Stretching The Education Dollar

American education (K-12) is looking at a truly terrifying future. One of the largest (and probably the most affluent) districts in my area just announced it is planning to save 50% of custodial costs by “privatizing” the function.
The people who will be cleaning the schools next year will get substantially lower wages, much poorer benefits and won’t be enrolled in the state’s retirement program. That’s about twenty more people who will not be contributing as much to the consumer spending we are depending on to pull us out of the recession.
Savaging the janitors’ pay won’t begin to solve the district’s problems, however. Last year, declining enrollment (people are moving out of Michigan in droves, taking kids with them) and reduced state aid forced that district to cut over a million dollars from its budget.
The $600,000 it will save by getting rid of the current custodial staff isn’t really going to solve this year’s $1.5 million dollar deficit. Nor will it help much at all in dealing with next year’s projected $4.7 million shortfall.
Other districts in the area are looking forward to absolutely huge deficits next year as well. The state will likely not be able to help. At what point does this start really cutting to the bone?
If I thought a handful of districts in Michigan—that I am personally familiar with—were part of a tiny minority in this country, I wouldn’t bother writing. But they’re not. For the first time since before I was alive, before World War II, we honestly don’t have the money.
It doesn’t help that a panicked Federal Government is adding to the pressure. We’ve known for years that vast numbers of American students have been passed on to the next grade completely unable to read, write or cipher.
Now the government is leaning on school districts to do vastly more just when they have less to do it with. Look at the tiny little (one mile square) district of Central Falls in Rhode Island. It’s not only tiny, it’s also poor and under-educated.
If the suburban kids I see when I substitute teach are increasingly unmotivated—leaving assignment sheets untouched on their desks—imagine the motivation in impoverished districts where the parents don’t care at all. (Sometimes I see the grade sheets—two or three As, a few Bs, a few more Cs, and as many as ten Fs. The kids don’t care.)
Over in Rhode Island, Central Falls is one of the lowest performing districts in the state. Under new Federal standards, the district was given four choices: Shut down, become a charter school, follow special guidelines that demand much longer days and deny teachers almost all planning or lunch time (they eat with the kids). Or the district could fire them all.
So they did. (This is somehow going to motivate the kids? Long experience has taught me and a lot of other teachers that if the parents don’t care, the kids aren’t going to either.) So at the end of the year, approximately 90 teachers will be out of a job.
Can you imagine how much money that will save the district? Teachers with twenty or more years of experience (and salary increases) replaced by an entire staff starting out at the bottom salary rung! That is one real way to save the 85% of a school budget that goes into wages!
I suspect boards all over the nation are looking at Central Falls with sharp pecuniary interest. (They are already begging long-term teachers around here to please, please, please retire.) Under the new fiscal restraints, it isn’t just custodians who are expendable.
How tempted might a district facing a multi-million dollar shortfall be to “privatize” those expensive items called “teachers” as well as ancillary staff? I fear we may see a lot of interesting things in American education over the coming years.
None of them are likely to make students learn more.