Apparently our Washington County School Board doesn’t like charter schools.
Not because they are teach poorly. But because they compete, strongly, for educational funding:
"Either they’re (charter schools) going to get rolled back underneath the school district or we’re going to give up a whole bunch of property tax to the charter schools, there’s no way around it," Bills said.
And we if we spend money we have to have control (not the parents):
Bills said the issue is charter schools have their own community councils with the right to hire and fire teachers.
The entire article, except for a bone at the end, is about “them” and their bureaucratic problems. It is hard to plan because they don’t know where kids will be going. They don’t want to spend money and not have control over the teachers. Blah blah blah.
I can think of a million ways to make life simpler for bureaucrats. Starting with having less bureaucrats.
Utah schools spend the least per student in the country. Some look at that and say “we need to raise it”. And it has, spending has grown $1,200/student per year since 2006. I look at our low per pupil spending and say, “nice – we are efficient, can we be more efficient?”. How about this chart:
This seems relatively lean. I’m sure there is waste – for instance I think our schools have WAY too many administrators. 5 vice principals and an athletic director seems excessive to me for a 4A school, for instance. And while our teachers are paid relatively low compared to other states, I betcha we could keep that lower and still retain a happy work force if we made the work satisfying and less of a hassle.
In other words, I don’t look to states like New York, or California for governance or educational advice. They’ve thrown money at education for decades and their student performance has not improved. And the lavish period has now setup a time where they are about to make dramatic cuts that are politically based to protect the unions, not the kids.
We are doing fine keeping it cheap. I say “keep at it!”.