From time to time as a school board member I vote against
recommendations. I do this when I do not
believe voting yes is the appropriate course of action.
-When staff wanted to fire a basketball coach for reasons
other than those stated in the board’s backup, knowing this would spur
litigation and despite the fact that this coach wanted to quit---yes I voted
NO.
-When students are treated in disparate fashion based upon
race with respect to disciplinary recommendations—so we can balance numbers--,
I vote NO
-When schools do not follow board policy on bullying and
harassment, I speak out forcefully and take action and often vote NO on
recommendations.
-When our district conducted a disastrously bad
investigation into disbarring a supplier, I voted NO
-When we decided to spend an exorbitant amount of money
building middle school in a
neighborhood where we desperately need another
elementary school, and not a middle school, Yes, I voted NO.
There are many more examples I could point to, including a
recent one at last Tuesday’s regular meeting.
At this meeting an agenda item was presented for our
approval. Now, this expenditure was not
coming from our general fund—it was money we were (are) receiving from a state
grant. Yes, this is grant money, but it
is still taxpayer money.
Anyway, the backup presented was opaque; it listed amounts and brief summaries of the
monies that would be sent to three different companies for “Professional
Development” and “Coaching.” Not given
in the backup were some important issues I wanted outlined. “How many hours is this coach from this
company going to spend here?” “How can
we know this is effective, how do we measure the effectiveness of this
coaching?” I got no good answers, except
that it would be one coach, for roughly 60 hours on several occasions, training
about 40 district “leaders.” For this
part of the expenditure ($31,500.00), this equates to $525 dollars per hour for
“coaching.”
Sorry, I think this is
exorbitant, and I cannot support spending this much.
$525 per hour for one employee of this company to do small
group coaching on “personality traits” and how to be better leaders. Are you kidding me??
No way, no how, ever!
We’ve tried coaching leaders at struggling schools in the
past with high-dollar programs and this hasn’t worked.
I wanted to explore a more cost effective approach, having
employees in our professional learning department find training online in order
to tailor a program to teach our employees utilizing open-source materials,
MOOCs, and/or other free and readily available materials. I wanted to do this instead of hiring
expensive private “coaches” at $525.00 per hour.
I lost the vote 4-1.
I was told by several folks “its grant money, if we don’t
use it, someone else will!”
Here’s my problem with that line of thinking:
Okay, did we negotiate the very best price
for this coaching, did we? Or, did we
just send a request for a proposal and accept the contractor’s rate? I believe we lost our focus on demanding
maximum value out of this purchase, the board was not provided with each
contract with each of these firms that delineates exactly what the deliverables
will be and how the costs were calculated.
It’s like the mentality is this “It’s grant money, so let’s spend it,
and the state approved it so it is acceptable!”
I reject that.
Somewhere, at some time, a General at a base somewhere said
NO, I’m not paying $600 for a toilet seat that I can get at Home Depot for
$29.99. And most certainly there was
probably a purchasing agent that said to him “Sir, these are very good toilet
seats and the DoD has approved the requisition and all of the bases are buying
these, so are we sure we want to reject these—I mean we have money from the
Pentagon specifically earmarked to use for replacing these toilet seats and it
won’t come from our post operating fund---are we sure we want to say no??”
Thankfully that General did reject this. And then Packard Commission was formed. And then purchasing was scrutinized, and
things got more affordable (although still priced above market in many respects)
than they were in years past. One general saying no could eliminate all the $600 toilet seats in the DoD---then the taxpayers save money---see how that works?
Every public official that has any part in acquisitions and
budgeting should be forced to watch the film “The Pentagon Wars” to see how outside
influences can run costs into the stratosphere.
President Eisenhower warned us all about the military
industrial complex, and his fears were legitimate. And what he feared, came to pass.
A lot of this is applicable to today’s education industry.
In today’s world, with our educational expenditures
exploding and at levels per pupil that are the highest in the world, I think we
need to beware of the Educratic-Industrial Complex! Between people that grift off of the
taxpayers selling seminars, conventions, and pedagogy courses to public
entities and school districts—to the testing companies that are driving costs
up while changing the way we teach---to the public sector organized labor
unions that drive up costs in education---we need to have another
Eisenhoweresque moment.
BEWARE THE
EDUCRATIC-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX!
We spend too much and receive too little in return, and
nobody bats an eye. Instead, we turn to
policymakers and others and say we are “underfunded.” We’re not underfunded, we’re inefficient and
wasteful. Unfortunately there appears
to be little appetite in changing this mindset.
No comments:
Post a Comment