what would you cut in your school?

[flowerseverywhere]

Budget time is here again and we are having community budget sessions. It is the same old thing. No one wants services cut, no one wants taxes raised.
They want to close the oldest of our five elementary schools. Of course the parents don't want it closed. We have a 100% bus policy, that is under scrutiny. Working parents want it kept at 100%. We have four languages in the high school, Spanish, German, Latin and French. I would hate to see any go, Latin seems to be the most mentioned but for kids who want to go into Medicine and Pharmacy seems like it would be good. We already are a pay-to-play school, with an active booster club. We have a marching band that is top notch, put on a great play every year and have a big art department. High school graduation rate in 4 years is 85%. It raises to low nineties for five years. Add in GED and it is over 96%- higher than the national average.

of course, at any meeting people always speak up against the teachers pensions and healthcare, which are union negotiated. That is of course the thing that most people bring up, as it is difficult to swallow if your pay and pension has gone down or away and the teacher pension will go down for future teachers, but not current.

One thing that bugs me is that many teachers I know get a sub for things that could be done during normal time off. One had a routine colonoscopy, another routine carpal tunnel surgery (not work caused) , both of which could have been fit into days that were school holidays when everyone else was working. The cost of subs in our district is astronomical. When I worked in an office or hospital I was expected to take vacation time or schedule on my two or there weeks off in a year.

So what is going on in your area? What suggestions have come under consideration? What do you see that could be cut without damaging the education of the students?

ps mods move if this is a better fit in family or somewhere else, I put it here because we all homeowners pay taxes

[leslieann]

We are struggling too with this issue. Schools here are run by the provincial government rather than by local community, but of course there is an outcry at any cuts. Here there are districts that operate somewhat independently. The current idea is to merge the districts and move some functions to the provincial office to capitalize on economies of scale. As that is, though, it is only projected to save 5 million. That's a very small savings in a province with serious financial problems.

Teachers may have sick time to have their colonoscopies...that's probably also a union issue.

Another place that often comes under fire is special services. For example, does Johnny really NEED a teaching assistant? Of course in the US if it is on his education plan, then he's entitled to it and that's that. But people who do not have kids with special needs will often see the supports given to those kids as a luxury rather than one of the ways that the classroom keeps working.

Your school sounds great, flowerseverywhere. Not many can boast an 85% graduation rate. Is that calculated from grade 1 or grade 9? Either way it is impressive.

[flowerseverywhere]

grade 7 from what I can figure out.

I am thinking that with the new definition of autism that will come out with the 2013 DSM there may be fewer kids that qualify for services. That will be a change, for the worse of course for some teachers who will have kids in their classrooms with needs but no extra help. And all the kids will suffer then.

Our school is great but we pay a lot in school taxes for it. We don't get a lot of school aid, one of my friends works in a district that gets 80% state aid which comes with all sorts of strings of course.

There is a lot of merge talks going on around us too in the smaller schools, but we are too big to merge.

[bae]

Our public schools in my county suffer from an excess of administrative overhead. The county of ~15,000 people has multiple school districts, each with a collection of superintendents/principals/secretaries/staff/...

Our administrative load, by my casual analysis, is 3-4x what a county of similar size situated elsewhere in the US would likely have. We have some geographic issues that make it difficult to share or combine staff, but that's all it is - difficult and inconvenient, not impossible, and there is clearly a huge cost savings available to us, if only we had leadership.

[lhamo]

Time to run for the school board, bae?

[bae]

Time to run for the school board, bae?

The trick is, each of the multiple districts here also has its own school board :-(

You need to infiltrate them all.

Our budget situation was so bad here recently though that the State was threatening to step in and take over, which woke a few people up.

Also though, some of the areas here are lobbying for *additional* districts for their little fiefdoms.

So expensive. Apparently education of the children isn't the main point.

[fidgiegirl]

Our public schools in my county suffer from an excess of administrative overhead. The county of ~15,000 people has multiple school districts, each with a collection of superintendents/principals/secretaries/staff/...

Our administrative load, by my casual analysis, is 3-4x what a county of similar size situated elsewhere in the US would likely have. We have some geographic issues that make it difficult to share or combine staff, but that's all it is - difficult and inconvenient, not impossible, and there is clearly a huge cost savings available to us, if only we had leadership.

This WOULD be hard. It would take some state level elected leaders to push this, I would think, particularly when the identities of (presumably) small towns are wrapped up in their schools.

[fidgiegirl]

One thing that bugs me is that many teachers I know get a sub for things that could be done during normal time off.

Sometimes, but sometimes it just isn't that neat. Hospitals book up well in advance, and if something comes up at the last minute, it just can't always be done.

[fidgiegirl]

You know, we were chatting about this over lunch. One place I see a possibility for savings is to allow schools to use their funds more like a household might. Sometimes schools have to spend up funds by a certain date, on certain type of things, so they do, whether or not those items are needed immediately. But with tight budgets, people can't bear to just let them go. However, sometimes if the money could be "saved," then it might be put to better use at a future time on something that is really needed. Or the practice of not budgeting money for a given department if they don't spend all of their current budget - "oh, they must not need that much." Well, what if in one year you need little, but the next year you do need materials or supplies? Unless you spend it up every year, the possibility of ever having it available disappears. So there are some management and legal things at play. This doesn't really help your district now, though, because those are huge picture changes to make at a higher level.

I read an article about a community, I can't remember where, that followed a community mandate, voiced through non-approval of a levy, to cut to bare bones. So they cut everything they could, including busing, and there was an outcry!

It is a slippery slope to further cut special ed. services. Those kids are in great need, often their families are also in need, and the interventions they get to be successful in school can be what keeps them out of jail later in life. (BTW, not true that kids are entitled to an aide just because you're on an IEP. Not even all the kids who need one get one. If you have visited a classroom with a child who needs an aide but doesn't have one, you will have seen the impact that has on that child's learning and all the children's learning.)

Where the bigtime money gets spent in special ed is at the higher levels where kids have to go into special programs because they can't remain in the regular school setting. I am really interested in doing some more study about how this comes to pass, because certain SES and racial groups are overrepresented in some of these programs. There has to be underlying reasons for this, and how can we address those?

My answers are probably bigger than you were looking for - more systemic.

Languages, boo hoo. I am a Spanish teacher by training, so it's sad to see that a robust, diverse foreign language program could be on the table. In our state there are some solutions to being able to offer specialized courses like Latin without as high a cost as offering all in-house courses - through Interactive Television. There are also supplementary online options. The sad part is that when we cut all the courses that hook kids into school - shop, art, music, languages, etc. - then some of them are less likely to continue to attend. I know all kids need the "core" knowledge offered in language arts, math, and the sciences, but for many kids, it's the "extras" that keep them coming to school and also keep them putting all the pieces together from all the other core subjects. I use quotes because I don't like the concept of "core" and "extras" but that's how many people conceptualize it.

I'm sure you know all this, but the fact is that the money is less and less every year :(

Haha, so my one concrete suggestion is to look into alternative delivery options for electives that can reduce the costs but still keep these courses available for kids.

Here's another WILD one. Seriously, for many people this is a wild idea. How about letting kids test out of courses for which they already know the material? It might not be possible, because some states have seat time and credit laws. But if it were, kids could graduate earlier and move on. For college credit, at least in Minnesota, these are called CLEP tests. Like in the novel "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." Spoiler alert: The girl doesn't go to high school but tests out of it by engaging in self-study and moves on to college.

I have one last thing to say about subs. In my district, other than your own ethical compass, there is nothing to incentivize you from not utilizing your sick days. When you retire, you get no compensation for them. You max out on them at a certain point. We get a generous number every year, and thank God, because schools are germ factories and it's very much better for everyone for sick people to stay home. It might seem counterintuitive, but perhaps an incentive program of being able to trade in, say, five sick days for one personal day or something like that would cut down on some of the sub time. Of course I didn't see the numbers you saw - maybe all the subs are not for sick time.

Sub time is also sometimes used for professional development and curriculum development activities, which are important. If we want to make meaningful instructional changes in our schools, we need time to analyze data, come up with interventions, test them and reflect on the results. There's no way this can be accomplished on the daily prep hour, and there is only a certain amount that can be done in summer without the kids there.

Wow. Way too long.

Keep us updated!

[flowerseverywhere]

Fidgiegirl, The sick time in question was not an emergency. I work as a sub with special ed kids and both told me that they made the choice to have this done during school time- one told me during the early summer when I ran into her they scheduled the surgery for the fall. So you lose sick time if you don't use it. Teachers are there to educate children not maximize personal benefit to themselves. That is a very big thing that is wrong with our school system. I worked over 25 years in the private sector as a registered nurse (don't tell me that is any less stressful than being a teacher) and if I had that attitude I would have been shown the door. The incentive should be to do the very best you possibly can with what you have for the good of the students. You seem like a wonderful person and I hope you don't think I am attacking you personally, it is just that that kind of attitude makes me nuts.

Bae, you have given me some things to think about. I am going to see if I can figure out what our administrative and supervisory staff has been through the years, and now that enrollment is down has that decreased as well. Should be interesting.

also, tonight I was watching a local show on PBS called Ivory Tower, where local college professors talk about education issues. They mentioned that one of the issues that has raised costs of education was "in loco parentis", in other words the schools taking on functions that were parents responsibilities. I am thinking teaching morals, being responsible for their health issues, and feeding kids. Where does the responsibility of the parent end and the school begin?

[fidgiegirl]

You seem like a wonderful person and I hope you don't think I am attacking you personally, it is just that that kind of attitude makes me nuts.

Well, kinda, to be honest. But you said it bothered you right off the bat, so I shouldn't have even gone there and I apologize for that. It seems that whenever I weigh in here on the boards with a teacher's POV about anything to do with teacher pay, I manage to get in trouble. In fact, my blood pressure is rising just writing this response, because frankly, I'm scared to unleash some kind of mass flaming. Sorry, board friends, but it's happened to unpopular opinions . . . and it ain't pretty to watch . . .

Anyway, it's only logical and inevitable that as the biggest part of any school budget, in times of cuts (which is all the time) teacher pay and benefits are going to be criticized and going to be examined, and I need to grow a thicker skin about it.

[bae]

I'd love it if the biggest part of our school budget was for actual teachers and books!

[Paige]

How many jobs do you know of where people get paid what, 40,000 a year and have to bring work home practically every night? Many teachers get up at 4 or 5, are at work by 7:00, then stay until 5, oh, and then work more at home. Coaches, drama teachers putting on a play, teachers meetings, volunteering to be on this or that committee, etc. get paid waaaaay less than minimum wage after figuring out the extra hours. It's all about the kids. That's what we are thinking about. One more comment, one more parent email, one more cool lesson plan to look up, one more standard to try to meet. Go to my school on a Sunday and sign in with several other teachers because the amount of prep, paper work, and grades are impossible to finish during your school day. I could go on....but don't judge teachers when you haven't walked in their shoes (not you fidgie). Taking a day off for a "routine" colonoscopy which you need to poop for 10 hours straight and not eat anything is pretty reasonable. Maybe in the summer the teachers are taking classes with their own money or going to workshops for the district. Remember, the only way to get a better salary is to take classes. Yikes. Leave the teachers alone, please. Try being excited, stimulating, organized, and caring for a new group of 30 kids five times a day for an hour each and trying to connect with YOUR child because truly, we do care. Try it and then put me down for having a colonscopy during the school year. Sorry to be so political, but the teacher put downs are ridiculous.

[lhamo]

I think in any field there are those who are totally dedicated to their work and do everything they can to do the best job they can every day, and there are those who are just skimming by on the bare minimum. Sometimes people can be the former for many years but eventually get so burned out that they become the latter. This is probably even more likely when there is a lack of good leadership and incentives for rewarding those who go the extra mile.

I agree with bae that the waste that often takes place at the administrative level is a huge tragedy. I have been following with some interest the news from the Seattle Public School district, which has had several major scandals and unfortunate developments recently. One of the biggest fiascos is a central administration building that was constructed supposedly to consolidate the administrative functions of the district into one place and increase efficiency. Good idea in theory, except they spent way too much money building what is now nicknamed the "glass palace" -- spent much more than was needed on architects and materials for what should have been a basic office building -- without any real plan for paying for it. Result? The school district has been robbing Peter to pay Paul for several years just to pay the interest due, and is now more than $10 million in the hole at a time when government budgets are being slashed across the board due to the financial downturn. Who will probably end up footing the bill? Taxpayers directly, but teachers and kids indirectly because the budget constraints will lead to tough negotiations with the union and most likely cuts in pay/benefits and increases in class sizes. The people who made the decision to do this stupid thing and then to cover it up through manipulation of the books are already gone or on their way to greener pastures.

There are probably no easy answers, but a school district with real forward-looking leadership should look first to the administrative/managerial side of things to make cuts and sacrifices. Unfortunately that kind of leadership is usually lacking at the level of the superintendent, or if it is around it only stays around for a couple of years before getting hired away by another district or the Department of Ed.

lhamo

[sweetana3]

Just a couple of points:

1. One of our townships cut 100% of all bus service. They sold all th buses to a company that provides services for a fee of around $40 per month per child I think. It is currently subject to a court challenge but if it is upheld, watch for many more townships to eliminate all bus service. (except for special services I think which are mandated). Their financial problem started when they built a huge new school AND SPORTS COMPLEX and then the economy disaster hit. They have closed several elementary schools including a new one.

2. The first thing that is always chopped from any budget is maintenance which is a current boost to the budget but a long term disaster.

3. Until you analyze the actual use of any kind of leave or statistics about administrators, most of us (not all) have little good info to base our distress on and tend to look at news reports and anecdotal information.

Is it possible that the vast portion of sick leave is used by a few employees with major issues like pregnancy or accidents? We had one employee in a group of 30 who was in an auto accident and she was off for a year with all her leave and donated leave. We had one manager with terminal cancer and another with a high risk pregnancy. Each used a huge amount of sick leave. All this happened within 24 months.

4. There are way way too many districts and administrators just from an overall perspective. I mean does ever single district need to reinvent the wheel?

This was a hot topic for me after running a review for 3 years on our own government office. We finally consolidated our staffs in our Federal government unit across the country and we were able to reduce staffing, increase knowledge (not everyone in every service center needed to know everything) and improve our response rate. I mean why did 9 service centers all have to have trained excise tax staffs when one service center could consolidate all the work, train and maintain all the staff knowledge, and have new procedures implemented at one time and in one way? It was wrenching at first but after a few years the whole program worked better, cheaper and faster.


We all need to find out what our school board members are doing and get involved. note: there was a news article about our big city superintendent who thought the board did not need financial info. We are a big city with a declining student body (every year declining) who keeps providing more and more money to these schools. The State took over several. Not good.

[flowerseverywhere]

I apologize for my remarks, I do realize that vast majority of teachers are dedicated and hard working. I guess I pushed someone's hot button and they pushed mine. This is a very controversial subject. The problem probably is that the few that are not hard working and dedicated are protected. If you child happens to land in a class with a teacher that is not dedicated they are forced to waste a year of their learning lives. Even if it is only one teacher in an elementary school that is a problem that can have a huge impact. There is no way to change that. As I said I started subbing in our school system as a one on one nurse so I am in a lot of different classrooms with lots of different teachers. Some I love, some make my hair stand on end. I think it is also very visible. If you call in sick to an office your work waits for you or your co workers pitch in. If you call in sick as a teacher someone has to sub and the sub needs to be paid. I get called every day at the two school systems I am registered in. Besides subbing as a nurse I get called as an assistant with the special ed kids as I can do both. Every day at least one call. How can I not think it is excessive? Even if I am wrong.

Paige, our average elementary class size is 21. The median teacher salary is $56,000. The median family income here is $51,000. Not a great salary, you aren't living like royalty but you can have a very nice upper middle class lifestyle here on a teacher salary. and as I said, most are wonderful.

Maybe we should just leave it that there are a few bad apples here and there, but most are hard working, wonderful, dedicated individuals. The best aren't paid nearly enough.

So back to the question, any more ideas on what to cut? This issue won't go away just because it is painful to talk about.

The bus idea was brought up to our school board and they are looking into it.

[Aqua Blue]

How many jobs do you know of where people get paid what, 40,000 a year and have to bring work home practically every night? Many teachers get up at 4 or 5, are at work by 7:00, then stay until 5, oh, and then work more at home. Coaches, drama teachers putting on a play, teachers meetings, volunteering to be on this or that committee, etc. get paid waaaaay less than minimum wage after figuring out the extra hours. It's all about the kids. That's what we are thinking about. One more comment, one more parent email, one more cool lesson plan to look up, one more standard to try to meet. Go to my school on a Sunday and sign in with several other teachers because the amount of prep, paper work, and grades are impossible to finish during your school day. I could go on....but don't judge teachers when you haven't walked in their shoes (not you fidgie). Taking a day off for a "routine" colonoscopy which you need to poop for 10 hours straight and not eat anything is pretty reasonable. Maybe in the summer the teachers are taking classes with their own money or going to workshops for the district. Remember, the only way to get a better salary is to take classes. Yikes. Leave the teachers alone, please. Try being excited, stimulating, organized, and caring for a new group of 30 kids five times a day for an hour each and trying to connect with YOUR child because truly, we do care. Try it and then put me down for having a colonscopy during the school year. Sorry to be so political, but the teacher put downs are ridiculous.

I think one thing that should happen is teachers have a time clock. Most people with the amount of education teachers have, have to use a time clock. I frequently hear how much teachers work, but I drive by a school regularly and I Never see cars outside the building after 3:30. There are quite a few teachers in a club I belong to and I never catch them by cell phone at school after 3:30. I usually ask, what are you doing? Is this a bad time? and I usually hear, I am at the grocery store etc. Never I am at school. JMHO

Personnally I think sports should go. I think a more Europeon model of sports as separate from school would be great.

[mtnlaurel]

I want to comment more on this thread, but I am out of online time this morning. So I haven't yet read all the posts other than OP.

I just wanted to throw in a vote for please don't scrap Latin.
I took Latin in high school and it helped me tremendously with my SAT study and vocabulary in general.

[iris lily]

Give them a 10% cut and force the administration to choose which programs and staff go. Look, many many many things can be cut in all kinds of bureaucracy whether governmental or not.

I went to a public school system that was consdiered "good" back in the days when public schools were good in a state that had the top public schools in the country. I can assure you that there was no Latin ever taught at the place. Same for DH's school in the same heartland.

While I think Latin is cool and I sort of wish it HAD been taught, would I have taken it? Maybe not. I took Spanish.

All of this stuff you are talking about is beyond the basics. In cases such as my school district they aren't even meeting basic requirements (they lost accreditation) and they cannot graduate children who can read, write, and do math. What is the point of all of the extras, I have to ask.

[fidgiegirl]

Maybe we should just leave it that there are a few bad apples here and there, but most are hard working, wonderful, dedicated individuals. The best aren't paid nearly enough.

On that point we can very much agree.

I was thinking about this thread a lot - another idea is income generation opportunities. Can your district create programs to bring in students from other areas? In our state, we have a program called Open Enrollment and kids can go wherever they want as long as they can provide transportation. It sounds like that your district could be attractive with its low class sizes and high rate of student success. When the open enroll, all their per-pupil state funding follows them, and it's a big chunk of change.

Another income generating idea is that my district has programs (because this is the nature of my district, we are not a typical district but a collaborative of districts) to serve low-incidence disability populations like the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. So if another district has a single D/HH student, or maybe two, it makes more sense for them to pay a portion of a teacher to another organization who kind of collects money from a bunch of other districts for one teacher and then that teacher travels around providing services. I know that our district makes money on this arrangement - how much, I'm not sure.

Also, a common model here is for elementary level music programs to have a fee attached. I'm talking instrumental programs - that the teacher is a support to the kids and runs the big groups, but that the lessons are fee based or must be obtained outside of school. Less that ideal, IMO, as a kid who went through my hometown's now-defunct music program, but it seems to be working for many places.

[iris lily]

Teacher pay is the least of my concerns in MY local cesspool of a school.

But I will have to say that I do not believe in automatic pay raises. It's astonishes me how little beginning teachers make and how much those who have been there for decades make, many doing the same thing. Umm. That just isn't right.

[flowerseverywhere]

We all need to find out what our school board members are doing and get involved. note: there was a news article about our big city superintendent who thought the board did not need financial info. We are a big city with a declining student body (every year declining) who keeps providing more and more money to these schools. The State took over several. Not good.

I go to all the school board meetings. There is a pattern. There are a couple of people like me who are interested in what is going on. there are a couple of crabby people who always are contentious and make statements before each meeting. If anything is on the agenda (bussing for instance) anyone who might be affected shows up.

and we still have latin, I too would hate to see it go. The teacher has other responsibilities besides just a few latin classes.

Aqua blue, interesting about the sports. One of our big expenses is the athletic complex and fields. In order to bring things up to state standards they just had a several year project to upgrade the facilities. While most was state and federal money that money of course does not come from the government, but from taxpayers. In the long run we are paying one way or another.

fidgiegirl, some good ideas. our superintendent will take suggestion by meeting, e-mail or phone call so I am going to organize some of these ideas to talk to her about. Keep them coming.

Iris Lilly, I agree about the automatic pay raises. Those that are good should be rewarded, those that are below par should have a chance to remediate and if they cannot bring themselves up to par then they need to find a new job, just like in the private sector.

[Tradd]

Thinking practically -

*Cut German and French. Keep Spanish. Maybe see if the Latin can be on a fee-basis like sports, after school or in combo with another district.

*Cut busing. Keep it for K-3 only. This is what was done with my own public school district in the late 1970s.

*Sports need to be TOTALLY self-funding for equipment, coach salaries, travel expenses, and so forth, aside from facility maintenance.

*Cut administrators

And then some things that have always befuddled me about schools -

Why do you need to offer every extracurricular thing under the sun? And <gasp!> are sports even NECESSARY? In my suburban area, there are plenty of options through the local parks district (in my hometown, it was called the "parks and recreation department"). From what I see coming out of the schools and from what friends and coworkers say, it certainly sounds like our tax dollars would be much better spent *educating* the kids and the heck with all the sports, extracurricular activities, etc. I consider music and art classes in SCHOOL to be part of educating the kids, however.

*Here's a radical one. Kill the school libraries. Does each school need one? Unless it's a very rural or spread out district, the public library should suffice unless it is bad or has really cut hours. The thing is that every teacher needs to be in the classroom to maximize dollars - not sitting in the library.

Just some ideas, some quite radical...

[Miss Cellane]

I think one thing that should happen is teachers have a time clock. Most people with the amount of education teachers have, have to use a time clock. I frequently hear how much teachers work, but I drive by a school regularly and I Never see cars outside the building after 3:30. There are quite a few teachers in a club I belong to and I never catch them by cell phone at school after 3:30. I usually ask, what are you doing? Is this a bad time? and I usually hear, I am at the grocery store etc. Never I am at school. JMHO

Personnally I think sports should go. I think a more Europeon model of sports as separate from school would be great.

Most of the teachers I know bring work home. Some do stay at the school to finish their grading and prep work, but many take work home. This gives them a break between teaching for 8 hours and then grading and prep work. The break means that they get a little rest and can come back to their work with fresh eyes. I've seen my brother get home from his school at 4 pm, take care of his kids--feeding them, playing with them, overseeing their homework, putting them to bed--and then putting in three more hours of grading and preparation. He also spends several hours weekly dealing with problems with the school's software for scheduling and grading, ever since the school decided to save money by eliminating the IT position. My brother is the apparently the only person at the school who can cope with technology of any kind. He does not get paid extra to do this, but since he'd like to keep his job, he has to.

There's no rule that all a teacher's work needs to be done at school.

[creaker]

I think administration is a big one - although everyone talks about the problem with underperforming/bad teachers, no one talks much about underperforming/bad adminstration. They are are the ones that are supposed to judge the teachers, most administrations seem absolutely clueless as how to actually do that. And many teachers are teachers solely as a pathway to becoming an administrator, which I expect does not have a positive effect on education. Administrators (most) don't teach - but it's often the last area cut.

Sports, definitely. It seems like a lot of resources for a very small portion of the student body. It's sad to see things like music and arts cut for just that reason while and at the same time they are breaking ground for new sports facilities.

I think letting kids test out of courses for credit is a great idea. I'd like to see options for people to test out to graduate (GED at will at any age). Middle daughter homeschooled - it was silly that to give her time for college courses she was attending and not deal with all the nonsense they put homeschoolers through in MA, she basically had to drop out at 16 because you're not allowed to do a GED until you're 18 here.

Courses for college credit would be good, too. If kids could trim a semester or two off of college instead of being forced to fill a schedule with classes they don't need or care about, it would be a plus.

More draconian - I think kids over 16 that have shown no interest in being in school should be shown the door so that resources can be concentrated on those who really want to be there. While a lot of discussion is done on drop-outs, there's a huge population who have effectively dropped out in terms of any actual effort but are showing up (mostly), occupying seats and wasting time and resources.

[Aqua Blue]

Creaker, I personnally think those are all good ideas. I totally agree that kids of 16 who aren't interested should be gone. They make it hard for the ones who want to be there to learn.

Miss Celane, I personally think there should be a rule that all a teacher's work should be done at school. All of my work needed to be done at the office and extra learning was done on my own time.

One of my biggest expenses is property taxes and the biggest portion of that is school support.

[Miss Cellane]

Miss Celane, I personally think there should be a rule that all a teacher's work should be done at school. All of my work needed to be done at the office and extra learning was done on my own time.


I'm not flaming you, but I'd like to ask why you feel this is necessary? Many jobs allow working from home or telecommuting these days. While teachers do need to be in the classroom during the day, why do you think they should have to do all their grading and prep work while in the school building? Is there some benefit you see to this?

As for extra learning, most of the teachers I know (I know a fair amount, there are a lot of teachers in my family) spend their own time and money during the summer to take extra courses, or they take night classes during the school year. There may be an occasional in-service day at the school, but nearly all continuing education is on their own time and money. If they don't get the right continuing education credits, they can't be promoted or, in some cases, get raises. Many school systems today require all teachers to either have a Master's degree to teach, or to get a Master's within a few years of starting to teach or they will be let go. And then there's more continuing education just to stay on top of current trends and ideas, etc.

In addition, many teachers, especially those in elementary schools, end up spending some of their own money for basic school supplies, so that their students have the materials they need to get the education they deserve.

[flowerseverywhere]

*Cut busing. Keep it for K-3 only. This is what was done with my own public school district in the late 1970s.



our busing is mandated by NY state
K-2 over 1/2 mile from school
3-6 over one mile
7 and up over 1.5 miles

if it is in the IEP or if there are other circumstances (crossing a bridge) the school busses the student

What happened here is that during the good times when gas was cheap the high school and Jr. high remained in town. They built 3 elementary schools and a middle school where it is 100% bussing.

Tradd I see a lot of stuff going on in the school libraries. Computer classes, kids learning how to use the library and doing research. Our big library is less than a half mile from the Jr. high and High school. But I still think your idea can be considered certainly, nothing is off the table.

[Miss Cellane]

Tradd, I agree with you about sports. Even in the pay-to-play schools, the fee the students pay doesn't begin to cover the costs of the sports programs. There's equipment, the field or court or gym or pool the sport is played in/on and the maintenance thereof, the liability insurance, the coaches, the buses for away games, the uniforms, the supplies like first aid supplies and things like tape for taping ankles, and I'm sure I'm missing a lot.

Either make the teams self-funding or cut the sports. Then you could have a lower-cost, informal, intra-mural sports program at the school, with many teams, thereby getting more kids to play, but without the travel costs or uniforms, etc.

It really bothers me when I hear discussions about eliminating art and music entirely, but the football team is "protected" and nothing about it can be cut or reduced.

[fidgiegirl]

are doing and get involved. note: there was a news article about our big city superintendent who thought the board did not need financial info. We are a big city with a declining student body (every year declining) who keeps providing more and more money to these schools. The State took over several. Not good.

Weird!!! Isn't that the whole point of the school board? To be a body of oversight and leadership? Totally off the mark on the super's part.

[Rosemary]

The schools I attended as a child and teen had no where near the number of specialized courses (at high school level) or the quality of art and music that I see in our district. I would not cut any of that - I think it's great. I wish I'd had that opportunity.

Libraries are essential to learning and cultivating a love of learning, in my opinion. One place where savings can occur in this area, though, is combining school with public libraries. I saw this done in a couple of new schools in Arizona - the school library doubled as a branch public library. Obviously this may raise security issues, but clearly it was working there.

But I do think there are places where streamlining needs to occur, to save those other areas. Sports, for sure. Administration, as noted above. And planning/curriculum. This seems to be completely different at every elementary school in our district, which does not even cover one whole county! I think this degree of localization has run its course. I think that multiple districts, in some cases, could be combined. I'm thinking more suburban and rural, where the number of students per district is currently small compared to city districts.

While charging students for participation in activities is verboten due to equality issues, I think there could be an optional payment requested, or payment requested with available 'scholarship' funds for those who truly can't afford it, much as field trip payments work in our elementary school.

Our district outsources busing, and parents pay for busing if they live within 2 miles of the school. Most opt to pay for it since this is Minnesota and it is impossible to walk or bike 2 miles without turning into an icicle for at least a couple months of the year... not to mention that we have limited sidewalks, and the streets are quite icy when we get freeze/thaw cycles.

I don't think it's necessary for groups like band or sports teams to have trips to Europe or halfway across the U.S. Those fundraising dollars could go back into the school to pay for the programs themselves.

[mm1970]

I don't think there should be a rule that a teacher's work should be done at the school. I'm a professional (engineer/manager), as is my husband, and we work from home. My kid has homework too, why not a teacher?

I don't know what I'd cut. I guess sports. I wouldn't cut busing, depending on the area. While we are close enough to walk to the elementary school, the junior and high schools are much further away. Then again, we don't have busing - we have city busses.

As it is, in our elementary school, art, science, PE, and music are "extras" and the PTA has to raise $70,000 a year to provide them. Thus far we've raised less than half that.

Since when is science an extra??

[Tradd]

The schools I attended as a child and teen had no where near the number of specialized courses (at high school level) or the quality of art and music that I see in our district. I would not cut any of that - I think it's great. I wish I'd had that opportunity.

Libraries are essential to learning and cultivating a love of learning, in my opinion. One place where savings can occur in this area, though, is combining school with public libraries. I saw this done in a couple of new schools in Arizona - the school library doubled as a branch public library. Obviously this may raise security issues, but clearly it was working there.

But I do think there are places where streamlining needs to occur, to save those other areas. Sports, for sure. Administration, as noted above. And planning/curriculum. This seems to be completely different at every elementary school in our district, which does not even cover one whole county! I think this degree of localization has run its course. I think that multiple districts, in some cases, could be combined. I'm thinking more suburban and rural, where the number of students per district is currently small compared to city districts.

While charging students for participation in activities is verboten due to equality issues, I think there could be an optional payment requested, or payment requested with available 'scholarship' funds for those who truly can't afford it, much as field trip payments work in our elementary school.

Our district outsources busing, and parents pay for busing if they live within 2 miles of the school. Most opt to pay for it since this is Minnesota and it is impossible to walk or bike 2 miles without turning into an icicle for at least a couple months of the year... not to mention that we have limited sidewalks, and the streets are quite icy when we get freeze/thaw cycles.

I don't think it's necessary for groups like band or sports teams to have trips to Europe or halfway across the U.S. Those fundraising dollars could go back into the school to pay for the programs themselves.

I heard on the radio news here a few days ago that some inner city Chicago high school marching band has been invited to play at the summer Olympics in London. Cost? Over $400K! And the person from the school was going on and on that "we have to do this for the children." But $400K in these economic conditions?

I think there is a real security issue combining public libraries with the school libraries IN THE SCHOOL. Take the school library's collection and give it to the public library.

[Rosemary]

Take the school library's collection and give it to the public library.

This would create an access problem for many students. Those who have two working parents in particular would have difficulty in checking out books. I know, because my parents very rarely took me to the public library as a child and I used the school libraries daily.

[Miss Cellane]

I don't think there should be a rule that a teacher's work should be done at the school. I'm a professional (engineer/manager), as is my husband, and we work from home. My kid has homework too, why not a teacher?

I don't know what I'd cut. I guess sports. I wouldn't cut busing, depending on the area. While we are close enough to walk to the elementary school, the junior and high schools are much further away. Then again, we don't have busing - we have city busses.

As it is, in our elementary school, art, science, PE, and music are "extras" and the PTA has to raise $70,000 a year to provide them. Thus far we've raised less than half that.

Since when is science an extra??

How on earth did someone make the decision that science is an extra?

I'm having a horrible feeling that science isn't tested in No Child Left Behind, and therefore someone decided to keep math and reading and writing, because those are tested in NCLB, but felt it was okay to drop science. And that is sad.

[jennipurrr]

I am in a state with a lot of rural/poor schools. A Latin, or even Spanish class is often not feasible because only there are often only a few students interested and much more often, they can not find someone in podunk, nowhere to teach the class. My state (and I know there are more states that do this) created an online program where kids can go to the library or a computer lab during that class period and be able to take this classes. Its not perfect, but it really gave them an opportunity...it started as mostly language, AP, and advanced math classes. Now a lot of schools are using it in a time of limited budgets to expand/keep their offerings but cut staff. Not sure if that is a good thing, but at least the kids are able to take the classes.

Funding (state here, possibly also federal?) is based on the amount of days a student's butt is in the chair. So, that would never work for getting the 16 year olds out who aren't interested or letting kids graduate early. My sister and I were recently discussing how miserable some the material in high school was (she is having to teach a particularly useless class) and how her school she teaches at (in a different state) encourages dual enrollment at a college and early graduation, but that would not fly with the funding structure in my state. I know it is similar other places because on the TV show The Wire, set in MD, there was a season that showed all the dysfunction of inner city schools, and they had an episode where they hired temp workers as truancy officers to round up the kids who weren't in school for a certain amount of time until they "counted" for the year, then they didn't care if they came back.

Where my sister teaches, she gets a certain amount of sick days, but if/when she uses them the pay for the sub comes directly out of her paycheck. On the flip side, if she fills in as a sub during her planning time she gets paid extra to do so. The sub pay is less than her pay for the day, so she isn't losing all her pay, and it certainly discourages taking sick days unless you really need them. She didn't like the idea of it at first, but since she rarely calls in sick and her planning period is the last period of the day she has been able to pick up a little extra money from it. I don't think the teacher labor union in my state would ever let that fly.