News Articles

October 10, 2007

Two ideas to contain school costs

By CURTIS G. HIER

The Cato Institute recently conducted a study of school consolidation in Michigan that found, among other interesting things, that school administrators spend money according to the ease at which it can be raised.

Cato compared two models of spending. The "personal interest model" is an approach to spending where an administrator spends according to what benefits his/her career. According to Andrew Coulson, the author of the study, advancement in the public sector tends to depend upon success in securing and administrating large budgets.

The "benevolence" model is an approach to spending where an administrator spends according to the actual need for the spending. Cato found that the former model was 15 times more likely to be followed than the latter.

All of this means that we need an informed electorate to check the spending habits of our local school administrators. And so the organization I have founded, First Class Education for Vermont (www.fcevt.com), is proposing two measures to inform and empower local voters. Our newly updated Web site provides details about getting involved.

The first measure we're advocating is S.175, a bill to require that supervisory union budgets be voted on by the residents of the supervisory union.

Currently over $120 million of such education spending is not voted on. The propoasal, introduced by Sen. Alice Nitka (D-Windsor), was co-sponsored by Nitka when she was in the House, along with Rep. Harry Chen (D-Mendon) and Rep. Joseph Krawczyk (R-Bennington). It has never received a committee vetting.

It's interesting to note that the committees to which the legislation was referred were committees chaired by former school superintendents. Superintendents are largely given blank checks for spending. While they report to supervisory union boards, nobody usually knows when these boards meet or even who is on them.

The second measure is to require that school boards report percentages of current expenditures going to direct instruction vs. other categories in annual budget reports. In school districts across Vermont, spending on administrative overhead and "student support services" is crowding out spending that could get a better return in terms of education quality, and it's precluding cost containment.

As a nation, we are spending way too much money on non-classroom personnel.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has released numbers that show that the U.S. spends 25.7 percent of available funds on non-teaching staff — compared to 15.5 percent among other members of OECD. Vermont is no exception. While it is true that the U.S. has certain mandates that other countries may not have, these mandates account for much of the truly "benevolent" spending but not for anywhere near all of the "personal interest" spending.

It's important for voters to have a benchmark to see how their districts are spending their money and measure it against comparable districts. Vermont schools all operate under the same state and federal mandates, but some schools are much more efficient in their spending than others.

The way it is now, Vermonters can visit the Department of Education Web page and see what percentage their district devoted to direct instruction — three years ago. Why can't we see more up-to-date numbers? If it makes sense for districts to report the data, after the fact, so the department can eventually put it up on their Web site, why wouldn't it make sense for districts to report the data for proposed budgets before the citizens vote on it?

Vermont statutes currently authorize the commissioner of education to prescribe the categories to be included in the required annual budget reports. But the commissioner feels that there is too much going on with Act 82 and the required cost containment measures passed last year to add one more requirement. However, such a requirement would only take district business managers five minutes to comply. It is unfortunate that the commissioner apparently feels that the Legislature did enough to bring about cost containment last year. It's unlikely that most Vermonters feel that way.

The other option in adopting this second measure would be for the Legislature to adopt it. Senator Kevin Mullin (R-Rutland) offered the legislation as an amendment to the cost containment bill, but he withdrew it after the leadership promised consideration of the legislation in committee this next year. It remains to be seen whether that promise will be kept.

These measures, if adopted, can only enhance our democratic rights and will likely help bring education costs under control.

Curtis G. Hier is a high school teacher and is chairman of First Class Education for Vermont.