Eliminating mandates on schools to reduce spending?

Tuesday, 31 May 2011 08:23

Eliminating mandates on schools to reduce spending?

Written by Scott LaMar, Director of Radio Smart Talk

Radio Smart Talk for Tuesday, May 31:

Pennsylvania faces a four billion dollar budget deficit. Gov. Tom Corbett has proposed a one billion dollar cut in funding to the state's public schools. For years, school boards have said one of the driving forces behind spending on the local level is that they are mandated to pay for many programs by the state. Now with the budget numbers part of every conversation at the state capitol, there is a move to eliminate some of the mandates on local school districts. The thinking is that removing the mandates will result in cost savings and maybe even reduce the need for tax increases on the local level.

On today's Radio Smart Talk, we'll feature a conversation with Tom Gentzel, executive director of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association and Matthew Brouillette, the president and CEO of the conservative think tank, Commonwealth Foundation. These two groups don't agree on several issues related to education but they do believe there are too many mandates.

LISTEN TO PROGRAM:

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# Lisa 2011-05-31 09:38

One of the mandates that I think we seriously need to reconsider is special education. While I fully believe that special education should be provided to those capable of learning, there are far too many cases where special education has become nothing more than daycare for children who will unfortunately never be able to learn. I am not talking about those who are able to learn at least rudimentary skills, I am talking about those with multiple disorders that prevent them from being able to perform even basic functions such as recognizing their own name. We need to recognize an impossibility when it exists and use existing assessments to determine an appropriate educational response. It is time to stop spending educational dollars in cases where the child is never going to be able to learn and instead shift the costs more appropriately to medicare and free up those special ed teachers to focus on those who can be taught.

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# robin 2011-05-31 09:41

Why wouldn't a school board fire higher payed teachers with more seniority?

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# Robert Colgan 2011-05-31 09:42

I think the entire educational apparatus is flawed--------------no matter how much money is spent on it, or how it's funded.

The mission statement is MIA in public education.

What is the objective of moving a child from 6 to 18 through a patterned system...but to allow that child to become a functioning adult in society...?

Our schools are essentially reform houses (the name previously given to juvenile detention centers) in which the child's body and mind are forcibly present and ordered what to do.

Until we understand that children are capable of learning on their own, that they can naturally gravitate toward that which they will use in life and that they deserve to be treated with respect to that empowerment
.........we are failing in our educational system.

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# robin 2011-05-31 09:44

Lisa has a point - sad as it is to say - some accomadation needs to be made.

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# Lisa 2011-05-31 09:49

Quoting robin:

Why wouldn't a school board fire higher payed teachers with more seniority?

The union prevents that. What you are proposing is discriminatory. Why should you fire a teacher just because they are higher paid? Employment should be dependent on effectiveness in the job.

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# Bonnie 2011-05-31 09:51

what about the administrators? there are alot of bad ones out there. they do not work with the teachers at all . if you have ever worked in a system like that whatcourse do you have ? why are teachers being picked on as first to go ?

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# robin 2011-05-31 09:54

Have either of you a personal history of organized labor as most Pennsylvanian's do? - Steel, Railroads, Coal, Manufacturing brought fair wages and conditions in order to provide a quality of life and a family supporting wage, all of which better enables citizens to pay your property taxes.

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# Lisa 2011-05-31 10:02

I disagreed immediately with something one of the panelists said about schools really being hurt by the loss of federal stimulus money. Baloney! Over 70% of our district's budget comes from local funding, with the federal stimulus money making up less than 2% of last year's budget. I don't find this panel to be politically balanced. I think that is the reason no one is discussing the elephant in the room -- administrative costs of education are way too high! Let's put this into perspective, my school superintendent (medium sized, semi-rural school district) makes $158,00 per year. Now compare that to the governor's salary of $174,000 per year. How in the world is my super's job even close to running an entire state?! The educational system is reflecting the inflation of pay for management that we see across the business world. Cut back on administrators and their pay. This is a bigger problem than most of the mandates.

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# Lisa 2011-05-31 10:11

"Lower the hurdles"? I know the business manager the speaker is talking about. He's one of the highest paid business managers in the state for our level school district! So does "lower the hurdles" mean pay administrators more? Yikes! If you are working in the public sector, you are in public SERVICE. If you want a higher salary (100K+), go to private industry because you are not in the job for the right reasons -- the kids!

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# robin 2011-05-31 14:30

Point of clarification, Lisa, I meant that were adminstrators given a free hand what would keep them from arbitrarily firing the highest paid teachers just to get the greater savings, leaving inexperienced and minimally paid teachers.

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