The Aaron Harber Show

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HOW TO STOP CLOSING PUBLIC SCHOOLS
04-27-03

NOTE: This is the second part in a two-part series about how the recent decision to close community schools in one Colorado school district -- the Boulder Valley School District -- epitomizes the defective decision-making processes experienced by many school boards across the State.

When school board members become overly dependent on their administrative staffs for the information they use to make decisions, the quality of their decision-making can suffer. Board members typically are volunteers without financial expertise so when there is a financial crisis looming, they can become insulated and stop asking the "right questions" – if they ever were asking the right questions to begin with (this phenomenon leads to poor decision-making and is common when one relies exclusively on a single source of information).

In the case of the Boulder Valley School District, their actions simply showed that Board and its Administration were out of touch with the people they are supposed to serve. In the case of the St. Vrain Valley School District -- which suddenly found itself millions of dollars in debt -- the Board members didn’t have a clue in regard to what was happening around them. The bottomline is that most laypersons who serve on school boards are easily manipulated – and often don’t even know it’s happening. They typically are parents who have little financial expertise.

As a result, all too often, educational institution boards accept the data provided by their administration and do so without asking the kind of tough questions which should provoke extensive debate and discussion. They don’t even know what the right questions are. In the case of the BVSD, the Board understandably is focused on what to do to compensate for declining enrollments but should be asking, "Why are we facing declining enrollments when the population of our District continues to soar?"

The answer lies in the quality of education this Board and Administration are delivering. The Boulder Valley School District has had a long history of educational success and always ranks at the top of public school performance in the State of Colorado. In past years, it frequently has been recognized nationally as one of the best school districts in the country. The quality of BVSD’s schools historically has been a driving force which attracted many families to the Boulder area. Clearly, past Boards and Administrations have had much success.

But Boulder Valley parents aren’t stupid and they know the BVSD (along with others) has been "coasting" on its reputation for years. As the quality of education delivered by the BVSD declined, many parents considered alternatives which are far superior to what their public school system is delivering today. The Board and the Administration should be asking, "How do we make our schools better so we can attract and serve more students?"

So, what are some alternatives to closing the budget gap besides shuttering schools? The BVSD faces a $3 million shortfall in a $244 million annual budget despite its own aggressive budget-cutting. Superintendent George Garcia and his staff have worked hard, in concert with the Board, to identify cost-savings and to carve out and eliminate big pieces of administrative budgets. It would be unfair to say the Board and the Administration have not made a good-faith effort to reduce costs. They have. But there are many options left. The challenge is they force the District to look at its resource allocation in a radically different manner. It requires the District to reorient itself to a truly minimalist approach to administrative expenditures.

One possible way to save money would be to eliminate an average of one administrative position in each of the BVSD’s 57 schools. That likely would save between $2 million and $3 million, depending on how the savings were achieved. With a likely base salary average of $37,500 and another $15,000 representing benefits and non-fixed overhead, the District could easily save all $3 million. If it could save more if higher paid positions were eliminated. A $3 million reduction represents a one-quarter (25%) reduction in the District’s on-site school administrative budget.

The District’s annual $33 million Central Administration also could be reduced. As the St. Vrain Valley School District -- the BVSD’s neighbor to the North and East – is showing, a permanent 25% reduction in administrative staff is possible. Administrations have a natural tendency to grow. In the case of the Boulder Valley School District, an additional 25% cut would save approximately $500,000 annually.

In-Service Days also represent a cost of approximately $500,000 per day for each of the 14 In-Service Days the District schedules each year. Although certain contracts would have to be negotiated and the District likely would net only slightly more than half of these savings, if it eliminated ten of these, it easily could save another $3 million. Teachers and administrators did fine without In-Service Days for decades. They are a relatively new phenomenon in the education arena and have never been proven to be all that beneficial as far as bottom-line educational results are concerned. If need be, give teachers these days off without pay so they have a break but the District still saves the money. Better yet, rescind most of these days and use them to teach kids! What a revolutionary thought.

It’s also time for parents to pitch in more. We should get a commitment from parents in each school to have one parent assisting in every classroom. Every parent should contribute one day per month to his or her child’s school. These added resources would do wonders for the quality of education, the support teachers truly need, and the appreciation parents would have for their teachers and the schools. From a financial perspective, if the District has 21,000 students and an average of 1.75 parents per student, that would represent 36,750 parent days per month. If parents’ time were valued at just $15 per hour, that would be a resource of over $500,000 per month or $4.5 million for a 9-month school year. Just think of how we could improve our schools with a "One Day For Kids" program. Parents could help with classroom instruction, tutoring, fundraising, extracurricular activities, and administration – and even provide expertise to their child’s school based on their own careers and backgrounds.

Some of these resources could be combined with a commitment from the entire community (in this case, including the City of Boulder) to help with fundraising and to develop innovative programs to bring in new resources. Get local businesses involved. Rally the troops! The City should use the low-enrollment and small classroom sized schools as a major marketing tool. It needs to attract more families to the core downtown area if it wants to maintain socio-economic diversity. One way to do this is to have schools in and near the downtown area which can serve families who either live or work in or near downtown. The City should be promoting and supporting these schools as major assets.

Finally, those who have expertise in education know that, indeed "Size Matters" and that, in the case of educating students, "Smaller Is Better." We should be saving and promoting smaller, community-based schools. It allows educators to deliver a better quality of education while also providing a wonderful marketing tool for the community. If Boulder wants families to reclaim the City’s core, it needs to help the BVSD reverse its decision and keep Base Line Junior High, Mapleton Elementary, and Washington Elementary open. The above examples illustrate just a few ways the Boulder Valley School District can save millions of dollars and generate new resources to keep all of its schools open and actually add additional resources to improve the quality of education it provides.