EDUCATION IS A BATTLEGROUND. GOOD TEACHERS ARE WARRIORS. THESE ARE THE FRONTLINES.
 

Home China Columns

Commentaries

Contact

Curriculum Vitae Graduate Students Publications KS School Naturalist Speeches

University World News Articles
 

 

Release: March 28, 2010
Wordcount: 581

Kansas Schools Not "Crying Wolf"

It is alleged that Kansas schools are making high profile budget cuts just to gain citizen support for increasing tax revenue. Supposedly, schools could save lots of money by just being more efficient. In other words, Kansas schools are merely “crying wolf” when they could readily trim some more fat from their budgets. Supposedly, school administrators are conspiring to close down a popular after-school activity here, an elective music activity there, to stir up public sentiment.

If you want to continue believing that: 1)don’t step inside a Kansas school, 2)don’t talk to Kansas teachers or ex-teachers, and 3)don’t read your local paper.

In the last weeks I have spent part of each day reading clips from newspapers across Kansas detailing the dramatic cutbacks that are being made just at the present time. School personnel cuts are being made in all regions of Kansas. And they do not account for another possible $172 million or more reduction for next school year.

Between 80 and 87 percent of a school’s operating budget is in personnel. Over 3000 K-12 faculty and staff lost their jobs between the 2008-2009 and this year. Administrators are looking at dismissing a similar number again under the best possible scenario.

The first teachers dismissed are mostly new untenured teachers, sometimes our most innovative, hard-working, and enthusiastic teachers. However, some schools (mostly small and rural) are now cutting into their tenured ranks. Under financial exigency, a school can—with due process—dismiss tenured teachers. These consequences are not cosmetic nor engineered to curry public sympathy. Cutting funding cuts people.

Class sizes are going up, often dramatically. Where a middle school or high school had six science teachers, some are cutting to five or four.

In smaller rural schools, where a teacher retires, that salary-line was lost to make up part of the deficit. The rest of the teachers cover those classes. More Kansas students will be taught by out-of-field teachers. Applications for waivers will soar. Kansas students are being deprived of art and music courses as those teachers are being cut in some schools.

Current student teachers and alternate route teachers are finding no job openings. Students at one teacher training university complained that their career fair should have just hung up a sign saying “no jobs.” This sends a new message to classmates that teaching, once considered a fairly secure vocation in times of recession, is no longer a good option.

Dismissed young teachers may join the unemployment line for a short time, but the best will eventually find other work, displacing other Kansans. After a few years away, they will not be coming back to teaching. This emerging “missing generation” of new teachers will have a lingering effect in Kansas schools well beyond any upcoming recovery.

A school consolidation study at the first of this decade, as well as the recent Post Audit, estimated that some money could be saved by consolidation. Both studies noted that there would be construction costs to hub the larger high schools. Smaller rural school boards are already accelerating talks on consolidation, forced by declining revenue, but without any money to merge facilities.

Anyone who reads their local paper knows these consequences of the school revenue shortfall occurring in their neighboring communities are real.

The Legislature will have a better guess of the state financial situation when the consensus estimate is released in mid-April. But any final budget that cuts school funding further can simply be named the Kansas School Consolidation Act.

-30-

John Richard Schrock

 

  Home | Columns | Commentaries | Contact  
  © 2009-2017 John Richard Schrock