Bonnie Lesley, guest column: If we want better schools, we need more investment

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Bonnie Lesley, guest column: If we want better schools, we need more investment

BONNIE LESLEYGuest column

Sunday February 7, 2010

Many people have said to me during my long career in public education that “throwing money at the problem” is not required for school improvement. And, of course, it isn’t the answer if that is all we do.

But I can say with certainty that student achievement will not improve if we do not significantly increase our investment in schools. More funding is needed to replace the money that used to be there for instruction.

When I first started teaching in the 1960s in El Paso, I remember our superintendent proclaiming that more than 80 percent of the district’s budget was dedicated to teacher salaries. Today, the entire instructional budget for most school districts accounts for only about 60 percent of a district’s budget and includes teacher salaries, professional development, curriculum, teaching resources and instructional technology.

Schools today have many new areas of need that require funding. In part, this is because of a myriad of unfunded mandates at the federal and state levels and because federal and state funding is inequitable.

Nevertheless, teacher salaries and benefits remain unacceptably low, and students are suffering. All children deserve a first-class education and, despite these mandates and obstacles, we must find ways to inject more money into the system.

To understand the problem, we must realize that today’s school systems must budget large sums of money for services that schools from decades past did not have to. These items include:

* Security: Schools started seeing the need to pay for staff to provide security in the 1980s, and that need continues to escalate, especially after 9/11. Waco ISD alone spent nearly $2 million in academic year 2008 to 2009 on security.

* Nurses: School nurses or aides are required to administer all kinds of medications and health screenings, monitor inoculations and provide care as needed at campuses. In Waco ISD those costs amounted to about $1 million in 2008-09.

* Special education: Schools are required to employ diagnosticians, speech therapists, occupational therapists, mental health specialists and other specialized staff to serve diverse needs of special education students. Waco ISD spent $9 million on all of its special education services in 2008-09.

* Technology: Schools must have sophisticated computers, software and technical specialists in today’s computer-driven world. The cost of administrative data processing in Waco ISD in 2008-09 was more than $2 million. Instructional computers, software, staff and other related expenses cost more than $1 million.

* Transportation: More students ride buses to and from school — even when they live short distances from their campus. Waco ISD, which is dubbed an urban district, spent more than $2.5 million in 2008-09 on student transportation services.

* Compliance: School funding comes from federal, state, local and private sources, all requiring applications, accounting, and numerous onerous reports. As a former associate superintendent for five urban school districts, including Waco ISD, I found that compliance requirements consumed at a minimum 20 percent of my time and sometimes as much as 60 percent. Those percentages are similar for almost all line administrators, so more administrators are required to get the job done.

* Energy: Schools always have had to budget for energy costs, but recent price hikes in gasoline and electricity have hit districts hard, causing districts to increase the amount of funds earmarked to these costs. No child learns more when energy bills are higher, and the money required to pay the light bill frequently takes away from instructional budgets.

Special mandates

Apart from these above costs, another category that eats away at school budgets is every superintendent’s nightmare and is termed “unfunded mandates.”

Some examples include the 2001 federal No Child Left Behind Act and special education requirements, as well as Texas’s dyslexia mandates and class-size limits. These laws were all passed for good and important reasons, but all included many requirements with inadequate or no funding provided to districts left scrambling to comply.

The No Child Left Behind Act required massive changes in schools, and the increased funding in no way covered the law’s mandates.

President Barack Obama is seeking a major overhaul of the U.S. education system, and this could possibly change this law, up for reauthorization this year. The president is leaning toward a shift from an emphasis on testing to an emphasis on career preparation. His recent $3.8 trillion budget proposal includes $49.7 billion for education, with 7.5 percent increase in federal education funds earmarked toward paying for programs under No Child Left Behind.

This would be a welcome change, as mandates for special education services have never been fully funded by the federal or state governments. Federal funding — which was supposed to be 40 percent of the costs — has in reality paid for only about 15 percent of costs. States and local districts fund the remaining 85 percent.

In addition, Texas schools get no extra money to fund the state’s requirements to screen and administer special services for dyslexic students, which typically make up between 6 percent and 15 percent of a school’s student body.

And keeping class-size levels at reasonable requires not only more teachers, but more classrooms, materials, energy, janitorial services and so forth. For a more comprehensive list that explains unfunded mandates, go to the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) Web site at www.tasb.org/legislative/resources/documents/mandates02.pdf .

Teacher salaries

Even though teachers have seen salary improvements in recent years, many still can barely make a living. I have never been able to understand why anyone would want their children’s teachers to be so poor that they cannot take a vacation, afford to pay tuition, buy books or a computer, attend a professional conference, or pay the dues to professional associations.

Teachers also need paid time to attend professional development sessions, participate in collaborative curriculum planning, evaluate teaching materials, prepare lessons and evaluate student work.

The point is that we need higher expenditures for teachers to be able to recruit the best and brightest to the teaching profession and be able to offer them competitive salaries to keep them in our schools. We must support their ongoing learning so that they are good models for the children. And we must give them appropriate resources so they are effective in their work.

Wealth disparities

In spite of some attempts to improve equity, enormous disparities still exist between the wealthiest school districts having the lowest tax rates and the highest revenue for students.

Property-poor districts struggle with much lower funding, higher tax rates for people who can’t afford to pay and greater numbers of children with special needs.

For example, wealthy districts in Texas during the 2006 to 2007 academic year were able to generate $2,382 more per student than the lowest wealth districts. During that period, those districts rated “exemplary” by the Texas Education Association spent, on average, $5,677 per student. Those deemed “low performing” had $4,980 per student to spend. In Texas, during that same period, the average expenditure per student was $1,509 below the national average.

There is a disparity at the federal level, as well.

The Center for American Progress recently published a study showing that Texas falls in the bottom 10 states for receiving Title I funding, with $1,411 earmarked for each poor child. Vermont receives $3,416 in Title I funding per child and Utah receives the least, $1,238 per child.

For the students

Finally, the most important reason for increasing funding is the students themselves. Sadly, Texas has growing percentages of children who come from poverty.

A school with only a small percentage of economically disadvantaged children can still meet their needs, but we have many schools in Texas with 90 percent or more children living in needy households. More than 60 percent of all children in McLennan County are eligible for free or reduced lunch.

Many come from unstable homes. They endure great stresses. They may live in unsafe housing or neighborhoods. Many are hungry. Many do not have health care. Some do not speak English. And most come to school performing two or more years behind their more privileged peers.

Schools need increased resources to close the gap so these children have a reasonable chance for success.

We know enough to know what to do to increase their chances for success, but there is virtually no way to close the achievement gap without sufficient funding for more instructional time and specialized staff and services.

In a democracy, we get the government and services that we want. When we decide that great schools are our priority, we can have the best schools in the world. But to get there we need to understand the real funding needs of schools and the reasons why there are increased needs. And then we need to make the necessary commitment to ensure that all kids are well educated.

Bonnie Lesley spent 41 years as a public school teacher and administrator, including five years as assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction in Waco ISD. She currently is president of Creative Education Institute, based in Waco.

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ghd

Mar. 13, 2010, 4:14AM

Bonnie Lesley, guest column: If we want better schools, we need more investment

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