The Truth on School Consolidation

Boy o Boy is Oklahoma in trouble. Over a $900 million budget deficit (and growing). With the Oklahoma legislature about to reconvene on the first of February I thought I would put my two cents in. One of the things we are hearing is that the Republican leadership will use the deficit to try to consolidate schools. We hear this some every year, but this year seems to be a big push.  Legislators are really good at trying to pit people or groups against each other and try to put the blame on one side for why things are they way they are. Currently the Republican leadership is trying to convince teachers that the reason they haven't had a raise in a decade is because we spend too much on administration cost and have too many districts. Let me try to show why that's not true or a solution to our problem.

Let me first say that we currently have a $900 million revenue failure and we give away 1.7 Billion dollars in tax credits. We instituted a .25% tax cut that is going to cost us another $150 million in lost revenue. Recent tax cuts have cost us over another billion dollars, and tax breaks to oil and gas another $200 million. I say this to make the point that if the legislature wanted to raise teacher's salaries they could make it real easy with better budget management, that we all use in our own houses.

School consolidation falls into two categories. You are either closing schools and having larger districts or you are consolidating school district administration services. For a little background school money spent on administration is capped based on your school size. The highest level is 8 percent. If you eliminated all administrators in Oklahoma you couldn't raise teachers' salaries enough to move up even one spot in state comparison teacher salaries. Let alone even get to the regional average.

The first method is just to have fewer schools serving more students. Here is the biggest problem I see. What district do you know that has the space to take on even small districts? Schools are already busting at the seems. Our building funds have never kept up with the times to build buildings so districts are faced with passing bonds. If a larger district absorbs two or three other schools that each have 200 or 300 kids where are they going to put them and how is that district going to raise the funds build those buildings? Pass Bonds? State Money? From where, we are behind $900 million now and growing. Have you priced school building lately? Those things aren't on the clearance section. Walmart doesn't have rollbacks for those. There are other issues like busing, safety, additional staff, including additional administrators to handle the additional kids.

The second option is to leave buildings open just consolidate administrative services. A recent plan put forward had it going from 500 to 200 Oklahoma school districts for administration. The average salary plus benefits for an Oklahoma school administrator is $100,000. So there is a savings of $30 million if all those administrators quit working. Not enough for a $1,000 raise, but a savings. There's two big problems. One, if buildings don't close there will need to be a principal or someone to handle discipline issues or day to day operations. Evaluate teachers, staff, you get the picture. So that $30 million shrinks in a hurry. In most of the smaller school districts the administrator does several jobs. They are not superintendent alone. Some are principals, some teach classes, coach, drive buses, etc. Again, you get the picture. You can't just eliminate 300 administrators, keep the buildings open, and save a lot money.

As you can see consolidation doesn't save money? Are there too many districts? Maybe, maybe not. There are some amazing small districts. Ever tried to get a large group of people to agree or work on a project? The bottom line is  this is just a tactic used to try to place blame. Pit groups against each other. The facts don't change. If the Republican leadership wants teacher raises they can make budget changes and do it. They just have to have the political courage to stand up and admit what they are doing is not working, but they are willing to change.