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Townhall...
The Feds, The
Economy, Your State And Your School Board
By Austin Hill
The wisdom of the American people is prevailing in some of the most
unlikely places. Unfortunately, the local public school board is
typically not one of those places.
As the federal government goes deficit-crazy and state governments
continue to feel the recession’s impact, some good things are actually
starting to develop. Fiscally conservative ideals are emerging in
states as diverse as Wisconsin , Idaho , New Jersey and Ohio .
In these states and in others, governors and legislatures have stood-up
to the ever-expanding demands of government employee unions, reigned-in
employee compensation growth, and have cut state spending. Even in
liberal Massachusetts the Democrat-led House of Representatives voted
last week to limit the powers of their state government employees’
unions.
This is good news for the American taxpayer, and good news for the
overall U.S. economy. But when state governments start to spend fewer
tax dollars, that often means fewer state tax dollars are flowing to
local public school districts. And when that happens, the affairs of
local public school districts can get especially outrageous.
Your local school district may be the exception, and its collective
behavior may be entirely “above the board.” But the sad reality for
teachers, students, and parents, is simply this: in the face of tight
budgets, most local school boards across the nation would rather fire
teachers, than reign-in other school district expenses. The reason for
this is simple: when teachers lose their jobs, students suffer – and
“student suffering” gets parents and other voters in the mood for a tax
increase.
It sounds cynical, I know. But think about it from the vantage point of
political strategy. if school boards actually tried to manage the
taxpayers’ money in such a way as to serve the students, first and
foremost, then every effort would be made to retain good teachers and
keep class sizes small. This would mean that school boards would look
“up the food chain” in to the administrative ranks, rather than “down
to the classrooms,” when the need arose to cut the budget.
But that’s generally not what happens in most public school districts.
The preference for board members is usually to eliminate teacher
positions, or at least to “threaten to eliminate” teacher positions –
because when budget cuts are felt in the classroom, voters become more
amenable to tax hikes – and tax hikes usually provide more money for
the school district to spend.
Consider the case of the Mount Diablo School District in the San
Francisco suburb of Concord . Like every other public school district
in California, Mount Diablo is being threatened with a dramatic
shut-off of state tax revenues, as the bankrupt state government
grapples with a budget deficit of somewhere between $10 and $15 billion
– a deficit that is expected to swell to about $25 billion by the
middle of 2012.
So the elected members of the Mount Diablo School District met in open
session last week. They heard public testimony, with local residents
pleading to “spare the teachers jobs” at the open microphone. Members
of the board even offered their own impassioned dissertations about how
“every one of our teachers is a human being,” and many of the teachers
“have their own families,” and they all “touch our families in such
important and necessary ways…” And then the board voted unanimously to
terminate one-hundred eleven of those “human being” teachers.
Unanimously. No dissenting voters.
After getting the “dirty work” completed, the elected board members at
the Mount Diablo School District then proceeded to vote in favor of
spending over $9 million on school building upgrades. All in the same
school board meeting, all on the same night.
The board made it clear that the $9 million or so that they were
spending on structural enhancements was money approved directly by
voters and designated for such purposes, and could not possibly have
been spent on retaining teachers. Legally speaking, it was probably
accurate that the revenues could not simply be used for “more urgent
purposes.”
But doesn’t this speak to a degree of mismanagement by the district
board? Why wouldn’t a school board in California be anticipating a
shortfall in state tax revenues, given that the state government is
broke, and begin strategizing a way to retain teachers, rather than
enhancing buildings?
The mismanagement of the Mount Diablo School District becomes even more
apparent when you turn the calendar back a couple of months. In March
of this year, the district board voted to raise the salary paid to the
district legal counsel by $28,000.00 (that person now takes home
$190,000 annually), the facilities and projects manager got a raise of
$11,000, and the director of certificated personnel got a nice
$6,000.00 annual income boost (each one of these employees also
receives taxpayer funded healthcare and retirement benefits).
If school districts genuinely cared for students, then budget cuts
would more often happen at the district office rather than in the
classroom. But nobody wants to raise their taxes just so the
Superintendent or the staff Attorney can keep their six-figure salary
and benefits. Thus, “firing teachers” becomes the best political
strategy.
Students, parents, and teachers deserve much better.
Read it at Townhall
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