Schools Facing Big Budget Bust: Opportunity for Overhaul?

While the media is preoccupied with financial and auto bailouts, a budget crunch is headed to a school near you.

In a very unusual sign of the times, school districts around the country are facing midyear budget cuts and negotiating with states that can't make payroll. Next school year will be worse. The 2010-11 school year could very well include another round of cuts for many districts.

School districts are terrible at cost reduction. With most of their costs tied up in long term employment contracts that include byzantine layoff rules, there's very little flexibility. Seniority rules in most districts -- lower cost new teachers are typically first to go.

District administration is sticky too. A district near home has lost 20% of its enrollment to charter schools and they have made no reductions in the bloated central office.

Here's what will happen: energetic young teachers will get fired, classes will get larger, and small schools will be closed. There will be some central office layoffs, reductions in transportation, and more pay-for-play sports. Special needs kids will fare best because they're individualized programs are legally protected. By and large, it means a crummier version of an already struggling public delivery system.

While far from easy, states with courageous governors could use this crisis to make a radical change: cut the budget by 10% and send the money directly to schools. Every school would get a three year performance contract (i.e., charter) and would be required to join a support network (which could include what used to be a school district, a university, a non-profit like New Tech Foundation, a charter management organization like Green Dot, a for-profit like Edison Learning, or a self-organized coop).

Under more favorable circumstances, Tony Blair implemented a slightly less radical version of this proposal that stripped Local Education Authorities in the UK of most of their control and budget authority. It resulted in more money in the classroom, more school choice, and probably contributed to improved outcomes.

Okay, this won't be easy, but a good deal of this proposal could be implemented in September 2009 if a legislature moved fast in the next 60 days. A saner schedule would be to put districts on notice this spring that they will be going out of business after the 2009-10 school year. A smaller version could target districts eligible for reorganization under No Child Left Behind and, like New Orleans, they could be placed in a state sponsored reorganization.

As Paul Hill and Marc Tucker have suggested, community councils (taking the place of school boards) could oversee charter renewal and ask the all important portfolio question, "What kind of schools do the kids of this community need?"

Budget cuts are inevitable. We will end up with a crummier version of mediocre except for in those rare places where leaders take advantage of the crisis and reinvent the system.

Comments

[Auntsep]

"School districts are terrible at cost reduction. With most of their costs tied up in long term employment contracts that include byzantine layoff rules, there's very little flexibility. Seniority rules in most districts -- lower cost new teachers are typically first to go." Well, Thomas, I could give you all the reasons for good union contracts, but we've been through that before! What's bothering me now, son, is your reference to new teachers. Are they the best? Is experience worth nothing? What is too old? Is seniority a "byzantine" rule? Can one create for a child a safe, stable and challenging environment if they are constantly worrying about being fired? Can we have protection for teachers as well as quality education?

[vegas9999]

This is why we need more lawyers and unions, right?

[NoPCZone]

From the Article:
"Special needs kids will fare best because they're individualized programs are legally protected. "
That should read
Special needs kids will fare best because their individualized programs are legally protected."

This problem is not limited to HuffPo nor is it uncommon.
For people who make their living by the word, however, it should never happen.

[mlaiuppa]

Your proposals have nothing to do with where the real reformation needs to take place. One is in the century old system of how we pay for schools. Using property taxes and lumping education in with the general fund needs to go big time. So raising the money to pay for school is the first order of business.

The second is the century old school model. Schools are the educational equivalent of Henry Ford's production line. They were designed to product factory works with the bare minimum of education at a cheap cost. Well, the business world needs a whole different kind of employee now, so you need to revise the entire structure of WHAT is taught and HOW it is taught. Compartmentalizing curriculum, 1 hour classes, 5 days a week, etc. It ALL needs to be updated.

And don't expect students to be ready for the business world (or college) upon graduation when they're using outdated technology. Businesses switch out their computers every 18 months. Schools use them until they die; 6 years if you're lucky. My school was still using Mac OS9 last year.

If you want to spout about school reform...you're going to have to do your homework.

[californiadreamer]

Yes!!!! You cannot change the education climate with some kind of bureaucratic reform. Change must be revolutionary and a reflection of the paradigm shift on how we learn and how we can use technology to learn. The "little red school house" model has been out-dated for some time but nothing has been designed to replace it. Simple mantra: Don't teach children to use computers; Use computers to teach children. Would it be costly. Yes, but it would bring education into the 21st century where it belongs. What happens to teachers? They teach in smaller groups and individually those who have trouble working independently with a computer/tutor. Let's put together a team of educators, programmers, technologists on the project to rebuild the infrastructure of our educational system and make the USA #1 again. That's change we can believe in and change we desperately need.

[mlaiuppa]

More veiled anti-union rhetoric.

Everyone that went to a public school thinks they're an expert.

Don't expect a Neiman Marcus education on a Walmart budget. You want to pay Walmart prices, that's what you'll get; 40 kids in a classroom with a green teacher that has no concept of classroom control and only a vague idea on how to multitask the state standards, district standards, reading strategies, NETS technology etc. There's a reason there's such a high turnover in the teaching profession the first 3 years. One is to fire anyone before they get "tenure". (There is no such thing as "tenure" in my state. What we have is "just cause" I.E. you need to have a better reason to fire a competant teacher than to save a buck.)

[KillTheMessenger]

Just raise taxes by 10%, what's the problem? Americans are so afraid of raising taxes that they are rather letting the country go to the dogs than even talk about the necessity to increase state and federal revenues. What nonsense.

[curly2]

Which taxes? Property taxes? That won't solve the problems in severely underfunded schools. If you have an urban school district where the average value of homes is $60,000 (compared to, say, $400,000 in the suburbs) raising taxes 10% won't accomplish much.

[JustAnotherJoe]

Check out Larry Cuban's article. If nothing else, please read the opening story which humorously illustrates the critical flaw in thinking that schools can be run like a business. Link below.

http://www.aasa.org/publications/saarticledetail.cfm?ItemNumber=5212&snItemNumber=950&tnItemNumber=951

[JustAnotherJoe]

Tony Blair's reforms "probably contributed to improved outcomes"? You want to radically overhaul big ed on the premise that it MAY contribute to improved outcomes? Unbelievable.

In an era of bailouts, you still think that introducing competition into public schools via school choice will improve quality? Big business has been a great model to emulate. I have yet to see any legitimate longitudinal study that shows an increase in student achievement in areas that have implemented school choice.

School distiricts are terrible at cost cutting because most are already operating on a shoe string. It's true that young teachers cost less, but untrue that they can facilitate higher student achievement. The most critical factor in student achievement is the instructor in the classroom. Until we provide economic incentives for experienced teachers to stay in the classroom and not drift into other careers or school admin, the problem of low school student achievement remains.

CEO-types who advocate market based solutions for education like charter schools miss the point. Charter schools have problems of their own. At least school boards operate in the public and their decisions are subject to media and public scrutiny. What corporation answers to anybody but its majority stock holders or board of directors?

Schools have a much bigger mandate than to produce competitive workers. They also are being asked to socialize students, instill democratic values and offer equal opportunity in a society that hasn't yet been able to completely follow through on that promise.