Children's Education Suffers in Government Schools

Two unrelated articles show how the education of children comes last when dealing with the government education bureaucracy and the labor unions representing teachers. In San Diego, the unions and the district struck a deal yesterday to avoid 1,481 layoffs, according to the U-T.

Representing 7,000 teachers, the San Diego Education Association agreed to extend furloughs for a third and fourth year — once again shortening the school year for 118,000 students and cutting pay for educators.

The preliminary agreement includes a one-time financial retirement incentive in an effort to nudge the most senior teachers off the payroll this year. It also lays the groundwork for shaving 14 more days off the 2012-13 academic year should Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax-hike initiative fail in the November election.

This is no bargain for children's education. The teachers are getting paid less because they are working less. Further, we don't know how many of the jobs saved are teacher positions. We could continue this trend and have children have zero days of school but still end up with a huge tab from the government school system. Neither the district nor the union have the courage to address the real problem, the large number of non-teachers on the payroll in the form of administrators. My research from 2010 showed that the ratio of teachers to other staff in San Diego schools was about 1.25 to 1. Chicago Catholic Schools have a ratio closer to 7 to 1. The reason we don't get much for our education dollar is the huge number of non-teaching staff members. Further, reducing the number of days in school reduces learning for children as is documented in Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Outliers. The government and the unions seem intent on rigging the education system against children.

Meanwhile in New York, Governor Cuomo is ready to sign EMERGENCY legislation to prevent government teacher's evaluation scores from becoming public knowledge, in spite of the fact that they are paid by the public.

Cuomo and the state's powerful teachers' unions have tried to limit the evaluations' release to parents of children in a teacher's class, without further dissemination. The bill also would prevent parents from seeing the evaluations of teachers they might want to avoid in future years, which could be more useful to parents than seeing an evaluation of their child's current teacher, who they can't change.

Of course they can't. Unions want to protect poorly performing teachers from the consequences of their performance. Parental involvement in education improves childhood learning; but the government school system is rigged to deny parents meaningful influence. But any attempt to give parents a voice in the system will be vigorously opposed by the government employees unions.

I think widespread vouchers and privatization of the government run school system is the fastest way to fix education in the United States. But government run schools can work. In San Diego, we often hear of the Poway school system being highly desirable. In San Francisco, a series of reforms that give parents more choice and principals more authority, including budgeting and hiring, has greatly improved schools there. San Diego schools could vastly improve, by imitating reforms that have worked elsewhere and reducing non-teaching staff size.

Math Strikes San Diego Unified

The San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) has sent out layoff warnings to over 1600 teachers and other employees for the next school year. The math behind the problem is simple. Part of the reason for the layoffs has to do with promises made in the past with the bill coming due now. From the City Beat:

Roughly $39 million of San Diego Unified’s $122-million deficit is the result of a deal the district struck in 2010 with the San Diego Education Association (SDEA), the union that represents teachers. The teachers agreed to cut one week off the school calendar for two years (reducing pay by 2.7 percent each year); in exchange, the district agreed to raise pay a little more than 4 percent for the upcoming school year (2012-13) and another 3 percent in 2013-14 and add that week back to the calendar.

Why the SDUSD assumed that they would have the money for these pay raises in the future is unknown to me. Much of the district's funding comes from the California state government. The state's finances are not improving. Given our high rates of taxation of all kinds, I am sure that California will lag any national recovery.

The unions are resisting any concessions, of course, and seem willing to put their heads in the sand and let the layoffs roll on. Meanwhile Scott Barnett of the SDUSD considers the nuclear option, if only to get the unions to bargain in their own best interests:

“In theory,” he says, “we could not do the layoffs, which is what the union wants, but then still come to an agreement with the unions on concessions—on salary cuts and so forth—if they don’t want a trustee to take over. In some ways, I’m wondering if the unions will ever seriously negotiate if they don’t believe we are going to go under. So, it’s truly an Armageddon solution.”

If he decides to vote that way, Barnett would need to convince at least two of his four colleagues on the Board of Education to do the same—a tall order because if the unions don’t buckle, it could amount to political suicide for the board.

The district is asking for these specific concessions to avoid layoffs:

The San Diego school board has been pushing for concessions since last summer. In January, Superintendent Bill Kowba put the request in writing, calling on the teachers union and the district’s five other bargaining units to:

• Save jobs by forgoing a series of pay raises set to begin in July.

• Extend furlough days for a third year, which amounts to eliminating five school days, cutting teacher pay 2.7 percent annually.

• Pay more for health insurance for any provider except Kaiser, which would continue to be offered to all employees and their dependents free of charge.

I notice that every labor dispute includes the issue of health care costs, with employers trying to get employees to pay a greater share. This is not a sign that Obamacare is bending the cost curve downward. In reality, by mandating coverages that not everyone wants, the administration is increasing labor strife and employment costs for the whole nation.

Proof that this is about the numbers and not ideology comes from a member of the board who is also a teacher.

Trustee and math teacher Kevin Beiser [pictured] made an emotional plea to unions and district officials, urging them to find a way to save jobs.

"I am a teacher and I am going to be voting to lay off my friends," Beiser said, his voice cracking at the dais."I implore the leaders of every single group or organization in this district to come together."

The schools in the state are over burdened with all sorts of requirements and too high a staff to teacher ratio. This results in costs per student that are much higher than well run Catholic schools in Chicago by way of comparison. Further, principles are not given the freedom to manage the budget for their own schools. A quasi-market economy could be achieved if principles were given power over their own budgets, could hire and fire teachers and parents could move their kids to any school in the district they wanted to. These ideas need not destroy public schools and might save them. But like any improvement, the unions will oppose them to the death. Given the dire straits of school financing, they may get their way.

SDUSD Mess Update

Erica Holloway, blogging at sdrostra.com, has an update on the fiscal mess of our local San Diego school district. I posted on November 2 on the same subject. A few quotes from Erica's article:

School district officials and board members say that without a serious, life-saving infusion of state revenue or drastic cuts, such as closing schools, the state could take over the district due to fiscal insolvency, or bankruptcy.

After the utter failure of the school closure plan, Sheila Jackson, schoolboard member, takes full responsibility for the board's failure to put together a reasonable process.

It’s not appropriate for people to come to us and be upset. We didn’t even know what the criteria was, we didn’t even tell the staff which direction we wanted.

Good going there Sheila. In any other kind of electoral situation, she would be a shoo in for recall or at least wouldn't get re-elected. But in an electoral system plagued by general voter apathy towards the schools, the teachers unions are able to hand pick the board. VOSD had this to say about her statement.

But the board was highly involved in setting those criteria. The trustees had discussed and voted on the criteria at least three times in the previous two years

Last July, Jackson and her colleagues voted unanimously to approve a 37-page document that precisely lays out the process by which schools would be chosen for closure. The document includes a four-page board policy detailing all the criteria by which schools should be selected.

They also labeled Jackson's statement "huckster propaganda" with a picture of Pinocchio sporting a very long nose.

The Mess that is SDUSD

The actions of the San Diego Unified School District board are irrational. Consider the following.

• The board proposed a plan to shutter schools, including high performing magnet schools to save money for a reported savings of $5 million.
• In the same article, it stated that the board is considering selling or developing real estate to save money.
• Two credit rating agencies have recently downgraded the district's bond rating.
  

So the district is in deep trouble, right?

• ". . .the district continues to hire back teachers whose layoff notices were rescinded some four months ago."
• ". . .instrumental music lessons offered at every elementary school also seem to belie the troubles that have been touted."

Now the district is talking about a new bond measure, but admitting that some of the money would be used to pay operating expenses. [Isn't that a violation of law or at least generally accepted accounting practice?]

The new bond money would ostensibly go for construction, upgrades and equipment, including new technology for students.

But officials openly discussed the potential of using the bond to free up general fund money for teacher salaries and classroom programs.

What gives with these guys. Melanie Nickel lambastes the board in a letter to the editor.

How much staff time was spent preparing this poorly thought-out, unrealistic list of proposed closures? (Example: The proposal suggested moving a K-8 magnet program to a middle-school campus that has no facilities for elementary students.)

Whose idea was it to put the selection process in the hands of a group of downtown bureaucrats, working in secret without any input from parents or working educators?

I guess this is what we get when we get a board whose election is dominated by the teachers' union. I don't recall a single board member being elected without union endorsement, because no one pays attention to those elections. If we are ever going to fix the school district, the voters are going to have to vote exactly the opposite of the union recommendation. Otherwise we will continue to pour money down the rathole of the public education system in this city.

[Full disclosure, both of my sons have graduated high school, from private schools here in the city of San Diego. We made financial sacrifice to save them from the cesspool of incompetence we witnessed in this school district.]