Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - Re: [Homestead] California College Administrators Attempt Funding Coup

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: KNat <knat AT sprintmail.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] California College Administrators Attempt Funding Coup
  • Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 08:39:14 -0600

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




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page