Why I may run for the school board

[Buffacuse]

In their recent proposed budget, the Loudoun County schools put forth a tiered system of budget cuts based on the funding they would get from the county--ie, if they give us a certain percentage of what we're asking for, here is what we would cut.

OK, fine...except their proposal would cut 10 special ed teachers in the first tier of cuts, wait until the second tier to cut a series of assistant sports coaches/trainers, and wait until the third and final tier to cut any front office administrative jobs.

I love sports more than most, but to even suggest cutting special ed teachers BEFORE cutting assistant athletic coaches/trainers and BEFORE cutting your admin staff is absolutely shameful.

They also proposed cutting summer school, which is often used to help special needs kids keep up/catch up with the academic workload...and is something often included on kids's IEPs. What are these geniuses going to do when some parent (like me) sues because their failure to provide summer school is a violation of our IEP--a legally binding document.

I feel a campaign coming on...

[peacock2121]

That is a great idea!

Your voice would make a difference then ........ an 'on the court' difference.

Go for it!

[geoffil]

Great idea. Our schools are very bloated with admins. There are 4 secretaries for the 2 assistant principals, one principal and guidance office. That doesn't include the student services office staff of 8 people plus the volunteer door greeter. Students needs should come first. The school has 1100 kids for grades 6-8.

[Appa23]

Great idea. Our schools are very bloated with admins. There are 4 secretaries for the 2 assistant principals, one principal and guidance office. That doesn't include the student services office staff of 8 people plus the volunteer door greeter. Students needs should come first. The school has 1100 kids for grades 6-8.

Administrative bloating seems to be an epidemic hitting nearly all public schools, especially middle schools and high schools.

It is even worse for district administration.

I say that Buff should go for it.

[wintergreen48]

Great idea. Our schools are very bloated with admins. There are 4 secretaries for the 2 assistant principals, one principal and guidance office. That doesn't include the student services office staff of 8 people plus the volunteer door greeter. Students needs should come first. The school has 1100 kids for grades 6-8.

Administrative bloating seems to be an epidemic hitting nearly all public schools, especially middle schools and high schools.

It is even worse for district administration.

I say that Buff should go for it.

That's probably the biggest problem for public school systems, and for government stuff generally: the bureacracy expands to serve itself, rather than serve the function for which it was created. While people complain in many places that the schools do not get enough funding (and people complain in many areas about the quality of public education), what you find is typically there is TONS of funding going into these systems, and little real output coming out, and the big problem is that too much of that funding is going to things that have nothing to do with actual education. The City of Richmond has been notorious for criminal/corrupt/bad stuff in its government (although it seems to be cleaning up now-- I don't think that anyone on the City Council has gone to jail during the past three years or so), and one of the big problems they had in their public school system was that there were times when they were paying mega-salaries to three different school superintendents-- they would hire someone under a long-term, highly-compensated contract, then when he/she didn't get them really good press as a result of winning huge success in the first year on the job, they would fire her/him and bring on someone else, while still having to pay the prior person under the contract, and then do the same thing a year or two later. The last priority in the schools seems to be the teachers, and it shows.

Some of these problems are intrinsic to the way the whole system works: in any government system, there is going to be a cap on how much you can pay people (although some are hugely over-paid, especially for the work that they actually do, most public employees are probably paid less than market for comparable work), so people need to be rewarded in ways that are not conducive to the 'mission' they are supposed to serve: in public schools, the teachers are typically compensated at a pretty low level, which has the effect of attacting people who are often not exactly the best available, and those who are good find that they only way for them to make a real living is to get out of teaching and go into administration, which is counter-productive. Similarly, in a lot of government bureacracies, people are 'honored' not so much for what they do or how much they get paid (because of the caps), but based upon the size of their empires: if you manage ten people, you are 'better' than someone who manages five people, so there are huge incentives to build up the numbers of people who report to you, without regard really to what it is that those people actually do. All of which costs lots of money, without a lot of real 'work' getting done (relative to the money spent).

[ghostjmf]

And then there are very non-governmental institutions (boy, you couldn't be more private than one I can think of) where people are hired to manage people who haven't even been hired yet.

Private institutions such as above also have exactly the same problem when a very high level manager "doesn't work out"; if they're high-enough level, they get kept at their very high salary, but someone else is brought in, & the job is split in "interesting" ways. They get kept, rather than the ax, because the corporation doesn't want the bad publicity that results from the ax, which would reflect their initial wrong choice.

Expanding bureaucracy is by no means some kind of exclusive property of government institutions. Very few corporations run as "lean & mean" as they could. If you are a very-well-paid person at one of them, one of the ways you're paid is that you're given staff to do stuff you could do, giving you more time to think great thoughts & write those great memos.

[Flybrick]

buff, I'm one county off (think Westfields) or I'd vote for you...

[mrkelley23]

buff, I'm one county off (think Westfields) or I'd vote for you...

One county off?

That's one I'd not heard before....

[SportsFan68]

Yay! Go Buffacuse!!!

This is a great idea!

Hope you decide to go for it.