----- Original Message ----- From: "Ronn!Blankenship" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2003 4:46 PM Subject: Re: The War on Schools
> At 05:30 PM 3/9/03 -0500, Erik Reuter wrote: > >On Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 04:22:48PM -0600, Ronn!Blankenship wrote: > > > > > Probably not if the additional funds go to hire overpaid bureaucrats > > > rather than additional teachers, as I described in the third (snipped) > > > paragraph of that message. > > > >You sound like a bureaucrat yourself, rather than a problem solver. Too > >bad. > > > No, I'm a taxpayer who thinks they're wasting much of the money they > already collect. The solution to the problem is to first get rid of the > overpaid bureaucrats and the corruption, then see if additional taxes are > needed. A friend of mine was head of the school board in a small town in Conn. for a while. We talked about the sources of the costs of school. He stated that the administration overhead in his town and mine were really quite low. Including principals and the superintendent, it was definitely < 10%; my memory is that the overhead was closer to 5% than 10%. The source of the great increase in costs were two-fold. First, was the soaring insurance costs. The second was the mandated special education. A very small fraction of the students in his school district had enormous costs associated with their education. This was mandated, so the school board couldn't do anything. Thinking about my children's schools, I think that the administration burden cannot be all that high. My daughter went to a school with about 2400 kids in 11th and 12th grade. There was a principal and about 5 vice-principals. These folks did more than administer the programs, principals handled discipline, for example. IIRC, there are 100+ teachers, so I cannot imagine them having more than 10% of the salaries. Further, salaries are only a part of the total cost, so that cuts the overhead even more. Yes, there is administration at the highest level too, but I don't recall it being all that massive. So, while I'm willing to agree with the proposition that the district is too bureaucratic, I don't think much in the way of real savings could be obtained by cutting it down. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
