Reform on the cheap: We can have save money and help schools, too
November 22nd, 2009
Last year the Legislature passed a state budget that included $2.57 billion for public schools.
It wasn’t enough, but it was what schools got. School administrators from Guymon to Broken Bow drew up budgets and signed teacher contracts based on the assumption that the state would pay its share of the cost of educating the children of Oklahoma. They had the word of the Oklahoma Legislature on it.
But tax revenue hasn’t come in as expected, so state bureaucrats have been cutting the state’s allocation to schools every month. The budget’s still the budget, it just doesn’t mean anything, an empty promise made by the leadership of the state.
Last week we learned that the superintendent at one local school district has cut out his entire budget for janitorial services and is cleaning the district’s toilets himself.
In Tulsa — which expects to get shorted as much as $10 million this year — substitute teachers have been told not to bother showing up for work. Most administrators and support workers are getting unpaid furloughs and other more drastic steps may be necessary.
The governor is ready to start studying the problem and see how much of the nearly $600 million the state has in its “rainy day” fund — the bank account set aside to deal with funding emergencies — we can afford to spend on the problem.
But there are those in the state capitol who don’t
want to do anything. They hum to the tune of shrinking government to the size that it can be drowned in a bathtub.
After they’re through with it, the school superintendent may have to scrub out that bathtub.
Let’s get cutting: With my tongue completely in my cheek, I present these ideas for cost-free things legislators could do to help schools.
1. Let’s release school districts from the class-size standards. Frankly, the standards had such a substantial loophole built into them from the beginning that they don’t do anything to protect the majority of Oklahoma school kids from overcrowded classrooms.
But there are still schools out there that see some small penalties every year because they have too many students and too few teachers. If the Legislature isn’t going to come through with the money that was promised in the House Bill 1017 reforms, why should the schools be expected to come through with the reforms?
In fact, let’s test out this whole idea that kids learn better in small classrooms. Let’s see how many students you can pack in a public school room. It’ll be like a science experiment that saves money at the same time.
Cost to the state: $0
2. How about this? Let’s release the schools from the state law requiring that all district employees get health insurance.
Of course the result would be that the number of uninsured professional people in the state would skyrocket. Meanwhile, if a lot of the nonprofessional school employees who work solely for the health benefits walk away from their jobs and school districts have fewer bus drivers and cafeteria workers, well that cuts the cost of education too, right?
And if it means kids can’t get to school, then the state doesn’t have to pay all those per-pupil costs, another savings. Cutting education costs is easy, once you get the hang of it.
I should mention that health care and insurance costs would skyrocket for the rest of us because hospitals would have to deal with the newly uninsured people who would start flowing into their emergency rooms, but that’s another day’s problem.
Cost to the state: $0
3. Here’s a notion: Let’s eliminate the state mandate that schools have to fund teacher retirement costs. The state requires it but doesn’t pay for it, so the least lawmakers could do — and the least seems to be exactly what the Legislature is inclined to do — is say the school districts don’t have to pay for it, either.
Again, there would be unintended consequences: a growing brigade of aging teachers who can’t really do their jobs but can’t afford to retire and an even greater migration of young teachers across state lines to go to work for states that pay and treat their teachers like educated professionals.
But, you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, can you?
In fact, if you look at it from the right perspective, it’s a positive thing. Oklahoma could promote itself as an exporter of teaching talent. We could work it into the commercials that run at halftime on the football games.
Cost to the state: $0
4. While we’re at it, let’s take another look at that law that requires school districts to run criminal background checks on all of its employees. I realize that opening the schoolhouse doors to molesters and pornographers would be a bit of setback for public schools, but it also would broaden and diversify the teaching talent pool. Supply up, price down, right?
Meanwhile, public schools wouldn’t have to pay for all that checking.
Cost to the state: $0
Right there are four solid ideas that any parsimonious legislator should love because they don’t spend a dollar. Some of them might even save some money. We could use that to build bigger prisons.
Fund education first: In 2003, the rising minority in the Legislature made a lot of hay by insisting that the majority “fund education first.” At the time the state was facing a budget problem and the minority said it was important to get the state’s first priorities straight.
As rhetoric, it was effective. It drove a wedge between the majority and voting school teachers, and helped the minority look like they were interested in the state’s future.
That minority is now the majority, controlling both chambers of the Legislature.
But I haven’t heard any of the new majority’s leadership singing the “fund education first” song any more.
I guess the situation is different.
Hey, here’s another idea for helping schools get through the crisis. Let’s pass a joint resolution of the House and Senate encouraging every school in every district to hang banners over the front door reading, “Officially abandoned by the state of Oklahoma.”
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