I saw this education plan by McClintock- it actually appears to have merit

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://republican.sen.ca.gov/web/mcclintock/article_detail.asp?PID=292

The multi-million dollar campaign paid by starving teachers’ unions has finally placed our sadly neglected schools at the center of the budget debate.

Across California, children are bringing home notes warning of dire consequences if Gov. Schwarzenegger’s scorched earth budget is approved – a budget that slashes Proposition 98 public school spending from $42.2 billion this year all the way down to $44.7 billion next year. That should be proof enough that our math programs are suffering.

As a public school parent, I have given this crisis a great deal of thought and have a modest suggestion to help weather these dark days.

Maybe – as a temporary measure only – we should spend our school dollars on our schools. I realize that this is a radical departure from current practice, but desperate times require desperate measures.

The Governor proposed spending $10,084 per student from all sources. Devoting all of this money to the classroom would require turning tens of thousands of school bureaucrats, consultants, advisors and specialists onto the streets with no means of support or marketable job skills, something that no enlightened social democracy should allow.

So I will begin by excluding from this discussion the entire budget of the State Department of Education, as well as the pension system, debt service, special education, child care, nutrition programs and adult education. I also propose setting aside $3 billion to pay an additional 30,000 school bureaucrats $100,000-per-year (roughly the population of Monterey) with the proviso that they stay away from the classroom and pay their own hotel bills at conferences.

This leaves a mere $6,937 per student, which, for the duration of the funding crisis, I propose devoting to the classroom.

To illustrate how we might scrape by at this subsistence level, let’s use a hypothetical school of 180 students with only $1.2 million to get through the year.

We have all seen the pictures of filthy bathrooms, leaky roofs, peeling paint and crumbling plaster to which our children have been condemned. I propose that we rescue them from this squalor by leasing out luxury commercial office space. Our school will need 4,800 square feet for five classrooms (the sixth class is gym). At $33 per foot, an annual lease will cost $158,400.

This will provide executive washrooms, around-the-clock janitorial service, wall-to-wall carpeting, utilities and music in the elevators. We’ll also need new desks to preserve the professional ambiance.

Next, we’ll need to hire five teachers – but not just any teachers. I propose hiring only associate professors from the California State University at their level of pay. Since university professors generally assign more reading, we’ll need 12 of the latest edition, hardcover books for each student at an average $75 per book, plus an extra $5 to have the student’s name engraved in gold leaf on the cover.

Since our conventional gym classes haven’t stemmed the childhood obesity epidemic, I propose replacing them with an annual membership at a private health club for $39.95 per month. This would provide our children with a trained and courteous staff of nutrition and fitness counselors, aerobics classes and the latest in cardiovascular training technology.

Finally, we’ll hire an $80,000 administrator with a $40,000 secretary because – well, I don’t know exactly why, but we always have.

Our bare-bones budget comes to this:
5 classrooms $158,400
150 Desks @ $130 $19,500

180 annual health club memberships @ $480
$86,400

2,160 textbooks @ $80
$172,800

5 C.S.U. Associate Professors @ $67,093
$335,465

1 Administrator
$80,000

1 Secretary
$40,000

24% faculty and staff benefits
$109,312

Offices, expenses and insurance
$30,000
TOTAL $1,031,877

This budget leaves a razor-thin reserve of just $216,703 or $1,204 per pupil, which can pay for necessities like paper, pencils, personal computers and extra-curricular travel. After all, what’s the point of taking four years of French if you can’t see Paris in the spring?

The school I have just described is the school we’re paying for. Maybe it’s time to ask why it’s not the school we’re getting.

Other, wiser, governors have made the prudent decision not to ask such embarrassing questions of the education-industrial complex because it makes them very angry. Apparently the unions believe that with enough of a beating, Gov. Schwarzenegger will see things the same way.

Perhaps. But there’s an old saying that you can’t fill a broken bucket by pouring more water into it. Maybe it’s time to fix the bucket.

- 30 -

nt

I'm laughing bitterly, having lived the last 23 years of my professional life in public school buildings, the first 22 in California. Tom McClintock? I wouldn't exactly call him a friend or supporter of public education.

The number of legal codes his cute little budget doesn't cover fills more than one post, at least from my computer connection; I tried.

Personally, I'd like to pluck him out of his elite ivory tower and into a public school classroom in California for a year to give him some badly needed education about the legal codes and how the system responds to them. I think he might exit with a whole new perspective.

Of course, Tom doesn't need to worry about my opinion. This kind of crap is one of the reasons I'm no longer in California.

He needs to leave. I'm glad he's terming out. He's running for Lt Governor but I don't know how good his chances are.

What planet does this guy live on?

Yes, I'm a public school administrator. You know what I do? I balance the books. I prepare all those endless federal reports that the GOVERNMENT requires me to prepare. I make sure people get paid. I make sure we bid out items that need to be bid. I make sure people get hired for open positions. I pay vendors when they've done work, and fight with them when they haven't. I prepare/review/revise contracts. I meet with attorneys. I return phone calls to whoever. I file claims for insurance. I get quotes on repairing roofs. I make sure 5,700 kids get fed every day, and that we follow all the FEDERAL guidelines in doing so. I work with our whacko state Department of Education, who wants to know everything we do, when we do it, and why. And I hide stuff from them when I know it's good for kids but they won't like it. I revise the budget when gas prices rise by 1.25/gallon midyear, and natural gas prices almost double. I prepare the following year's budget, based on our 1.1% increase in funding last year. I secure financing for building projects so that kids are warm, dry and have electricity and water. I work with principals and teachers to formulate their school budget so they have what they need for the year. I call and remind them when they haven't spent their money (which is always odd, but it happens every year). I apply and secure grant funding for programs, following the ever-more arcane rules and regs that accompany each one.

I could go on and on. But to say I don't do anything just really burns me up.

When the propaganda of the day doesn't include the well-oiled "incompetent teachers are responsible for destroying public education" mud, it's always about cutting out all the other "unnecessary" staff and salaries.

Without any acknowledgement of the legal requirements that those people are meeting, without any acknowledgement that any student might ever need any special service outside what that one classroom teacher can do, and without acknowledging this little gem:

When admin staff is cut, who does the job? The job doesn't go away. Someone has to do it. So who is left? The teaching staff. They can add separate jobs to their already over-full plate of responsibilities.

This actually happened in my last district. They kept cutting staff at the DO until schools were left with one administrator (some of these schools had 1,000 - 1,300 students), pulled the admins off campus for 3 days a week to do some of those other jobs, and assigned the teaching staff to district committees to handle the rest, in addition to their regular contractual responsibilities. The last year I worked for that district, my shortest day in the year was 12 hours. The pressure to show up on weekends in addition to those hours was fierce.

Frankly, I want my admin, and abundant support staff, on duty to handle all that other stuff. I like to keep my focus on actual students. It's easy to forget the whole point when you are buried in paperwork and meetings.

How about just admitting that education is EXPENSIVE! It's a LABOR INTENSIVE task, and will NEVER be cheap. You can't replace everyone with a robot, as manufacturers can do. You can't outsource the labor like the service industries do. You can't standardize every element like a Ford plant - making everything interchangeable. All kids are different. Each one is a "custom" job. It's just never going to be cheap.

The 65% Solution is the brainchild of Patrick Byrne, president of Overstock.com. His premise is that schools don't actually need any more money, they just need to spend it wisely. He is passing legislation and initiatives around the country that requires schools to spend 65% of all funds in what's called "direct instruction" (i.e., only includes the accounts defined by the National Center for Education Statistics).

On its face, you might be thinking, "Yeah, that's the way it should be." And there are probably school districts here that are top-heavy.

But there are several things wrong with the idea. First, as I mentioned, it is founded on the assumption that schools already get plenty of money. This topic is still hotly debated, (by the NEA, AFT versus the Money Doesn't Matter crowd headed up by Alan Odden). To base permanent legislation on disputed evidence is obviously not the best idea in the world.

Second, the NCES definition of "instruction" is very, very narrow. Anything that falls outside of this category is liable to face cuts. The biggest area is staff development. That's a problem for my district particularly. We have a very, very young staff. They need and ask for lots of training in all the new models that we're opening up here (Expeditionary Learning, International Baccalaureate, Montessori - very expensive - Coalition of Essential Schools, Early College, Big Picture - all small schools here in my district). But none of this can be counted as instructional expense. Conversely, since they're all young, they're all at the lower end of the salary schedule. With salaries making up 80% of our instructional expense, it's a double-whammy for us.

In addition - these other areas are also non-instructional: counseling, social work, nursing, administration of any kind - including principals, secretaries, non-instructional paras, TOSAs, etc., food service, maintenance - including any utilities, transportation, SROs - the list goes on and on. All of these areas will probably have to be cut to change the ratio to 65%.

Yet, even with all of this, we're at about 60%, which is higher than average (i.e., we put considerably more into instruction because our elementary staffing ratio is 22:1 and our secondary varies from 15:1 at Big Picture/Early College to 22:1 at the CES Academy - we're a lean, mean machine here). But to go any higher than that would force us to cut the biggest budget item outside of direct instruction - staff development. This would really stymie our reform efforts.

AND, the initiative doesn't exclude federal or local grants. Most grants don't provide funds for more teachers (except Title I, and that's shaky with NCLB, and Title VIB which just got cut another 1%). Most are for staff development. And with all of our school reform work, we've brought in a considerable amount of local funding and grants - all for staff development. So we would be heavily penalized for that.

His first step is to defund the pension plan? Typical repuke attitude. And what does he plan to do with the remaining millions of students outside his "hypothetical 180"? Is there enough 'luxury commercial office space' around to do this? How much luxury commercial office space is there in south central LA anyway? How about Apple Valley?

Plan? Hardly.

We have all seen the pictures of filthy bathrooms, leaky roofs, peeling paint and crumbling plaster to which our children have been condemned.

How about since you KNOW WHERE THESE SCHOOLS are and their needs are so fucking OBVIOUS, you simply present a bill to FIX THEM THE FUCK UP!!


mcclintock = asshole