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No blood in those state turnips

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Means no $ for Ed

School districts are beginning negotiations with their unions based on their 2010-2011 budget numbers, which are depressing.  If it’s impossible to draw blood from a turnip, just try to wring money from state legislatures for education.

The Colorado legislature is about to claw back $250 million+ from public schools for the ‘10-’11 year.  It will probably take back just as much, if not more, for ‘11-’12.  If school districts don’t have enough reserves, and no one does, they will be going backwards in funding for years.

Money saving tricks

Some districts are freezing salary - no COLA, no steps and levels.  Others are doing furlough days.  Others are charging for transportation.  Others are ending all technology purchases.  Others are emptying administration - no more professional development for teachers or curriculum support!  Others are increasing classroom size by one, two, or three children.  Last but not least, some districts are closing buildings.

No more investing in education!

Investment in education has stopped.  Districts that have made progress in student achievement will probably freeze in place or will start drifting backwards.  After all, if no one is in charge any more of managing the voluminous data underlying each student’s progress, how will the analytical process thrive that supports achievement?

Schools going backward in funding

The largest district in Colorado is about to cut $60 million from a $670 million budget.  The district estimates it will make the same size cut in ‘11-’12, and possibly again in ‘12-’13.  That means that by ‘13-’14, unless miracles happen, the district will be at a budget starting point roughly $180 million below where it is today.  And yet the District is supposed to get every student to meet annual growth targets.

Colorado calculates annual growth against student peers.  Proficient students are measured against proficient students, barely proficient against barely proficient, etc.  So the only good news for schools is that all students in the state are in the same hole, so the lack of annual achievement growth should be relatively similar.  This prediction will assure funding remains at about the same dismal level for all schools in the state.

Not enough tax dollars for education today

Colorado is almost last in state funding per student, at about $7300, even though the state has one of the highest college education levels.  This “Colorado paradox” happens because educated out-of-staters like to come and live here for the mountains.  The state is also reasonably affluent.  But like other western states, including California, citizens prefer to keep their money in their pockets.  Colorado has one of the lowest state income tax and sales tax levels in the country.

How’s that Obama money doing?

ARRA money has bailed districts out in 2010, but now everyone is headed towards a cliff.  What kind of help is the Obama administration offering?  Race to the Top, of course, or as some wags say, slow jog to nowhere.  Really, the $4 billion will go to schools doing education Arne Duncan’s way, which means pay-for-performance and closing non-performing schools or turning them around or starting over.

What does any of that do to help districts whose schools aren’t completely in the doghouse yet (but may be after two or three years of these budget cuts)?

What would you do if you could?

And will pay-for-performance really do the trick with teachers? Schools definitely need something beyond steps and levels, but what should that look like?  Do schools need a more streamlined way to move bad to mediocre teachers out?  Yes.  Do schools need more money for entry level teachers, so education can compete at least marginally with law and medicine for top graduates? Yes.  Do schools need a way to pay off student loans to encourage teachers to work in challenging schools?  Yes.

How about a little extra money for some teacher career tracking - giving teachers money for online course development, professional development of peers, etc.

Get your 30 in and retire

It’s true that some relationship needs to exist between compensation and how well kids learn, but that’s not the whole package.  And frankly, in Colorado, teachers and districts are going to be so busy plowing money into their PERA pension fund, they may not get a raise for years.  They are mostly going to be working for that glorious final moment when they stagger over the 30 year finish line and can get out of education altogether.  Not very pretty, is it?

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Posted in Colorado Budget Crisis, Race to Top, public schools, school accountability, school resources |
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What was he thinking?

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

I received my pink slip two weeks ago, long before  March 15 (California’s education code rule) when layoff notices must be delivered.  A district personnel officer handed it to me in person.  I think the human resources office thought we’d feel better if a human being delivered it instead of getting a certified letter in the mail.

Why would I feel better when the guy walked into my class while I was teaching and said, “How are things going today?”  Can you believe how obtuse that was?

What was I supposed to say, “Oh fine, and how’s your day?” while holding up my hand to indicate wait to the child who was waving furiously for me to come help and accepting the letter in my other.  As if receiving a RIF notice was going to make my day.

After school when I calmed down, I thought he could have said, “Hello, I’m glad to meet you even if I’m the bearer of bad news.  Please know I’m sorry we are in such a bind.”  At least it would have been admitting the quandary.

Here is what the teachers in California are doing.  It started last fall when University of California students, initially over tuition increases, decided to have demonstrations up and down the state on March 4, 2010.  Then the State University students joined in, angry about all the cuts to state university public education.

Then the news came out that San Francisco schools would have a $113 million deficit beginning next year.  Parents began to devise ways to raise money. The usual: another parcel tax measure, asking businesses to match funds raised by PTA’s, a surcharge on movie tickets.  I laughed reading San Francisco  legislator Tom Ammiano’s pitch for regulating and taxing marijuana purchases to raise money for schools.

Of course, the district is doing the same as my district: layoffs, furlough days, no professional development, summer school cuts.

Same ole, same ole.  Too bad.

But teachers and students in public universities and community colleges and teachers in public elementary and high schools throughout the state and across 2 dozen other states according to the San Francisco Chronicle are demonstrating on Thursday.

In colleges, there will be marches.  I did my undergraduate work at San Francisco State and I’ve heard students there have built giant puppets, La Llorona weeping for her students and a skeleton with a graduation cap to show that students will still be paying off their fees when they’re dead.  I suppose humor helps you laugh instead of cry.

At our elementary school we will all wear black to signify the loss of school staff and support for students.  During social studies the fourth grade classes who, remember, study California history and government will have a lesson on how schools and libraries and the police and fire departments are paid for.  During the time for writing, they will compose letters to the governor describing which services are important to them and offering ideas to help the government.  Fulfills several grade 4 standards, but most important students are analyzing what they know to synthesize new ideas and write them down.

After school, I’ve heard many teachers will join demonstrations at city halls or along well-traveled intersections on the peninsula, but as of this post I’m not sure where my union will participate.

By the June primary elections I tell you, people are really going to be furious as cuts get worse and services collapse.  Even though initiatives are troublesome to me, seven likely to be on the ballot aim to increase funds to support schools and other social services.  All because so far the legislature has not found a way to finance support for state services or schools that used to be the best in the United States.

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Posted in California budget crisis, layoff notices, public schools, school finance reform |
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Short Term Savings, Long Term Losses

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Daily, articles describe the fiscal problem for schools.  Tuesday, February 23, 2010, a San Francisco Chronicle front page headline stated “Over 900 pink slips likely for S.F. schools,” the largest, distressed district in the bay area.

CA suburban middle school

CA suburban middle school

Today, Wednesday, February 24, 2010, the Wall Street Journal front page reported disaster for San Mateo County school districts, elementary to community college, affecting high and very low-performing schools with layoffs up and down a beautiful part of the San Francisco peninsula.

The superintendent of well-to-do Lafayette School District states “districts across the state are increasing class sizes, decreasing the length of the school year, eliminating professional development, and eviscerating art, music, athletic and summer school programs.”  See “Complacency has added to our crisis in education” by Fred Brill, San Francisco Chronicle, February 19, 2010.

The catastrophe for students is the procedure whereby huge cuts balance a short term budget, i.e. layoffs aka RIF-reduction in force.

“Increasing class size” means teacher layoffs.  “Eliminating professional development” means teachers providing the service disappear.  No “art, music, athletics and summer school” means RIF.  Furthermore, furloughs and decreases in the number of school year days forewarn that teachers decamp in hopes of a better salary elsewhere-maybe to booming Wyoming.

It may be that school districts are caught in the middle of the state’s fiscal debacle, especially in California.  However, Jeffrey Pfeffer in ‘Lay Off the Layoffs” Newsweek, February 15, 2010, quoted a head of human resources, “If people are your most important assets, why would you get rid of them?”

It’s a business quote, let’s be honest, not a school district’s.  First thing that will come to the reader’s mind is school districts are not businesses.  Agreed.  This blog often says that.  Nevertheless, think about why layoffs sabotage the goals for student achievement.

Immediately, the unemployment benefits that the county will pay cuts into money available for schools.  Money spent when people are rehired cuts into supposed savings.

Next, morale of the remaining staff goes down.  Teachers are redistributed, and there is a direct and indirect cost to resettle in a different school, much less learn the “school climate” at the new location or new grade level.  That’s why the strongest schools have few teachers moving in and out and students remaining at the school from grades K-5.

Another indirect cost is loss of institutional memory.  Especially in low-performing schools where young teachers are often the first to be sent packing, every year the few remaining teachers must spend at least a month of instructional time training new teachers who inevitably are brought in as student demographics shift.

Next, productivity is reduced.  Fatigue sets in.  With substantial layoffs, too few teachers must take on extra duties that had been distributed among more employees.  They get sick.  More teachers take days off and the district must pay for substitutes-another cost.

This blog has no “magic bullet” to avoid projected layoffs for 2010-2011, other than to hope more stimulus money is authorized by Congress.  However, state and local school boards should think “long term.”

How about working through the county to gain volume and thus reduce the substantial cost of supplies per school district?  Right now each school district makes deals, not nearly large enough in volume to save the money required.

The state department of education should advocate for the revised federal health care plan, thus cutting costs for teacher benefits and Medicare, after salaries a major cost to school districts.

County boards of education should strongly advocate for combining small districts into one larger district to save the cost of multiple superintendents and district personnel.  Maybe the goal should be 10-20,000 students per district.  Contentious, but cost-cutting.

Finally, this blog has advocated for the proposal developed two years ago “Getting Beyond the Facts: Reforming California School Finance” that suggests a plan to reorganize the funds available to the state so that money is allocated where it’s needed.

Why should teachers (and so students) be the first to pay the price for a poor economy and state inability to manage its finances?

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Posted in California budget crisis, community colleges, layoff notices, low-performing schools, public schools, school finance reform |
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Back to the Old Name for NCLB

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

When the U. S. Department of Education began to address the revisions to No Child Left Behind legislation (up to now put off several times), the first thing changed was the name.  NCLB (often pronounced Nickel B) has become toxic to most educators, governors, and state education departments.

We’re back to Elementary and Secondary Education Act aka ESEA, the original title of the legislation, in an effort to abandon the stigma attached to the NCLB revisions in 2001.

Heading the list of disliked provisions was distaste for “top down” mandates.  Seen as an especially noxious feature of NCLB legislation were mandates required by Congress with no money attached.  Even now, as word gets out about negotiations on ESEA revisions, the fear is for more top down requirements with no $$ attached.  As most states are currently in the middle of terrible fiscal times, all eyes are on m-o-n-e-y.

Looking at current deficits, states can’t bear to rewrite state tests, put new evaluation procedures in place, provide colleges adequate funds to train teachers, much less support school districts to turn around failing schools-even though, in the long term, all those revisions must occur to close the achievement gap among student groups, the top of the top priorities for ESEA revision.

On the other hand, states might as well face the facts.  The Obama administration has insisted on accountability, but no longer with a NCLB type of yearly test geared to state standards that are set to increase levels of proficiency to 100% by 2014.

As before, each state will set its own standards and choose its own test, but everyone in the education world knows how that worked under NCLB.  Lowered standards and simplified tests made the state look like it was making its benchmarks.

The overview of the ESEA legislation revisions have stressed the U. S. Department of Education’s insistence on data to show student growth and school progress over time with the plan to reward gains in closing the achievement gap among the students left behind in the ordinary school setting.

So now the focus is on the National Governor’s Association and Council of Chief State School Officers to design common standards that become the core of each state’s plan for accountability.  This blog’s bet is that researchers at, for example, Education Trust will be comparing each state’s standards and tests so that low-performing schools are not left to fail.

As most school districts are just trying to get by for another year, such a big change in thought and structure for school reform requires investment.  Like flowers from a magician’s hat, the Race to the Top competition energized 48 states to think about change for high schools, and Title I School Improvement Grant competition sets those states to structure elementary education reform.

Get over it.  Whether a group of charter schools or a public high school district or a tiny rural public school district, someone is at the top.  Here’s the question: is the figure at the top looking ahead or keeping his/her head lowered?  Those are the stakes for legislative reform in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Where do you stand?  Paralyzed?  Or willing to grab this formidable bull of reform by the horns and wrestle it down?

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Posted in ESEA, Education Trust, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, NCLB, Race to Top, public schools, school accountability, school reform |
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Hurricane Katrina a-coming; school districts drowning

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

School districts are cutting budgets like crazy.  In Colorado, the state will reduce its contribution to school districts by roughly $350 million in 2010-2011, leaving districts scrambling to high ground while figuring out how they’ll cut millions from their operating budgets.

Pension fund deficits hurting budgets

On top of budget cuts, Colorado’s state pension fund (PERA) is underwater by about $30 billion over 30 years.  If left unchanged, the fund will go broke in 2032, which is not a problem if you’ll be dead within the next 22 years, but a challenge if you intend to live past that.

Colorado’s SB10-001, a bipartisan bill to square up the pension fund, will reduce the automatic annual COLA increase of 3.5 down to 2.0, and will increase employee contributions by 2 percent and employer contributions by 2 percent.

Salary freezes, furlough days, and larger classrooms on horizon

At the same time, many districts are looking to freeze salary steps and levels right now to balance their short-term budgets.  The freeze in Colorado teacher salaries could extend over two or three years, depending on state and local property tax revenues.

These facts leave boards and all school employees between a desk and a hard place.  It’s difficult to picture how school districts will provide any staff raises in the near future.  Starting teachers in the $30 thousand range may be stuck, sliding farther behind workers in other professional fields, such as investment banking.  New college graduates may struggle to figure out how public school teaching can ever provide enough of a living to be worthwhile.

While taxpayers certainly feel the pinch in this recession, schools are doubly hit as the budget crisis proceeds.  If a salary freeze occurs in ‘10 -’11, budget balancing in ‘11-’12 will require larger classrooms and layoffs.  By the third year out, budgets may be so drained that furlough days will be piled on salary freezes and increased classroom size.

High quality education at stake

Meanwhile, schools try to bring the highest quality education to kids, including all the technology necessary to keep students technologically literate.  They’re asked to reduce the learning gap between ethnic groups.  They need to get kids up to speed in reading, math, writing, and science.

Schools have so many fingers in the dykes that it’s inevitable that a New Orleans style flood is on its way, drowning kids in inadequacy and insufficiency.  School districts will need to offer their best arguments to their constituents to bring more money into the system.  But communities will also have to step up to avoid Hurricane Katrina destruction in classrooms across the nation.

*Serious discussion needs good communication to promote successful solutions for the school community.  See the website with this blog for a possible support program.

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Posted in Colorado Budget Crisis, public schools, school community, school finance reform, school reform |
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