WHERE TO FIND SCHOOL MONEY

                                            WHERE TO FIND SCHOOL MONEY

     If my task was to find ways to waste tax dollars, you know how I'd do it?  I'd create a couple a hundred bureaucracies  that just do the same thing.  I'd give them all a superintendent with a big salary, an administrative staff, with offices and buildings, oh...and a bunch of vehicles.  All bureaucracies have to have vehicles to drive around in and maintenance guys with big rings of official looking keys. And one more thing!!  None of the people that carry the keys, or drive the vehicles, or occupy the administrative offices, or any of the administrative staff or even the superintendent do the actual job the bureaucracy was created to do.

     Isn't that brilliant of me to figure out all by myself how to waste millions...oh wait it's already been done.  Any resemblance between the bureaucracies I described and the 250 plus school districts the state is burdened with is purely intentional!!

     I saw a aTV ad awhile back that said about 45 cents of every tax dollar goes to schools.  I think that's crap. The money goes to superintendents, administrators and overhead and darned little trickles down to the actual class room. 

     I have nothing but respect for the teachers that struggle every day to teach kids, but does Oregon really NEED 250 different districts?  Could we get along with say four regional districts? School   districts vary in size from the money gobbling Portland district to the tiny Fossil Oregon district with only 100 or so kids.  Again, do 100 kids need their own district or could they be a part of another district?  Every group has their agenda for fixing schools but if it doesn't GUT ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS IT ISN'T A PLAN!!

     I read in an Oregonian a while back where a fella by the name of Lekas that owns a management company tried to figure out some of the schools budgets.  He concluded they were "incomprehensible."  But he figured that if all the local school support staff were fires there would be $9,000 for each elementary student, $10,000 for each middle school student and $11,000 for each high school student.THAT'S WHAT I CALL A PLAN!!!  He looked at only the budgets for 7 Portland schools.

     Bottom line is this:  Schools are not poorly funded and do not need more money.  They need less administration.  Remember two things:  Redundancy is our natural enemy.  There is always money for the 3 "B's" Bureaucrats, Bombs, and Bullets.

View From The Street

Don DuPay