Now That SQ 744 Has Tanked, What To Do About Common Education

[Conan71]

Here's a small but good start in better school efficiency.  This was an 85 student district in rural Seminole county serving K-8.  Basically 9 students per grade.  That's a freaking waste.  How many other districts out there could do the same thing?

I believe in making education a priority, but I don't believe in the politics behind it.  Let's cut out waste before asking for more money.

Rural Seminole County school district to be annexed by neighbor

By Associated Press
Published: 11/3/2010  10:14 AM
Last Modified: 11/3/2010  10:14 AM

SEMINOLE — A rural Seminole County school district soon will merge with a larger neighbor.

Voters in the Pleasant Grove district voted Tuesday to merge with the Seminole Public Schools by a 202-93 count. The merger will take effect on Nov. 17.

The Shawnee News-Star reports that Pleasant Grove's budget problems led to the annexation proposal. School officials have said the Pleasant Grove district didn't have enough money to make it through the school year.

Pleasant Grove is a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade district and finished the 2009-10 school year with 85 students.

Read more from this Tulsa World article at http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=19&articleid=20101103_19_0_SEMINO681509

[RecycleMichael]

Our legislature won't do it. They protect the smaller districts.

My sister works as a school principal in Florida where they have one school district per county.

Tulsa County has 14 public school districts. Tell me which of the newly elected politicians is going to suggest that Union Public Schools merge with Tulsa Public Schools.

[Red Arrow]

Our legislature won't do it. They protect the smaller districts.

My sister works as a school principal in Florida where they have one school district per county.

Tulsa County has 14 public school districts. Tell me which of the newly elected politicians is going to suggest that Union Public Schools merge with Tulsa Public Schools.

I don't think I would call Union or TPS small.  Try picking a few rural areas.  I understand that protectionism would be encountered.

[Conan71]

Easy there RM, you sound like one of the Whirled commenters.

Merging larger districts like Union or Jenks in with TPS would certainly save some in admin costs but it would never happen. 

I suggest looking at all districts, create a size threshold, along with determining what would
be a reasonable distance for students to live from a school and start consolidating. One person who commented on the story said Seminole County has 10 high schools in a 20 mile radius.  That's a lot of properties to heat, cool, and maintain and more administrative salaries.

Maybe it made sense 50 years ago to have so many districts out of convenience to children.

Decentralization of services is costly. Do we really need 50 or so universities or 50 or so prisons in the state?  The reason for all this inefficiency is because decentralization creates many more jobs and gets politicians re-elected because it beings money to rural areas.

Instead of lamenting the failure of this bag-of-smile bill, I'm interested in exploring real solutions to improve common education in Oklahoma. Let's not focus on "We can't do that" let's focus on what we can do. I wasn't kidding when I said I was interested in finding real solutions which make a difference in the classroom.

[swake]

Easy there RM, you sound like one of the Whirled commenters.

Merging larger districts like Union or Jenks in with TPS would certainly save some in admin costs but it would never happen.  

I suggest looking at all districts, create a size threshold, along with determining what would
be a reasonable distance for students to live from a school and start consolidating. One person who commented on the story said Seminole County has 10 high schools in a 20 mile radius.  That's a lot of properties to heat, cool, and maintain and more administrative salaries.

Maybe it made sense 50 years ago to have so many districts out of convenience to children.

Decentralization of services is costly. Do we really need 50 or so universities or 50 or so prisons in the state?  The reason for all this inefficiency is because decentralization creates many more jobs and gets politicians re-elected because it beings money to rural areas.

Instead of lamenting the failure of this bag-of-smile bill, I'm interested in exploring real solutions to improve common education in Oklahoma. Let's not focus on "We can't do that" let's focus on what we can do. I wasn't kidding when I said I was interested in finding real solutions which make a difference in the classroom.

I looked at the numbers, and if you forced all counties with with less than 40,000 people to go to a county wide school district and then also forced all districts with less than 2,000 students (thats about 80 teachers or less) to consolidate we would end up with about 70 county wide districts and about 100 total districts. That would be 8-10 districts in Tulsa and Oklahoma counties and 2-4 in five more mostly metro counties. You don't have to close schools necessarily, just consolidate the administration of the schools.

[Conan71]

I looked at the numbers, and if you forced all counties with with less than 40,000 people to go to a county wide school district and then also forced all districts with less than 2,000 students (thats about 80 teachers or less) to consolidate we would end up with about 70 county wide districts and about 100 total districts. That would be 8-10 districts in Tulsa and Oklahoma counties and 2-4 in five more mostly metro counties. You don't have to close schools necessarily, just consolidate the administration of the schools.

I think it's worth trying to sit down with our new state superintendent and looking at.  I wanted to gather some ideas from here and draft a letter to Janet Barresi as well as my state representative and senator.

What are some other cost-cutting measures or re-appropriations which could benefit the classroom aside from consolidation without cutting into popular programs like sports?  Obviously administration, maintenance, and utility costs are items which take money away from the educational experience.

[Townsend]

I think it's worth trying to sit down with our new state superintendent and looking at.  I wanted to gather some ideas from here and draft a letter to Janet Barresi as well as my state representative and senator.

What are some other cost-cutting measures or re-appropriations which could benefit the classroom aside from consolidation without cutting into popular programs like sports?  Obviously administration, maintenance, and utility costs are items which take money away from the educational experience.

Cutting any music/art and most physical activity seems to be popular.

I'd imagine all foreign language classes could go now.

[Red Arrow]

Cutting any music/art and most physical activity seems to be popular.
I'd imagine all foreign language classes could go now.

So we will only teach Spanish now?  It seems like English is now a foreign language.

[Townsend]

It seems like English is now a foreign language.

Really?

[sgrizzle]

The idea of merging TPS and Union is just the big dog peeing on the underdog because the underdog had the gall to succeed. Similar to when TPS stole Mayo elementary.

Also keep in mind that Union already is a consolidated school district, they took in people from 9 communities, mostly rural property that only provided any decent tax money in the last few years of the school's history.

[Conan71]

Cutting any music/art and most physical activity seems to be popular.

I'd imagine all foreign language classes could go now.

Nope, I'm not looking to cut curricula, teachers, sports, nor culture.  I think music and art has a very good place in school as well as sports.  Think outside the classroom for savings.

[Townsend]

Nope, I'm not looking to cut curricula, teachers, sports, nor culture.  I think music and art has a very good place in school as well as sports.  Think outside the classroom for savings.

That's my point.  How often does that happen?

[swake]

I think it's worth trying to sit down with our new state superintendent and looking at.  I wanted to gather some ideas from here and draft a letter to Janet Barresi as well as my state representative and senator.

What are some other cost-cutting measures or re-appropriations which could benefit the classroom aside from consolidation without cutting into popular programs like sports?  Obviously administration, maintenance, and utility costs are items which take money away from the educational experience.

I don't think there is much to cut. Most of the money goes to the classroom now, it's just not enough. Consolidating 400 districts might save a couple of hundred million dollars a year, and while that's real money, it's not a huge amount compared to the overall school budget. We chronically underfund schools and we have the results to show for it.

This is from the state chamber, but it really bears repeating: We are 49th in per student school spending, 41st in bachelor's degree attainment, 42nd in advanced degree attainment, 46th in technology concentration, 44th in high tech wages, 42nd in venture capital investment per capita, 47th in R&D spending per capita and 49th in exports per capita.

That all sounds bad, but at least we rank 8th in the teen pregnancy rate. Oh wait, that's bad too. Ok, so we don't allow courts to use Sharia Law.  We got that going for us, which is nice.

The Republicans are firmly in control of the state now, there is zero ability for Democrats to even influence decision making in the state anymore. What is our Republican leadership going to do to fix schools and the state? My guess based on the last two years is that we will see even more attention on new and stricter  laws regarding immigration, English only, gun rights, abortion and fighting Obama. In other words nothing meaningful at all.

[SXSW]

The state will face some serious budget shortfalls this year.  Instead of cutting funding to education why not consolidate the school districts?  This is the time for that to be done.  The Republicans have said they want job creation and economic development to be their many priorities.  Education is a big part of that. 

[Conan71]

I don't think there is much to cut. Most of the money goes to the classroom now, it's just not enough. Consolidating 400 districts might save a couple of hundred million dollars a year, and while that's real money, it's not a huge amount compared to the overall school budget. We chronically underfund schools and we have the results to show for it.

This is from the state chamber, but it really bears repeating: We are 49th in per student school spending, 41st in bachelor's degree attainment, 42nd in advanced degree attainment, 46th in technology concentration, 44th in high tech wages, 42nd in venture capital investment per capita, 47th in R&D spending per capita and 49th in exports per capita.

That all sounds bad, but at least we rank 8th in the teen pregnancy rate. Oh wait, that's bad too. Ok, so we don't allow courts to use Sharia Law.  We got that going for us, which is nice.

The Republicans are firmly in control of the state now, there is zero ability for Democrats to even influence decision making in the state anymore. What is our Republican leadership going to do to fix schools and the state? My guess based on the last two years is that we will see even more attention on new and stricter  laws regarding immigration, English only, gun rights, abortion and fighting Obama. In other words nothing meaningful at all.

Look, if you want to continue to focus on partisan stereotypes that's your prerogative.  I'm very solution-oriented, not problem-oriented.  If you are truly concerned about improving the quality of education of this state move beyond the problem and start thinking of innovative solutions instead of a bunch of crap about Republican road blocks.

Here's a snapshot of how our school funding is spent:

Figures for '07/'08

Total common ed revenues: $5.482 bln
Instruction expenditures: $2.845 bln
Support services expenditures: $1.760 bln
Non-instruction expenditures: $327 mm

$4.932 bln "current" expenditures out of a total of $5.4 bln education expenditures.

Basically, for every dollar spent on "instruction" there's an additional 75 cents spent on support services and non-instruction expenditures.  When I was putting together stats on our region, I noticed Oklahoma has a disproportionate amount of NI expenditures with our peers. 

Some interesting stats not noted in the vote yes campaign was that in our region, our education spending as a percent of local and state total budgets (based on the '07/'08 table) is second only to Texas at 35.19% vs. 35.22% for Texas.  Dollars spent per pupil becomes somewhat less relevant when you take into account Oklahoma's cheap cost of living and real estate, and start looking at what percent of overall dollars are being spent on instruction.

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/stateprofiles/sresult.asp?mode=full&displaycat=2&s1=40

nces.ed.gov is a great repository of statistics.