|
Thanks Shorebound. Much appreciated. Yes, plenty specific enough.
If you think Baldacci's admin. consolidation ideas are taking heat, if he had suggested eliminating sports teams they'd literally want his head on a platter. I am a track coach myself and I work part time for one of the HS basketball tournament venues. The unrelenting POWER of sports in our culture is phenomenal. If half the energy that parents and others put into sports went into good discipline and homework, MANY of the schools' (and society's) problems would be solved. It's absolutely unreal. I am a great advocate of sports and all other extra curriculars, but I at least agree that parents need to foot more of the bill if they want all these teams. That means setting up more boosters clubs and having more private fundraisers to offset all this cost. * Back during the late 1970's gas crunch, there was a proposal to scrap the football program at my hometown high school to save money. The team was never really much good, and we also had cross country and soccer which would remain since they were cheaper to run. THE COMMUNITY WENT BULLSHIT! HUNDREDS of people went to the schoolboard meetings on this to protest, there were tons of letters to the editor opposing it, petitions were circulated, etc. and they caved quick and kept the program. Good luck trying to get rid of school-based sports in Maine.
I love the idea of the smaller neighborhood schools, but reality now is that they want to consolidate locally to save many of the other costs (including admin., utilities, maintenance, etc.) which is why the new schools are being built larger to consolidate the old smaller schools. It is expensive for a town/city to maintain multiple schools. Many Maine schools share principals. Larger schools put all the grades and admin. under one roof. But as you say that also means needing space for sports fields which WILL NEVER GO AWAY. Even the smaller neighborhood schools still require transportation services, especially for the little kids, and parents insist on this. We also have to remember that the rural schools will also always need transportation, so those new schools should certainly be consolidated.
As to the special ed. piece, under I.D.E.A. (Individuals with Disabalities Act - both state and federal), if a kid has a classified diagnosis (and there are many - everything from attention deficit disorder to mental retardation), then that student has the right to receive special education services. So those kids that you say are "behavioral problems" in school can qualify for some amount of special ed. services if they have a special ed. diagnosis, PERIOD! And parents can raise hell, to the point of threatenting lawsuits, insisting on this. If the kid is a behavioral problem but doesn't have a diagnosis, then he remains in the regular classroom and is subject to discipline from teachers and admin. Some kids who fall under special ed. who are still behavioral problems in their resource rooms and/or mainstream classrooms are still subject to discipline, but believe me that it is often a much harder road to travel to get something done with them. If a kid is bad enough and has to be removed from the school, often the system still have to provide tutoring, or another placement, or some other kind of alternative plan. Yes, the umbrella of special ed. has widened dramatically in recent decades, and it is VERY expensive. But it is the law. One could try to argue that we are over-diagnosing kids, but that is up to the Ph.D.'s and other specialists who are doing the assessing and diagnosing, but it is something for states to look at. There are also what are called 504 services for kids with disabilities that don't otherwise affect their abilitiy to learn (i.e. smart kids that may have a physical disability, but they still get accommodation services, etc). Kids under I.D.E.A. or 504 special ed. receive teacher aide support, self-contained classes, resource room support and services, speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, special phys ed classes, resource room support, special transportation, etc. etc. It also requires more layers of admin. and clerical support. Some of the sp. ed. files are INCHES thick! Every sp. ed. student gets an indivualized plan that requires periodic meetings to update. It's ethical and right to do, but also VERY expensive and requires vast resources. BUT, with state and federal I.D.E.A. mandates the services MUST be provided.
Again, some of my cost saving ideas: Consolidate admin. and purchasing functions where practicable in education; As I said above, trim extra curricular budgets and increase town/school connections to offset these costs through added private fundraising; Close LD1 loopholes to increase local budgeting efficiencies; Streamline state ed. mandates (i.e. permanently eliminate the foolish local common assessment system, trim down the volume of learning results indicators to better focus on critical basic skills, etc.); deal with skyrocketing property valuations in some way and/or the proper adjustment of local mill rates; consolidate admin. functions wherever possible across all state departments; consider expanding circuit breaker and homestead exemption; implement zero-based budgeting models, especially in local government, to find ways to squeeze out waste; in the long run, healthcare and energy costs MUST be addressed. We could talk about how best to get those done forever. Looking forward to your response.
|