Friday, May 9, 2008

Where does all the money go

Recently I was reading the Longview paper and it is just amazing how many school districts are putting forth bond elections on May 10th in this area of state. The paper listed the following:

Longview ISD $267 million
Ore City ISD 8.5 million
Spring Hill ISD 41.8 million
Tatum ISD 18 million
Beckville ISD 2.3 million
Pittsburg ISD 36.5 million

I dug a little deeper in research and found out that across the state there are billions of dollars at stake on May 10th.

Where does all the money go? It appears that the public education system in Texas needs a through review. I am all for paying for education and realize the associated long term benefits; however, if spending continues at this pace then property owners will soon be bankrupt. Perhaps grades PK-12 should return to their traditional roots of the Three Rs and let the community college systems pick up the worker training type programs, i.e. nursing, agriculture, office education, etc. The current public education system is grossly mismanaged from the state on down to the local level. The overhead and bureaucracy of the public education system is going to put the taxpayers in the poor house.

Sad thing is that all the money we pump into the public education system continues to produce remedial results. Test scores are down and not up. More and more kids graduating high school and attending college are having to start in remedial courses in order to get them up to speed. In the real world of business this money losing 'baby sitting' service would have been shut down long ago!

Here is a possible solution...............................................Completely clean house at the Texas Education Agency at all levels along with the regional education centers. Re-staff with non-bureaucrats and individuals from outside the education arena from various other career areas. Eventually this will trickle down over time to local districts who in turn will hire business people to run schools and not promote bureaucrats raised within the system. These bureaucrats (school administrators) have blinders and can't see outside the covered windows. School people are school people and they are not given instructions in how to run a business. They are given instructions in how to manage educators. Educators don't work to produce profits. There profits should be the success of the products they assemble and turn out. THE STUDENT who graduates!

Educators have different motivations. The public education system needs new motivators and new motivations. The education system should enjoin with some of the same motivations as a business. After all that is where the final product ends up when it is properly assembled.

These new motivators and new motivations could end up saving property taxpayers a great deal of money in the long run. The question comes to mind - Can it get any worse?

I would be willing to bet some innovation would start taking place and the square peg would eventually find its way into the square hole.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

My wife works for an architect company that designs, builds, and renovates schools in North Texas. I've seen pictures and heard her stories about the school that they replace or renovate - these schools need the work done to them. It is not fair to send kids to these schools to attempt learning. The bond money goes to these companies to work on the schools. The bureaucracy has nothing to do with the bond packages being passed for the schools - they have everything to do with what is taught (or not) in the schools after they are build/fixed up.