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.

Ugly

Ugly. I have two daughters and if they had a teacher that had made suggestive comments towards them – and he didn’t get fired and didn’t lose his license I would be outraged.

That is what happened in Houston and a reporter there called to ask me what I thought.

I think it is outrageous that we have a system that would allow this teacher to slink away to possibly teach again. I strongly believe that because of the teacher shortage, and groups that fight against new methods of recruiting and certifying teachers, the problem will only get worse.

We don’t usually have HR professionals in districts and schools that are trained to deal with this. We have former teachers in these jobs doing the best that they can. We don’t have a way for states, districts and schools to share issues with teachers. We don’t have a standardized method for performing background checks on teachers and there are too many vendors providing this service. (Hint to principals: in addition to doing a background check - google the name of the teacher BEFORE hiring as the cheapest way to see if they have made the news lately). And we don’t have enough teachers fighting for jobs in the schools.

Until principals have enough teacher candidates to select the right one for their schools and until we get a standardized background check process and until we have districts that take and stand and revoke licenses of teachers making sexual advances towards students – we will have this problem.

And it is outrageous.