The Little Red School House

Author Tony DeMaio

Once upon a time there was a peaceful valley. In this valley, the people worked hard. They believed in thrift, hard work, and hard play. The people valued education, and were very proud of their school district, which they supported through their taxes—though their taxes were not very high. The district consisted of a 1,000 student high school and 4 five hundred k-8 schools.

The schools were very well run. The school Superintendent had been there for many years. The school had few discipline problems, few frills, and high achievement. An inordinate number of the students received scholarships to prestigious schools. Morale was high.

An unusual feature of the school was a rainy day fund and a capital improvements fund. Each year, the school accounting unit calculated the depreciation of the building and other assets, and set aside that money. At the end of the year, any unused monies were deposited in a rainy day fund. The funds had grown over the years to be quite sizeable. The year when there was a fire, there was no need to assess the population for money to rebuild that part of the school that was destroyed.

One year, the superintendent announced his retirement. The school board began a search for an acceptable replacement for him. They were not particularly concerned. They had watched the previous occupant for the past many years and had observed how easy the job was (much like watching Olympic ice skaters—they also make it look “easy”.)

The city fathers went to the state university and sought the advice of the dean of the school of education. The dean recommended John. Everyone at the school spoke highly of John, he was highly recommended by his instructors. It was said that he was “on the fast track”, “ahead of the curve”, and that he was “well connected”. John did very well on the interview, but later, no one could quite remember just what it was he said.

John started that July. The first thing he did was an informal audit of the finances. He called the budget director in and pointed out some anomalies in that the numbers “didn’t add up”. The budget director said that the numbers DID add up, John wasn’t taking into account the rainy day fund or the depreciation fund. John took one look at the numbers, whistled, and said, “Look at all that money.”

John convinced the board to institute mandatory art and music classes. He persuaded them that an “educated person” was well versed in art and music. In order to do that, he extended the school day from six to seven periods, and hired ten teachers. (It is not well known, but an employee is usually “loyal” to the person that hires him. It’s one reason a new CEO often replaces the top 10% of the company.)

Class size in the school was about 30. Since there were no behavior problems, there appeared to be no reason for smaller classes. John suggested to the board that higher achievement could be obtained by making the average class size 25. There was some discussion about this, as it would require an additional ten teachers and also require tapping either the rainy day fund or the capital outlay fund. In the end, the board agreed to reduce the class size.

Astute observers noted that the “new” twenty teachers seemed to “clique” together and not assimilate into the main school. Some said that all of the teachers were from John’s college. When the new teachers started a “union”, most of the “old guard” refused to join.

John encouraged after school clubs. Most of the club sponsors were the new teachers. It created some problems with bus scheduling, but the addition of two new busses and paying the drivers overtime resolved that problem. Students began to spend more and more time with their club activities and less time with their school work. Some complaints began to be heard about “too much homework”.

John pointed out that the school had a 200:1 counselor ration and it was recommended that 100:1 was optimal. The board rejected the request, stating that they had gotten along just find at the present ratio. John invited the president of the PTA to dinner. During the dinner, he casually mentioned how counselors were absolutely essential to a well balanced education. The teacher’s “union” also attended the next PTA meeting to inform the PTA of the good the counselors would do. They helped troubled children, directed children to appropriate courses and could, in a pinch, substitute for sick teachers. Two months later, the board approved the additional counselors. In order to retain the five additional counselors, the capital outlay fund was tapped. The counselors also joined the union.

John approached the board with a “modernization plan”. It consisted of instituting courses in driver education, sex education, drug education, and sensitivity training–in addition to expanding the scope and span of the clubs . In order to defray the expense, he recommended hiring a grant writer to obtain a federal grant. The grant would pay all the expenses of the program–including the teachers. With some discussion and dissention, the board agreed. The grant write was hired, wrote the grant application, and the program was funded for two years. In order that the students would have time for the new courses, the four year Math/Science/English requirements were reduced to three years. When asked about the elimination of the four year math requirement, John said, “Our kids have a lot more trouble with sex as an adult than they do using trigonometry.”

During the ensuing two years, drugs started appearing on the school grounds, and several girls became pregnant. In discussing the situation with John, John explained how the problems at the school were quite typical in modern times, and it would have been much worse without the education the new program provided. John stated that the accepted remedy was to hire policemen to remain on campus. While dubious, the board agreed and two policemen were retained.

At the end of two years, the grant was terminated. John pleaded with the board to retain the programs and personnel as they were doing so much good. There was plenty of money in the depreciation fund to pay for the program. One member of the board asked how John intended to fund the program the following year, since funding it this year would deplete the capital outlay fund. Without batting an eye, John said, “There is enough money in the rainy day fund to fund it next year, and perhaps the next. Also, I have reduced the budgets of the math, science, and language departments.”

Over time, each of the programs developed it’s own constituency, and became quite entrenched. Morale deteriorated, as each department tried to protect it’s own “turf”. There was little money “left over”, and the various departments fought over money during the budget cycle. It became more and more common to “dip into” the rainy
day fund for various expenses. Soon, there was no rainy day fund. When teachers attempted to discuss the situation with John, he invariably replied, “I don’t think it’s right for me to discuss things with teachers. Go through your union.”

John went to the board and said, “We simply MUST have a tax rate hike. There simply isn’t enough money in the school budget to fund the programs. For one thing, our math, English, and science scores are dropping in a fairly alarming manner. We need more money to get them back up. Also, we need to float a bond issue. The school has some serious construction problems that must be fixed or we run the risk of the school being condemned. I’m not even sure that we can make it until the tax rate and bond issue passes. This is an emergency.”

The board had no choice but to agree and floated the bond issue and tax hikes in a special election. Both passed. John supervised the contract administration and renovation. The board was quite surprised to see that a considerable amount of the bond money went to refurbishing the administration building. The board was also surprised when John purchased a Mercedes.

John left the next year. He had no trouble obtaining a position since his resume’ stated all the various programs he had instituted, the federal grants obtained, the bond issue passed, the tax rate increase obtained, the class size reduction, and the state of the art counseling program he instituted. The resume’ did not state that he left behind a bankrupt school district with plunging test scores and low morale.

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