County schools drowning in deficits

School administrations in revenue limit districts have been cut – from my experience mostly at the middle management level. Teachers can not be thanked enough for what they are able to accomplish during the day with the number of interruptions, paperwork, increasing pressure to meet AYP/NCLB targets with swelling classrooms and parent/guardians struggling to find well paying work and ride out this long and deep recession in the state. There is very little that board members and administrators do that is not heavily regulated by federal or state legislation and mandates. Administrators do not “have nothing to do for the most part” in your local schools. They are running at least 24 payrolls a year, accounting for construction and voter approved debt, responding to tort and property claims filed, ensuring that all personnel laws are followed in hiring, dismissal, grievances, negotiating in collective bargaining, monitoring contracts for risk management, purchasing instructional materials, providing food services that meet all regulations, filing 100s of yearly reports from budgets, audits, use of federal funds, maintenance of effort on special education expenses, financial statements, use of state funds – not one $ is spent that is not closely monitored -to maintaining transportation fleets, thousands to hundreds of thousands of square feet of facilities and grounds must be maintained up to legal safety standards, emergency response drills and lock down procedures. They are often on-call 24-7 for fire alarms, rain damage monitoring to prevent storm water runoff, vandalism, theft, alarm systems. I’ve known administrative principals that have been at every after school football game, dance, college prep night, board meeting. In my experience they are men and women, many of whom have been classroom teachers, with a deep caring for children and a strong work ethic. Becoming a school board member is not an easy position by any measure. Their roles are also heavily regulated with little free choice in decision making. They not only attend meetings that can begin at 5 and end at 10 two-three times a month they also do quite a bit of work during the week reading stacks of documents, interview panels, legal challenges, negotiations, monitoring accountability standards, millions of dollars in facilities assets and payroll, layoffs (a particularly wrenching experience), fielding phone calls and e-mails and public access to their home addresses, struggling to balance staggering losses in revenue while maintaining academics, athletics and the arts. There is no easy job in the CA public school system. There is a long history of under funding that has had the state well below the national average level since Prop 13 was adopted decades ago in this state. Prop 98, the minimum guarantee, is all but set aside and became a floor rather than a ceiling. The floor gave way in January 2008. The Governor’s tax initiative attempts to keep a flat funding amount for next year from this year. If it fails districts across this state will be insolvent and forced to the negotiations table to reduce up to an additional 15 days of instruction per year. The great equalizer, public education, will be lowered to a place where it may not recover for another generation. Meanwhile, those districts in areas in the state that vote in local parcel taxes and/or receive large distributions of taxes that exceed their revenue limit entitlement – also known as “basic aid” districts – will fare better. No one wants to be taxed regardless of your political affiliation. The decades of relying upon booms from aerospace, housing, dot.coms ended and the Great Recession revealed that the tax base cannot support the result.