No Flexibility Without Reforms
Despite the fact that South Carolina’s 85 school districts are squirreling away nearly a billion dollars in reserve funds, are putting less than fifty cents on the dollar into the classroom and are producing the nation’s absolute worst system of public education, state lawmakers are being asked to provide them with additional “flexibility” over their funding.
In fact, they want that flexibility “lickety-split,” according to the bureaucrats’ top lobbyist.
Specifically, Columbia politicians are being asked to pass a bill that would permit local districts to increase class sizes and furlough teachers, which is pretty amazing when you consider some of the bureaucratic salaries and expense accounts taxpayers are funding, to say nothing of all the discretionary cash these districts have been hoarding lately.
Since legitimate need isn’t what’s driving this, something else is obviously afoot, people.
In fact, when we plugged this proposal into our handy-dandy bureaucratic translator, it told us the bill was actually called the “Empowering Bureaucracies To Make Recent State Spending Cuts Look As Bad As Possible” bill.
And that’s why the districts want it – as a tool to wage a public relations war. Nothing more, nothing less.
Now don’t get us wrong, we’re all for local flexibility. But that starts with eliminating our state’s 80+ funding categories and implementing a true block grant system, as was proposed in 2002 by Gov. Mark Sanford.
That would have saved millions of dollars in administrative costs each year while giving local school boards the flexibility they covet.
It also means we need to start actually “backpacking” money to follow the individual child, not just studying the concept ad nauseam, which would level an extremely inequitable playing field.
But here’s the thing – you can’t have flexibility without transparency and reform.
Specifically, hello! We have eighty-five school districts in this state.
That’s insane. There should be no more than thirty local adminstrative units in a state this size, and consolidating that gi-normous army of local bureaucrats would also save millions of dollars in administrative costs each year.
Second, if local governments expect to be given free reign with their checkbooks, then those checkbooks must be put online where every taxpayer can see where every dime is going. Otherwise, it really doesn’t matter which government entity is in charge of what pot of money.
Instead, our local governments try to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to provide information that we’ve already paid for with our tax dollars.
Third, the best way to reduce class sizes and free up additional resources is to pass a universal parental choice bill, which would increase per pupil funding and free up millions at the district level to adequately compensate teachers.
Some estimates are that each district would inherit $5,000 in additional revenue for their schools for every child who took advantage of choice.
But as it has been with desperately-needed education funding, transparency and structural reforms, lawmakers have consistently rejected parental choice in favor of dumping more money into the sinkhole and giving educrat leaders whatever they want.
Enough is enough.
We need to fix our system’s funding mechanism, its structure, its lack of transparency and its lack of choice.
If educrats agree to do those things, then lawmakers should be more than happy to grant them “flexibility.”
“Lickety-split,” even.
Until then, though, the answer should be a firm “No.”
Comments
By StupidShouldHurtMore (SSHM) on February 19th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Hmmm . . .
If we separate the fluff from the substance, you will see where our resident “expert on education” is advocating greater centralization. How can you possibly have more local control if you are advocating greater centralization?
How does one arrive at the conclusion that only “thirty local administrative units in a state this size” should exist?
Basically, Fits is proposing an end of “Home Rule for Public Schools.” Let these thirty or so administrative units address the needs of 46 counties – and do it well (hint: It won’t work).
Ever bothered to do a study on the operational costs of the Greenville County School System? Remember, Greenville, once upon a time, was a multi-school district county. Compare costs, before and after. You’ll see centralization fails to work on large-scale endeavors.
- SSHM
By Just Checking on February 19th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
i believe we should have no more than 46 school districts….one for each county. that’s plenty.
By Mike on February 19th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Any such study of the Greenville system (or most other SC school districts, for that matter) would fail to determine much other than that the newer, larger district is probably as inefficient as the combination of former districts. This would be more a lesson in the flawed structure and funding mechanisms of our current system, and less relevant to the efficiencies of scale inherent to the consolidation of any organizations or bureaucratic entities. Common sense dictates here- when the public school system in SC can’t manage to get more than half of each allocated dollar into the classroom, there’s obviously a systemic problem. The more interesting studies (no time to debate them here) compare the efficiency models of public and private institutions. I’ll let you guess who gets more bang for their educational buck, and fiscal efficiency isn’t subject to the standard “Hey! It’s demographics!” attacks from the educational establishment…
By baker on February 20th, 2009 at 11:13 am
I think Will’s post here is a pretty good example of why so many South Carolinians (for actual responsible government) don’t buy the voucher and tax credits idea. The evidence just doesn’t add up. Several examples:
**The less-than-half-the-money-to-the-classroom stuff: Will and his fans may have determined that Ashley Landess is the “sharpest tool in the shed” or whatever, but the Policy Council “study” from several years ago saying that public schools spend most of their money outside the classroom has been debunked over and over and over. To get their numbers to come out the way they apparently wanted, the PC had to put such positions librarians (obviously academic support personnel….and required by law), guidance counselors (support personnel on a number of fronts….and required by law) on the other side of the ledger. If I’m not mistaken, they also included one-time capital expenses in their snapshot of school spending. People with common sense understand that this so-called research was bunk.
Of course, Will and “The Voice” and others continue to cite this non-sense as if, I suppose, they actually believe it’s a fair representation of academic spending in public education.
**Choice as a means of saving public education money: Good grief. On the one hand, these folks rant about how greedy the “educrats” are. On the other, they are claiming that public school people are turning down an opportunity to have a bunch more money and have responsibility for fewer students. Something doesn’t square. It’s because this idea of “backpacking” money for individual students — while it’s an idea that may have merit from some angles — doesn’t have much to do with school budgets.
If 10 kids leave a school with their $8,000 or whatever amount in their “backpack,” this doesn’t represent an $80,000 savings for the school. In all likelihood, especially if the 10 students are in different grades, not one single teaching position can be cut, not one janitor can be laid off, not one classroom can have the lights turned off, etc. Instead, the school just loses $80,000. Even if 50 children leave a school, depending on their age distribution, it may not result in any opportunities for the school to cut expenses…..despite what Will’s “estimates” say.
**So-called choice “levelling an inequitable playing field”: Most folks, I think, logically figure that the top private schools in SC have no interest in taking students with academic or social problems….and those are the youngsters most likely to drag test scores down and drop out of school. And in communities that have only one or two private school options, the idea that private school choice is going to save the day strikes people as pretty absurd. Floating voucher money or whatever out there might create energy for some new choice — but I think that would be extremely iffy in our poorest communities. Meanwhile, there are transportation concerns to consider.
I have long said that a targeted voucher program might work in the right circumstances. It’s hard, though, for me to see SC overcoming very real and practical challenges to make it work here. And I think most people who ponder the issue are of the same way of thinking about it.
**Consolidation: There may be a need for further consolidation, but I’m not sure Will’s prescription makes sense. In fact, I think many people in SC think is good to have smaller districts where they can have easier access to administrators and school board representatives. I have mixed feelings about it myself, but I think blanket statements about how massive consolidation would streamline administration and improve classroom learning are highly questionable.
By Nope on February 20th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Will has never seriously thought about any education issue. He just repeats the mindless crap that SCRG and the Voice for School Choice put out, like it’s the truth.