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Saturday
March 20, 2010 Since 1922 |
The 65% solution
By David Bloom
Baytown Sun Published August 25, 2005 Other than proposing a tax on strippers and booze, Gov. Rick Perry has done little if anything about school finance reform since he has been in office.
That was until Monday when Perry decreed that all school districts must now spend 65 percent of education funds on “direct classroom” instruction.
This means districts are required to spend no more than 35 percent of their budgets on non-classroom expenses such as transportation, school lunches and administration. Non-complying districts will be subject to investigations and sanctions.
Perry’s order saddles districts such as Goose Creek, Barbers Hill, Anahuac and Crosby with an unjustified mandate that simply dilutes local control, and makes matters worse.
Instead of tackling the problem of inadequate funding of our schools in a simple and direct way, the governor blindly mandates a bureaucratic non-response to the problem. And whether the order can be properly monitored - or legally enforced - is another question.
Inherent in Perry’s spending rule is the faulty assumption that school districts waste their money on things unrelated to education. Like administrators. Or librarians. Or computer specialists. Or social workers. Or school nurses.
In addition, the one-size-fits-all spending approach allows little flexibility for varying circumstances.
The governor says he did it because “people have demanded reform, they have been promised reform, and I intend to deliver reform using the full constitutional authority of the executive branch.’’
Perry’s solution is really no solution at all. Rather, it would force districts to rearrange spending based on an arbitrary number.
The governor should skip the cheap political gimmicks. Educators and children in Texas deserve better.
Today’s editorial was written by David Bloom, managing editor of The Baytown Sun, on behalf of the newspaper’s editorial board.
Baytown Sun Published August 25, 2005 Other than proposing a tax on strippers and booze, Gov. Rick Perry has done little if anything about school finance reform since he has been in office.
That was until Monday when Perry decreed that all school districts must now spend 65 percent of education funds on “direct classroom” instruction.
This means districts are required to spend no more than 35 percent of their budgets on non-classroom expenses such as transportation, school lunches and administration. Non-complying districts will be subject to investigations and sanctions.
Perry’s order saddles districts such as Goose Creek, Barbers Hill, Anahuac and Crosby with an unjustified mandate that simply dilutes local control, and makes matters worse.
Instead of tackling the problem of inadequate funding of our schools in a simple and direct way, the governor blindly mandates a bureaucratic non-response to the problem. And whether the order can be properly monitored - or legally enforced - is another question.
Inherent in Perry’s spending rule is the faulty assumption that school districts waste their money on things unrelated to education. Like administrators. Or librarians. Or computer specialists. Or social workers. Or school nurses.
In addition, the one-size-fits-all spending approach allows little flexibility for varying circumstances.
The governor says he did it because “people have demanded reform, they have been promised reform, and I intend to deliver reform using the full constitutional authority of the executive branch.’’
Perry’s solution is really no solution at all. Rather, it would force districts to rearrange spending based on an arbitrary number.
The governor should skip the cheap political gimmicks. Educators and children in Texas deserve better.
Today’s editorial was written by David Bloom, managing editor of The Baytown Sun, on behalf of the newspaper’s editorial board.