting to be a Fine Institution (I think it should), we could at least emulate the Fine Institution and others in that class by putting our surpluses into an endowment, away from the fingers of future legislators, where the income will produce some permanent value.  Even with such an endowment, we might never find such a large sum of unexpected money, but without some sort of state savings plan, we certainly won't find one.

A graduation thought

This is the season of college graduations, or "commencements" (leave it to higher education to name an ending with a word meaning "beginning"), and this week a law student, speaking at the graduation of his class, reminded his classmates to be humble:

"You may take great pride in the degrees that you receive today," he said.  "Don't.  All those degrees would have been given to someone today anyway -- even the magnas."

The Laquedem Kicker in the Pants for Higher Education Plan

One of the Fine Institutions that's educated a number of the Laquedems is inviting my class back for a milestone reunion.  The Fine Institution's official hymn includes this quatrain:

Integrinti sint curatores,
Eruditi professores,
Largiantur donatores
Benepartas copias.

A translation that conveys the meaning, if not quite word-for-word, is:

May [the Institution's] caretakers be honest,
May its professors be erudite,
May its supporters be many
And give copiously when asked.

The Fine Institution seems willing to excuse the Laquedems from auditing the trustees and enlightening the professors, but hopes that we can help it meet the third portion of this tripartite prayer.  Although its development office's estimate of the Laquedem fortune is optimistic (I should present it to my banker) it does correctly believe that I stand ready to help out, albeit in some amount perhaps closer to parvo than to copias.

These thoughts passed through my mind as I read about Governor Kulongoski's proposal to have the state of Oregon hang on to the "kicker" instead of refunding it to taxpayers.  A little background: several years ago as part of the plan to starve the legislature into submission an anti-tax group proposed, and the voters adopted, a constitutional amendment that says that if the state takes in more income tax money than it budgeted, it must return the excess to the taxpayers in the following year.  This refund of the tax surplus is called the "kicker," perhaps because it's sort of a kickback to taxpayers.  The kicker check usually arrives with a letter from an elected official which makes it appear that the kicker check is the gift of a munificent government, rather like the handouts that Gaius Julius Caesar used to give to the masses, instead of the truth, which is that it's an unpleasant duty imposed on the state by its voters.

Even though the kicker law represents bad public policy at its finest, it's widely viewed as political suicide to suggest reducing the refund checks of the taxpayers.  The soundest reason for returning the excess money to the taxpayers is that Oregon's legislature is too dysfunctional to spend surplus money wisely.  The main reason advanced for the refund, I think, is different: it's that the taxpayers are counting on receiving the kicker money and it somehow represents extra taxes that the taxpayers have paid.

Nonsense.  I expect to pay the state an income tax of about nine percent on my income, and that's about what I do pay.  The rates don't change very much.  It's not as if the state told me at the beginning of the year, "We estimate that your share of the cost to run the state is $X thousand" and at the end of the year says, "Good news!   We didn't need to spend all your money, so here's a refund of the extra you paid."  Rather, the state gives me the kicker refund because the citizens and businesses of Oregon collectively had a better year than the state expected they would, and paid more taxes in total than the state had predicted.

If the kicker is bad policy (as I believe) and shouldn't be refunded to the taxpayers, and if the legislature can't be trusted to spend it well, what should be done with it?  I like the Governor's idea of creating a rainy-day fund, except that I believe that if we had such a fund, the legislature would quickly find rainfall on the driest of days, and spend it.  I also believe that we're letting our public universities run down and become third-rate, which will keep down the growth of the tech industry in Oregon.

Hence my idea on what to do with the kicker, which I'm calling the Laquedem Kicker in the Pants for Higher Education Plan.  The surplus will be set aside in an endowment in which the principal is untouchable, to be managed by the Oregon Investment Council and to be separate from the state's general fund (i.e., not reachable to pay for any deficit in PERS).  The actual income of the endowment in each year will be given to the state colleges in the following year in direct proportion to the number of undergraduates who graduate from the college within four years of entering.  The allocation board doesn't get to say (for example) that this year Oregon State University is more deserving than Oregon Institute of Technology, or that Eastern Oregon University is more deserving than Southern Oregon University (which I still think of as SOSC) -- it's strictly allocated by the number of graduating seniors.  Why support schools that can't produce graduates?

Under my plan the kicker fund can't be diverted to pay for highways, or salmon habitat, or trams (compare the lottery fund, which was to go only to economic development and which the Legislature's tapped for a variety of pet causes).  The principal is saved forever and the income goes to Oregon's public colleges.  How much income?  It's possible that the fund would build to $1 billion in a few years of surplus, which should produce about 4% ($40 million) of cash flow if invested prudently.  The public colleges have about 85,000 undergraduates.  Each school would get an average of almost $500 per undergraduate per year; not a fortune to be sure, but still a meaningful sum for a public college. 

We aren't going to make our state colleges world-class, or even national-class, institutions overnight.  But we ought to at least make the effort to get them back into the competition by the time that today's students are ready to send their own children to college.

Bill Gates raises money for the Old School (a story that should be true)

A Laquedem friend tells the following story, which if it is not true, should be:

A few years ago, Bill Gates was asked to contribute to his alma mater, as part of the lead-up to the 25th reunion of his college class.  He pledged $25 million.  He then called one of his old roommates to ask the roommate to join in, and (supposedly) the conversation went something like this:

"Bob, this is Bill.  As you know, our 25th reunion is coming up, when traditionally we make large gifts to the Old School.  I'm giving $25 million, one million dollars for every year since the class graduated.  That's what we should be giving.  Can the Old School count on you for $25 million also?"

"Bill, you're forgetting that you're the world's richest man.  You're a gazillionaire.  With all due respect, $25 million is a lot of money to almost everyone else.  I can't possibly give $25 million."

"I suppose you're right, Bob."

"Bill, $25 million is way out of my range.  I couldn't make a gift like that."  Pause.  "I'll give $17 million, but that's all."