Prodigal Spending in Our Public Schools, Part Two

Dear Readers,

For part one of Prodigal Spending in Our Public Schools, click here. In that previous post, I started a list of wasteful spending that I saw first hand in our public schools.

So far, there’s

1] Textbook misallocation of funds

2] Impeccable landscaping.

3] Excessive Technology.

And now the list continues…

4] The attendance lady.

The school I taught at was similar to most other schools in that it had an attendance lady- a lady who compiled all the attendance records and made phone calls home to parents of absent students and other stuff. (Well, she oversaw the machine that automatically made phone calls home to the parents of absent students.) But I think this position could be cut.

Maybe teachers could take attendance, and then not report the attendance to anybody. The only reason there’s an attendance lady is because schools have to report attendance to the government for funding purposes. But if we were back in the one-room school-house days, we wouldn’t have to do that, and I think we could cut the attendance lady position altogether, or at least merge that position with the receptionist position.

(For an interesting book on how education has moved from being controlled locally to being controlled federally, see Liberty and Learning: The Evolution of American Education, by Larry P. Arnn, the President of Hillsdale College. It’s a fascinating book.)

5] Ordering Art Supplies from Expensive Places

The art teacher, who we’ll call Ms. Y., told me about her dilemma with ordering supplies. She only has a limited amount of money to spend, and she sometimes spends her own personal money. The school district has contracts to buy stuff from certain companies, and so Ms. Y. could only order supplies from certain companies. She couldn’t shop around for the best deals. If I remember right, one of the companies that the school had to order from was based in Canada, and so the shipping was really expensive. Later in the year, the school district told her that she could start ordering from a different art-supply company that was based in a neighboring city, rather than a company based in a foreign country. On top of the savings in shipping, the prices of all the supplies from this new company were usually 25 % – 50 % cheaper! I’m glad the district finally switched to the cheaper company. But still, for all that time before they switched, the district had been wasting money buying expensive supplies and paying expensive shipping costs.

6] The locksmith

Did we really need a full-time locksmith? Maybe. He was in charge of making sure all the locks and keys in the school district worked. Or maybe we could have outsourced that position, or maybe we could have had the custodians do the locksmith job.

7] HeadStart and Early Head Start

I picked up a promotional flier for this government program in the front office. I have transcribed it for you here:

J. O. Combs Preschool Head Start and Early Head Start

Head Start is a preschool program for low income families or children with documented disabilities. We provide classroom and home base options for 3 and 4 year olds. Children experience academic and social-emotional experiences which will help them transistion into kindergarten. Early Head Start is a home base program for infants and toddlers birth to 3 and pregnant teens and women.

We do not provide transportation.

Free tuition.

The following information is required:

Proof of income – Income Tax return, check stubs, award letters. TANF, SSI Disability, Foster Care, JOBS, DES Child Care, or Homelessness

Proof of child’s age – Birth certificate, guardianship papers, AHCCCS

Proof of updated immunizations.

On the back of that flier they have all that information written in Spanish.

So here’s the waste I see in the Head Start and Early Head Start Program: The whole thing. I think all tax funded pre-kindgergarten programs should be cancelled in perpetuity throughout the nation.

8] Information Technology Fix-It People

With example of wasteful spending # 3, excessive technology, comes example of wasteful spending # 8: people to fix the excessive technology. I think each campus in the school district where I worked had 1 or 2 computer fix-it people employed by the district. Maybe we could get rid of a lot of the technology and get rid of a lot of the technology fix-it people. Because the important question is, does all that technology really improve education? The jury’s still out on that one. For more information on technology in schools and such, see the writings of Neil Postman, especially Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology.

9] The Drama Fee Drama

OK gang, this story should make you mad. It still makes me mad when I think about the corruption and injustice deep at the heart of this story.

The story starts like this: In an attempt to make more money, the school district where I used to work came up with the brilliant idea of charging fees for elective classes. They decided to make every student pay ten bucks to take drama.

I, the drama teacher, didn’t find out about this until about halfway through the third quarter. I found out that I had $550 to spend on drama class supplies, such as costumes, sets, scripts, and so on. Well, seeing as how I didn’t have any good textbooks for my classes, I wanted to order either some drama textbooks or some collections of scenes and monologues from Amazon.com, where you can get some really good deals. But the secretary informed me that Amazon.com was off limits. I found some books I wanted at Dover Publications, but Dover was also off-limits, per the district's rules. Remember how in list item # 5, the art teacher could only order from certain companies? Well, it was like that for me, too. I had to get my order pre-approved with the district.

So time went on, and I decided that I would just spend the money on big sheets of colorful paper and paint, which I would use for the plays that I put on. I would order from the same companies that the art teacher used, so I knew that the purchases would be approved.

Time went on, and the art teacher and I, and some art students, helped build and paint the sets. We used up a lot of paint and paper and stuff. I told the art teacher that her art supplies would be replenished with the $550 that I had from my drama fee fund.

Well, when the art teacher and I tried to order the supplies, the powers that be told us, “Actually, that money has been re-allocated to the bookstore.”

Yeah, you read that right!

Without even telling me, that 550 bucks was whisked away to fund another department! But the money wasn’t even spent on another class. It was spent on the bookstore, which is like a little side project of the librarian. I don’t know what the bookstore is, exactly, but it involves asking for book donations from home, and it involves selling books to students, and it involves releasing some students from class sometimes so they can help with the bookstore.

But whatever "the bookstore" is, it's certainly not the place that drama fee funds ought to be going! I wonder how the librarian is going to use those drama fee funds. Maybe she’s buying books at wholesale rates and then jacking up the prices and selling them to students. Ha ha ha. If that’s her plans, I hope she gives me a cut of the profit.

Ha ha ha.

I laugh to prevent myself from clenching my fist and releasing my Wolverine claws.

There are so many things wrong with that story. Here’s a few:

One- the parents of my drama students paid the fee under the impression that it was a mandatory fee. (Of course, for poor families, you could talk to the principal and he could waive the fee.)

Two- the parents paid the fee under the impression that the fee was important, and that the money would be going towards something worthwhile. Maybe some of the parents thought the money would be going to something so awesome that their taxes wouldn’t cover it. “Wow,” the parents must have thought, “the electives at this middle school must be extra awesome, if they need extra money, on top of money from taxes, to make them so fantastic!”

Three- the parents paid the fee under the impression that the money would be spent on drama, not on the bookstore.

Four- I, the drama teacher, didn’t even know I had this pool of money available to me until late in the school year. Of course, I did miss a few meetings, and maybe I should have taken the initiative to find out about the money, but it seemed like all I ever heard about money from the administration was, “the budget is tight this year. Watch the number of copies you make. Paper is money, you know.”

Five- the art teacher never got reimbursed for all that paint and paper we used.

Six- The money never really felt like it was mine to begin with. I barely found out that I had it, and then I couldn’t spend it how I wanted to, and then I couldn’t spend it at all because it was embezzled by the librarian!

This is the kind of shenanigan that happens in government.

OK, those are most of the examples of prodigal spending in our public schools that I have seen from firsthand experience. But I have a lot of other commentary on other ways that public schools waste money. And I have a lot of anecdotal evidence about how other school districts have been wasting money. And I plan to write about those things soon.

But for now I bid you farewell.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa