Ending Over-reaction

A while back I noted that school districts love the irate parent ploy when budgets are being discussed. They start letting parents know that sports will be cut, class sizes will be huge, activities cut and music/art programs eliminated. Obviously the parents get mad, attend budget meetings and let the county commissioners know they may find themselves electorally challenged in the next election.

The same holds true for teacher layoffs. In Arizona there was mass panic about the pending layoffs and now we are told that almost everyone notified that their job was over is being rehired. We are hearing the same thing in Florida and in South Carolina our teachers are getting hired as well.

Is it the stimulus or just common sense replacing over-reaction. I believe it to be the latter.

Education budget cuts will get even worse

Just over a year ago, I predicted extreme belt-tightening ahead in state budgets. After looking at my retirement savings, I wish that I wasn’t so right. Now we read that 29 states face a total shortfall of $48 billion. And the states that were immune last year to the real estate crumble because they had oil and natural gas revenues are going to be hit hard with oil down under $80.

This is all very bad news for education spending. It will go down and it will go down hard.

At the Broad event, it was of deep concern to the superintendents on the panel. They felt it was going to hit their students and that they were going to have to make very difficult changes. They are going to have to get help from the community. What they were not doing is whining. They seemed to take it in stride and stayed focused on the kids.

States have got to find ways to cut that don’t adversely affect student learning. They need to find efficiencies in their systems that can fully leverage the smaller budgets they are going to find.

Programs like ABCTE that have been funded with federal dollars to reduce their recruitment cost is an excellent example. States and districts don’t pay a dime for our program yet they receive high quality teachers who stay in the classroom (85% retention after 4 years). Instead of providing a four year scholarship for a math teacher to Florida State, that money could be used to scholarship 100 math teachers through ABCTE. Instead of paying $5,000 - $7,000 per teacher for a recruitment program in the district, the district could work with ABCTE at $2,500 per teacher.

These are significant savings and could help save after school programs, reading programs that make our schools better.

If we can only get leaders to stop looking at the politics and look at the results – we can make this happen.

Budget Cuts = Creative Solutions

District Superintendents are running a huge business. It is fascinating to watch Fairfax County Superintendent Jack Dale. He is basically running a $2.3 billion company. Most CEO’s with vast business experience don’t have a $2.3B budget and haven't yet had to make drastic cuts in a budget that large. The complexities of such a budget are staggering yet here we have Jack Dale and his staff now trying to cut $100 million from that budget.

They have come up with some pretty innovative ways to make those cuts. In an affluent county like Fairfax they are asking parents to pony up in the way of fees. They want parents to pay for AP tests, PSAT and the like. They are also thinking of charging $50 to participate in high school sports. They are going to raise class size by a half of a student - which I find amusing unless of course it was my child who is the one to be cut in half.

It isn’t going to get better. They have an increase of students yet property values are dropping meaning their tax/revenue base is dropping. The county told them to keep costs flat next year and their current budget represents a 3% increase – so there is still a lot of negotiating to do and no one wants to talk of cutting education in a big election year.

District management teams are really going to be challenged this year with dwindling budgets. Innovative ways to meet those challenges should be shared so that we can meet this challenge and still improve education.