Has Hell Frozen Over?
Yessiree, Bob! An “official” public school study says that Hamiliton County (Chattanooga) taxpayers are doing enough. According to this article in Sunday’s Chattanooga Times Free Press:
“Public schools receive adequate local taxpayer support, which will force administrators to attack “inefficient” spending to wipe out a $20 million deficit, according to a recent budget analysis.
“This is not a revenue issue from the county’s perspective. Local funding appears to be sufficient,” said Bob Greving, Unum’s chief financial officer who completed the analysis for a citizens advisory panel charged with reviewing the budget.
“We’re actually getting more from the county than other districts,” he said.”
The newspaper article went on to report:
“Mr. Greving’s analysis shows that compared with Tennessee’s other large school districts, Hamilton County Schools has one staff member for every six students; the average in other major districts is one staff member for every eight students. (emphasis added)
“The report suggests the school district has about 1,420 “excess staff” members; cutting them would save $54.4 million. (emphasis added)
“Compared with other major school districts in the state, Hamilton County also has more schools for fewer students: The average number of students per school is 513 compared with an average of 620 among the other districts, the report shows. Closing 14 “excess” buildings would save about $5.2 million.
“About 80 percent of Hamilton County’s schools enroll too few students to cover costs of maintaining, heating, cooling and staffing, school records show.
“We’re operating on a philosophical approach that embraces small schools,” Mr. Greving said. ‘It’s an inefficient model.’” (emphasis added)
And how did the school district grow? The newspaper also reports:
“Kurt Faires, a lawyer with Chambliss, Bahner and Stophel and a member of the advisory panel, said that over the years, the school system has allowed “some creep” in its personnel and buildings count.
“I think it was probably the political path of least resistance until a crisis arose,” he said. “We need to take a machete to this thing and make it right so we don’t have this problem every year.”
Maybe it’s time that Arlington School Board members start taking seriously the comparative numbers from the Washington Boards of Education (WABE) that we’ve repeatedly growled about over the past several years and start asking the Superintendent some tough questions rather than whining for more taxpayer money.