Last Saturday in the MJ the editorial was praising two Wayne County school districts for making an innovative move naming one superintendent for the two school districts. By eliminating one superintendent it was estimated that "about $200,000 in taxpayer's money" will be saved. The editorial went on to say that "Ohio's system of school districts is obviously and woefully inefficient". That got me to thinking.
It seems like each and every election at least one school district is putting new tax levies on the ballot. Around here the most notable is Beaver Local. Not having much industry in their district they have to rely mostly on property taxes to keep their doors open. In a depressed area there is a lot of home owners with budgets stretched to the limit. As a result it is increasingly difficult to get a new levy passed. Everybody wants the best for their children's education but there is only so much we can afford.
If I counted correctly in Columbiana County there are 13 school districts including the JVS. Then there is the CC Education Service Center. That makes 14 different entities and each and everyone of them have a superintendent, a Board of Education and principals for each school in their district. Time after time each board exhibits a reluctance to really get serious and change the status quo to save their districts money. I couldn't find anything on the county's different web pages but there use to be a County Board with yet another superintendent. There is a state board with 19 members and a president. In addition to that the state has Area Coordinators. We're in District 7 which is headquartered in New Philly and we have three different Area Coordinators. To me that seems like a lot of over lapping of administrative duties for our school systems. There's a lot of money being spent on salaries and benefits that could be poured back into our schools for our children's education.
Why not follow the lead of those two Wayne County districts? Why not have one county superintendent and BOE for all the districts in the county? It would have to come out of the state legislature. I don't see any district willingly changing the antiquated way they do business. It's a radical idea and the folks we send to Columbus would have to show some serious intestinal fortitude to change this system. However, it could be done and state wide the savings would be tremendous. Even in our county the savings would be immense. Yes, a lot of superintendents would be out of a job but in most cases they could be absorbed back into their districts as principals or teachers. With normal attrition through retirements or relocations, etc. there will be such positions available.
Our educational system is increasingly overwhelmed with costs of benefits alone. We do not need all of the duplicated administrators when we have a principals doing basically the same job. As individuals we have to learn to live within our means when changes occur in our lives. Educators have to do the same. As the MJ editor said the Ohio government leaders have to take a serious look at public school reform. This is just one idea to start with. Our children deserve better without mom and dad being taxed to death.
Think about it...
ole nib
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6 comments:
Southern Local should never have built that new school, they should have combined with us. I know that wouldnt have made alot of people happy but it would have made sense. Lots of those kids go to school in Wellsville anyway. Just an examplel of wasted tax dollars.
Hey I got an idea,
Close Wellsville and ship all the kids to Southern, Beaver Local and East Liverpool.
Southern got more for their school building dollars than Wellsville.
Wellsville just got one new high school building and Southern got all new buildings.
Talk about waste of taxpayers money!! Just look at both districts, the same amount of money was spent in each district, now who got the better deal??
I agree with opinion..many of those kids go to Wellsville anyway.
I am not saying Wellsville should have even had a new school. They could have fixed up the old High School and not had empty schools sitting in town now. But to build 2 new schools so close together with so few kids was silly. I only say they should have combined because Wellsville had the new school first, whether we neededit or not.
You can put earrings on a pig and it's still a pig. No amount of sparkling, shiny new buildings makes a difference if the teachers inside are not doing their jobs.
Let's see whether these new buildings improve the report cards for these districts.
The comment trend here seems to lean toward consolidating the consolidated schools. Interesting. Back when Southern & Beaver Local were built they were called consolidated schools. They were built to accommodate the babies we baby-boomers were producing. Back then the city schools were getting over crowded and places like Calcutta was booming with new homes being built. Back then industry was booming up and down this valley. Now things have changed.
Although we can't scrap the whole system our state legislators need to go back to square one and, as the MJ editor proposed, take a serious look at education reform.
ole nib
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