| 1 - Eliminate Excess Administration
First, look to the district office. Each school district should have only one district office employee (ie: not working at a school) per 250 students within said district.
Then, we should take a look at our schools. There is absolutely no reason why any 7-12 institution needs more than one assistant principal, and there is no reason any K-6 needs any assistant principal at all. My elementary school managed to work just fine, despite having one principal who was getting up there in years. Now, they have an assistant principal who travels through schools!!! We also only need 1 librarian per schoolhouse!!! Different school districts have different issues, but if it sounds like a position is unnecessary, it probably is.
2 - Statewide prohibition of buybacks
Administrators should be banned from cashing in any sick/personal/vacation/days
3 - Reduce administrative pay
My father is 22 years into a job with an organ of state government. He only makes $48,000/annum, which I think is fair as an entry salary for administrative positions. I propose 40% pay cuts for those administrators making more than $80,000/annum and 20% pay cuts for those administrators making more than $60,000/annum.
4 - Mandatory retroactive retirement rules
After 25 years, a teacher or administrator should be forced to retire and those with 25 years or more under their belt should also be forced out, with their pension of course, but understand that pensions have nothing to do with property taxation.
However, to help accomodate this, I highly suggest a progressive mandatory pension fund contribution based on income, much like a progressive income tax. These should apply to public school teachers statewide and should have the same brackets throughout the state.
5 - In terms of cuts towards extracurricular programs, consider sports/cheerleading first
Sports is an extremely specialized program where potentially very few students can get benefit from, and cheerleading is a very heterosexist activity that reinforces traditional gender roles, and as a state that is actively trying to create a less heterosexist and cissexist culture, I just don't believe there should be public funding for it. There are always local businesses or regional sponsors that will help with the cost of sports. Music and arts, however, can better prepare people for college; THERE ARE MUSIC AND ART DEGREES IN HIGHER EDUCATION, BUT YOU CAN'T GET A DEGREE SOLELY BY SCORING POINTS FOR YOUR COLLEGE TEAM.
6 - Encourage DIY textbooks
Yes, this may sound like a crazy idea, but the textbook industry is a known cartel, where new editions keep coming out too soon, thus driving up prices. I believe that NJs public schools should stop purchase of textbooks whenever possible and have either teachers or departments write their own textbooks and save them in a school database for use year after year. This would especially be a good idea for math department, since mathematics is a cut-and-dry subject. I know a math professor at my college who did DIY textbooks, and they ended up being less expensive.
__________________________________________
Please bring the above ideas to the attention of school administrators.
I plugged in these ideas for my own school district, and 2/3 of the savings could be used to offset the state aid cuts and 1/3 could be used to reduce property taxes, and all without pay freezes for teachers (though the richer teachers may have to pay more into the pension fund than the poorer ones, according to one of my ideas to help take the pressure off the pension system due to the forced retirements.
So, remember, it is up to you to pressure your local school board to make sure their priorities are straight, I'd suggest you forward these ideas to your local school board, and if they continue with the same old ideas or put administration above children, it is your obligation to vote the bastards out, or to recall them.
Here is a good resource for recalls. The percentage is steep, but school districts don't have that many people and school elections don't have large turnout.
http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/in...
And of course, I've never done this, mostly because I'd be unelectable, but progressives should run for school board. I propose the open source idea "Anti-Administration, Pro-Education" as an unofficial banner for progressive activists to run under, so that people can bring out-of-the-box ideas for giving children the best education possible, because we need more teachers and less bureaucrats.
|
.gif)
