"EDUACTION, PUT YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER"
By Ted King, President of the RCPOA
In Februrary thousands of school teachers took the day off to descend on the state capitol to protest the buget shortfall and its thread to education funding.
Waving signs sayin " Save Our Schools" or S.O.S. the Oklahoma Education Association teachers union was out in force to demand MORE MONEY from the state's taxpayers.
We made a request from the State Superintendent Sandy Garrett's Office and got the number on our school superintendents.
The Rogers County Property Owners Association does not wish to involve itself in the debate over our schools except that IT IS the Property Owners' of Rogers County and Oklahoma who foot the bill for a large part of the funding for public education. We should have a say on HOW OUR MONEY IS SPENT!
Oklahoma has 552 Public School Superintendents. Many Superintendents also have Assistant Superintendents and other well-paid peresonnel on their staff. Superintendents alone draw almost 40 million dollars.
States like California and Florida with many times our state population have less than 100 school Superintendentst each. WHY DO WE HAVE SO MANY!?!
Tulsa and Oklahoma Counties have 15 Supers each. Our own Rogers County has 9 Superintendents.
Seven counties in Oklahoma area statistically frontiers according the 2000 US Census. That is they have fewer than 6 persons per square mile. And yet each of these sparsely populated counties has two or more Superintdents. Beaver County in the panhandle has four Superintendents costing $246,297 a year. $25,547 in fringe benefits for the Superintendentsbrings the total up to $271,844 - just for Beaver County Superintendents! The other Frontier County in the panhandle is Cimarron County with four Superintendents.
They make a cumulative $211,181! $5,988 extra for expenses! Dewey County has three Superintendents who make a total of $200,200 with expenses of $10,458! Ellis County has four Supers that make a total of $238,565 - $9,897 more for their expenses. Grant County has four Supers who make a total of $245,842 plus an additional $16,986 for expenses.
Harper County has only two Supers. They make a total of $137,525 and have $12,305 for expenses.
Roger Mills County has 5 Supers who make a total of $302,383 and have expenses totaling 21,439!
Now these are just the Frontier counties -- 6 or fewer people per square mile. That does not include the other 70 counties with hundreds of Superintendents who take up space and draw significant salaries in the name of "educating our children." To see a full list of Oklahoma counties and total salaries being paid to Superintendents. click here
And just to drive our point home, Rogers County has NINE (9) Superintendents.
Let's not mince words here -- this is a SCANDAL! We are talking about MILLIONS HERE; and they don't have enough MONEY to pay SUBSTITUTE TEACHERS? They don't have enough money for SCHOOL SUPPLIES? The teachers march on the state capitol holding up signs proclaiming - Save Our Schools?
They are WASTING OUR MONEY outrageously?
NO MORE MONEY FOR EDUCATION UNTIL EDUCATION GETS ITS OWN HOUSE IN ORDER!
"DO IT FOR OUR CHILDREN"
 Press Releases
Nation’s Largest Taxpayer Group Backs Oklahoma Plan to Deliver More Money to Children in the Classroom
By Kristina Rasmussen, Peter J. Sepp
Mar 22, 2006
(Alexandria, VA) – A soon-to-be-circulated proposal to boost the effectiveness of schools in Oklahoma without raising taxes has drawn early raves from the nation’s largest grassroots taxpayer organization. Today the 350,000-member National Taxpayers Union (NTU), which has over 5,900 members in Oklahoma, endorsed a measure that would dedicate 65 percent of all education funding to classroom instruction.
“Currently only 57.9 cents on the dollar are devoted to direct instruction. This citizen-driven ballot proposal would channel more than $269 million to classrooms without the specter of tax hikes or costly bond measures,” said NTU Government Affairs Manager Kristina Rasmussen, endorsing the Oklahoma funding blueprint. “Until now taxpayers have faced a devil’s dilemma of higher property taxes or cuts in vital funding. This innovative proposal would chart a third way toward providing education funding and preserving taxpayers’ wallets.”
If the plan is adopted, Oklahoma would not be the first state to increase funding for the classroom. Utah, Tennessee, New York, and Maine all spend at least 65 percent of their education budgets in the classroom. More than a dozen states spend less than 50 percent, placing more emphasis on non-essential administrative and bureaucratic red tape that interferes with classroom resources. The District of Columbia for example, devotes less than 50 percent, and has one of the worst performing school districts in the nation. Several studies have concluded that a connection exists between proportionally higher in-class expenditures and learning.
According to one study conducted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, “students benefit when schools restructure their financial priorities and shift more money to classroom instruction. The relationship between spending and education is clear. Student achievement rises when schools devote a larger portion of their budgets to instruction.” Another related study by the University of Texas concluded, “[M]ore effective resource allocation can help school districts achieve the goal of high academic performance of all students.”
“Channeling money toward direct classroom education is a common sense measure that policymakers of all ideologies should embrace,” Rasmussen concluded. “Oklahomans deserve to have their $2.1 billion spent in the classroom, and not squandered on bureaucratic or low-priority activities that don’t help their children.”
NTU is a non-profit, non-partisan citizen group founded in 1969 to work for lower taxes, smaller government, and economic freedom at all levels.
One Man's Way to Better Schools
By George F. Will
Sunday, April 10, 2005; Page B07
PHOENIX -- Patrick Byrne, a 42-year-old bear of a man who bristles with ideas that have made him rich and restless, has an idea that can provide a new desktop computer for every student in America without costing taxpayers a new nickel. Or it could provide 300,000 new $40,000-a-year teachers without any increase in taxes. His idea -- call it the 65 Percent Solution -- is politically delicious because it unites parents, taxpayers and teachers while, he hopes, sowing dissension in the ranks of the teachers unions, which he considers the principal institutional impediment to improving primary and secondary education.
The idea, which will face its first referendum in Arizona, is to require that 65 percent of every school district's education operational budget be spent on classroom instruction. On, that is, teachers and pupils, not bureaucracy.
Nationally, 61.5 percent of education operational budgets reach the classrooms. Why make a fuss about 3.5 percent? Because it amounts to $13 billion. Only four states (Utah, Tennessee, New York, Maine) spend at least 65 percent of their budgets in classrooms. Fifteen states spend less than 60 percent. The worst jurisdiction -- Washington, D.C., of course -- spends less than 50 percent.
Under the 65 percent rule, Arizona, which spends 56.8 percent in classrooms, could use its $451 million transfer to classrooms to buy 1.5 million computers or to hire 11,275 teachers. California (61.7 percent) could use its $1.5 billion transfer to buy 5 million computers or to hire 37,500 teachers. Illinois (59.5 percent) would transfer $906 million to classrooms (3 million computers or 22,650 new teachers). To see how much money would flow into your state's classrooms under Byrne's approach, go to http://www.firstclasseducation.org/.
Byrne, who lives in Utah and has made a bundle in various business ventures, was once advised by Warren Buffett to pretend he is a batter at the plate with no one calling balls and strikes, so he can wait for a perfect pitch -- a perfect idea. The 65 Percent Solution is perfect because it wins 80-plus percent support in polls and torments people who Byrne thinks should be tormented.
Buffett also advised him to ask himself this: If you had a silver bullet, what competitor would you shoot, and why? Byrne says he would shoot the National Education Association -- the largest teachers union. Byrne is pugnacious -- after graduating from Dartmouth, studying moral philosophy at Cambridge and earning a doctorate at Stanford, he tried a boxing career -- and relishes the prospect of the 65 percent requirement pitting teachers against other union members who are in the education bureaucracy. "Educrats," he says, "have become what city hall was 50 or 60 years ago" -- dens of patronage and corruption.
The 65 Percent Solution solves the misallocation of resources, but there is scant evidence that increasing financial inputs will by itself increase a school's cognitive outputs. Or that a small reduction in class size accomplishes much. Or that adding thousands of new teachers would do as much good as firing thousands of tenured incompetents.
However, firing a bad teacher is, according to a California official, less a choice than a career -- figure two years of struggle and $200,000 in legal costs. That is why in a recent five-year period only 62 of California's 220,000 tenured teachers were dismissed.
Much of the reallocated money under the 65 percent requirement would go for better pay for teachers, which is wiser than just adding more teachers. Chester Finn, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, notes that, while the number of pupils grew 50 percent in the past half-century, the number of teachers grew almost 300 percent. That pleased dues-collecting teachers unions and tuition-charging education schools. But if the number of teachers had grown apace with enrollments, and school budgets had risen as they have, teachers' salaries today would average nearly $100,000 instead of less than half that.
America, says Finn, has invested in more rather than better teachers -- at a time when career opportunities were expanding for the able women who once were the backbone of public education. The fact that teachers' salaries have just kept pace with inflation, in spite of enormous expansions of school budgets, explains why too often teachers are drawn "from the lower ranks of our lesser universities."
Arizona's House speaker and Senate president have endorsed the 65 percent requirement, which should encounter scant opposition here or in the other 49 states to which Byrne's organization, First Class Education, is coming.
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AN INTERNET millionaire's idea to reduce wasteful spending by ensuring more education dollars are spent in the classroom is starting to take hold among some politicians nationwide. The proposal deserves a thoughtful debate in Oklahoma.
The mission behind Patrick Byrne's "First Class Education" movement is to mandate that all school districts spend 65 percent of their operational budget in the classroom. On its face, the spending restriction seems like a great idea. In fact, we suspect many taxpayers may be surprised to find out that's not already happening.
According to figures released June 1 by the National Center for Education Statistics, instructional spending accounts for about 61.3 percent of school expenses. Oklahoma is below the national average, dedicating about 59 percent for instructional spending. Only two states -- New York and Maine -- meet the 65 percent standard, although New Hampshire (one of the childhood homes of Byrne, founder of Overstock.com) and Rhode Island are close.
Should the percentage spent in classrooms be higher? That's likely the will of parents, taxpayers and teachers. While administrators and the bureaucracy are necessary, most taxpayers want their money in the classrooms where the real work is done.
In Oklahoma, common education accounts for $2.1 billion of the state's nearly $6 billion budget. That's a significant amount that must be well spent for the benefit of students.
But whether the 65 percent bar is the right one-size-fits-all approach for schools is a question worth exploring. For starters, "instructional spending" does not include counselors or librarians. It also doesn't include nurses or other "support services" schools may offer to help keep at-risk students healthy and out of trouble.
There's also the issue of local control and imposing yet another mandate on schools. We generally support local control of schools. But we also know that local control hasn't done a great job of preparing all students for the rigors of college and the work force.
The real bottom line is whether such a spending mandate would improve student achievement. Some states that spend more money in the classroom are seeing better levels of student achievement, while the spending-achievement relationship is less clear in other states.
Spending is far from the only factor that determines student performance. It's critical, though, in making sure teachers have the resources they need to be effective. Maybe Byrne's idea isn't right for Oklahoma, but it is worth talking about.
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