Terminating Good Teachers Not the Answer: Strategies for the Public Education Revolution
By Carole Hornsby Haynes Ph.D.
Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas It seems the most popular solution to education budget crises in our Texas government schools is to cut teaching positions and increase classroom sizes.
There is a better solution: terminate a majority of the school administrative positions -- superintendents deputy superintendents assistant superintendents associate superintendents principals associate principals assistant principals academic coordinators testing coordinators curriculum specialists technical specialists certified interpreters and on and on -- who do not actually teach our children.
Daily there are new estimates about the number of teachers who will be terminated. Yet there is a glaring error. Nothing is being said about the outlandish number of administrative positions.
In Texas we have a teacher/administrative ratio of approximately 1:1!
Check it out -- google the name of any Texas school to see how many administrators and consultants are on the payroll…a payroll funded by taxpayers. Then check out the Texas Education Agency (TEA) website for Staff FTE Counts and Salary Reports."
Why do we need so many non-teaching positions?
In the olden days" we did quite well with one principal managing an entire elementary school of six grades in large city schools with only the help of an office assistant and a janitor. And for grades 7-12 we had one principal an office assistant and a janitor.
Do we really intend to fire thousands of good teachers while leaving all those administrators and support staff to sit around trying to look busy?
Of course we could cut their salaries and let them teach" the classes of terminated teachers so that our students wont have to be sandwiched into rooms that could have 30-40 children whenclasses are consolidated.
One of our most expensive line items is the salaries paid to superintendents.
It is outrageous that many Texas school superintendents are paid more than our governor!
According to the TEAs list of base salaries for the 2010-2011 academic year superintendents are paid an average of $112000 annually with 82 being paid $200000 or more. Of these 82 more than two dozen manage districts with 20000 or fewer students.
An example of this is the Beaumont Independent School District (ISD). In spite of the small student enrollment of fewer than 20000 its superintendent Carrol Thomas is paid the highest salary of any superintendent in Texas --
$348000!
The Coppell ISD with only about 10000 students pays Superintendent Jeffrey Turner $282000.
Superintendent salaries for Dallas and Fort Worth are among the top five in the state at $333000 and $330000 respectively.
Among the top ten are the ISDs of Houston ($300000) Plano ($292000) and Austin ($283000).
Further details about superintendent salaries can be found by using the interactive table on the TEA website to sort the records by salary district enrollment and pay per student as well as how each superintendent ranks.
Yes superintendents have much responsibility in managing school districts.
However they are public employees and if they expect larger salaries they should seek executive positions in private companies instead of being on the public dole bleeding state and local budgets -- and taxpayers.
To listen to the daily rhetoric of the media one would think this budget crisis was foisted upon us by Governor Perry the Texas Legislature and Tea Party members.
To quote one school board member Im very angry with the Legislature for putting us in this position and affecting our kids this way."
And to what extent should we assign guilt for this budget problem to local school boards?
The whiners would have us believe this is merely a sudden and temporary crisis.
That is not the case.
In the past decade alone there have been financial exigencies as Texas school districts faced monetary shortfalls.
Poor management and fiscal irresponsibility abound in our Texas education system.
According to the TEA there are 1237 Texas school districts -- 5 new districts have been added since 2007. Yet there seems to be little facility master planning with many schools being underutilized.
This did not happen overnight!
For example Miles is a small Texas town with 425 students. Yet it is a school district with a superintendent and three schools. Miles will receive about $2.5 million this year in direct state aid while local taxpayers pay only $710000.
This share the wealth" fact is not lost on Texans. Homeowners now are voicing their anger about having to pay an inequitable amount to educate
other peoples children. They are angry that those who have large families often pay very little for their own childrens education.
Another fact that angers Texans is the way administrators are spending us into the ground with their Taj Mahal fiefdoms….elaborate school and sports facilities.
Too many administrators have personal dreams they want to see realized with OPMother peoples moneynamely our tax money. As one new principal said Its your baby…. this is where you get to make your dreams come true."
So why are shock waves and anger resonating throughout Texas? Its not that we have not known we were in financial trouble. We just chose to ignore the problem.
After all government schools do not have to live within their means. They just tell Sugar Daddy they need more money. Then Big Daddy finds creative ways to raise taxes without raising taxes" to pay for new programs that either are duplicative or have no purpose to serve.
Of course the finger pointing by liberals is toward those conservatives who most assuredly rained this holocaust down upon Texans.
But this time liberals have killed the golden goose! As witnessed in Wisconsin Americans are drawing a line in the sand.
This is more than a temporary or a sudden budget crisis. Public education has lost the good faith and support of the American taxpayers.
….this is more than a temporary or sudden budget crisis.
Unless massive changes are made in school management public education as we know it today faces extinction.
Sadly our American government schools seem to focus on everything except the academics.
They pass out condoms to teenagers and spend valuable class time teaching children about sexual diversity and English as a second language.
Our government schools now expel students and leave them with a criminal record for shooting spitballs…a favorite of millions of teenage boys for generations past.
Others they suspend expel or send to psychiatrists for pretending to shoot a classmate using their hands as imaginary guns.
Wasnt this also a favorite past time of millions of American kids as they pretended to be Roy Rogers or Gene Autry or even Dale Evans?
This is sheer idiocy.
Our Texas legislators were given a clear mandate to reduce the size of government and cut the wasteful spending and fraud. We expect them to take a principled and decisive stand to carry out the wishes of their Texas constituents. They must go beyond making percentage cuts across the board and get serious about finding wasteful and duplicative spending.
They along with our public school administrators need to wake up and read the tea" leaves. There are many ways to sharply pare our bloated government school budgets.
Terminating good teachers is not the answer.
The right answer is to eliminate the layers of administrators and cut the unreasonable salaries of those administrators who remain especially those of superintendents.
Carole Hornsby Haynes can be contacted at chaynes@teapartyforkids.org.
