School Budgets Slashed But Waste Continues

As America finds herself fully submerged in this downward economic spiral we’re in, school budgets are being cut – slashed, really – in just about every corner of America. Here in Charlotte, our superintendent has recently announced having to eliminate positions after trying to cut every other thing before having to lay off personnel. But it has come to that, and folks will be out of a job in an economy that makes finding a new job extremely difficult. Like him, I feel for these folks. I work at the district office in professional development, and while I have every reason to believe my job is secure, I can still feel the pain of the other district folks – the nervous group – whose jobs are sufficiently ill-defined so as to make them easy targets for layoffs.

And yet, somewhere in this mess I still see so much waste. I go to meetings in which there are 50 pages of handouts – all copied single-sided – with information that could easily be condensed to a dozen pages. But no one seems to notice. Or, I go to trainings of some sort or another in which pen sets or faux-leather portfolios embossed with the district logo are given out as small gifts for attending. Are the trainings that ordinary or boring or unsubstantial that gifts need to be handed out to somehow appease participants into thinking it was a great workshop?

How many other episodes of waste are routine in school districts? I am sure my district is no different from any large district in this way.  Is it that those holding the purse strings have always spent money in these ways and that they are essentially irresponsible when it comes to spending?  Are they watching the news about how people are losing jobs as the they, the spenders, continue to copy all the handouts with graphs in living color?  The disturbing irony is that in many districts in which this kind of waste is happening at the the district level, there are teachers in schools being told they are “out of copies”, that they have exceeding their copy allotment for the year.

Maybe some of the lay-offs in my district were warranted and maybe the positions were superfluous.  I don’t know.  We’re big enough for that to be a possibility.  But I don’t think I’d lay off a single person – district level or not – without first taking a hard look at the waste that is happening without consequence.   What waste do you see where you are?  I’d like to hear.  dven.

Can the funding problem get any worse?

This week my media specialist forwarded the following article to our e-mail.  The article is entitled “Cash strapped teacher sells ads on tests”.  (See link at http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/12/03/teacher.ads.on.tests/index.html)  Is this what education has finally come to?  We have already sold our football fields and gymnasiums to the soda companies who provide new scoreboards or improved tracks in return for advertising.  We’ve sold our students’ health to the fast food companies who are offering donations to the school in exchange for allowing them “space” to sell their products.  Many of our schools look more like the food court at a mall versus a place of learning!  Many states have instituted lotteries to (supposedly) add funding to education, yet, over the years, regular spending has been replaced by lottery dollars; education funding is now dependent on the gambling habits of our residents.  Anyone else see a problem here?

Now, in defense of Mr. Farber, he clearly is in a pickle . . .his students have been successful with his methods and he should not be forced to change his methods because of funding issues!  I find his solution extremely creative and successful . . . however, I truly fear that these drastic measures will become the norm, and not the exception.  I must also say, I was alarmed that Mr. Farber has 167 students.  Here, in Florida, we are functioning under a class-size amendment that limits the number of students in our classes.  Most high school teachers will have less than 125 students!  Of course, this requires counties to provide more teachers and more classrooms, which cost a lot more money than providing supplies for an additional 42 students per teacher.

One thing I really do not understand is why so many of our counties are cutting back at the school level on supplies and additional employees (we lost 1 secretary, 1 counselor, and 1 teacher this year, even though our enrollment increased) but the county office personnel list seems to increase every year.  Now, my current county is pretty decent with its spending . . .but the first county in which I taught has its offices in the heart of downtown, on the intracoastal waterway in a building dubbed the “Crystal Palace”.  I have needed to request information from that county and, after being passed through a dozen different people who claim it “is not their job”, I usually give up!  Can we not find a way to streamline our paperwork to cut down on these positions to free up funds for our classrooms, where the money has the most effect on student achievement?  And I am not naive, I know that leads to more unemployment, etc., etc.  But, certainly, changes need to be made. 

I know, we can ask all of our stakeholders to help defray the costs of education by asking local businesses to advertise on our school buses to cover gas costs, asking local residents to sponsor quotes on each page in our textbooks, asking parents to pay a minimal amount for “student dues” each year . . .oh, wait, our stakeholders DO help defray the costs of education . . .we call it TAXES!!!  Let’s use them correctly and put them where our country needs it most!