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[KNat <knat AT sprintmail.com>]

Bill Jones wrote:
> The syndicate that represents California community college 
> administrators is trying to eliminate the law that forces them to spend 
> 50% of the money on actual classes (as a taxpayer, I'm wondering, 'Gee, 
> shouldn't that be the 70%, or the 80%, law?'). 
No defenses for them because I think if they truly cared their issues 
would be framed to serving students better. Their terms are not 
acknowledging their client base- students. But, the formulas we all use 
for calculating our schools do force that framing in discussion.
Our financial reports, that measure percent spent on instruction, do 
things like include the teacher's salary as an instructional expense and 
their benefits  as overhead, non-instructional. We can't hire them 
without benefits. It gets crazy to figure what is for the benefit of the 
students in legal terms. (this is a real example, we were so close to a 
line that hiring the additional teacher we wanted, to have a specialist 
and another set of hands/eyes, would have  raised our overhead over a 
line. Ironically, sending our existing teachers to a special training in 
the Virgin Islands would have been "instructional." since they would 
then have a new curriculum to offer.)
Further, we need a highly skilled professional who's training and skills 
are in setting up schemes to met these formulas. His license and 
qualifying reports are only on his ability to follow, and report on, the 
formulas of education. Now, WE include him teaching the students those 
skills as one of our requirements since we figure if we are 
acknowledging it is a necessary life skill, they should be learning it, 
and we keep a wonderful person by letting him also interact with 
students (why he went into teaching, originally.) But in most schools, 
all that person does is gyrate paper (for up to 40% of the school 
funds.) That is not a service to the students, only to the oversight 
officials who invent the rules and get paid to read the stupid reports 
on "percentages" he generates.
"Oversight" of the "taxpayer money" spends well over 90% of the money. 
That's real figures for the officials to create the rules, the school 
workers who document following the rules, the officials reading and 
reporting on the schools, the courts overseeing the compliance. 
Nationalizing education has added so many extra people for every 
student, I think they should have to count themselves as overhead in 
each of our reports. We have to stop having local people, who would 
actually know/help the students, to have people far away looking at 
reports about the students in aggregate.
Schools don't need CEOs. Children are not products.
(btw, we finally got dispensation from the state to count part of our 
administrator as instructional so we could hire the specialist, but not 
all schools have a volunteer like me who would invent/process that.)

Peace,
Kathyann