I suggest that school districts in Washington terminate their contracts with school bus companies. These companies are privately owned and cost tax payers millions. I work in the Seattle School District and I have learned that if we terminated our contract with "Student First" we would solve our entire budget deficit and have plenty of money left over to facilitate all kinds of new programs for students. The students ...more »
Make the public school systems food service industry self-sustainable. Schools would grown their own vegetables and livestock, double win for extra curriculum and sustainablity.
The Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test is already used by hundreds of schools around the state. It's developed by a private company, the Northwest Evaluation Association. It's correlated to our standards. The results are immediate. Beyond that, though, the potential savings--given that it's computer based, we wouldn't need a staff member in every school and district to process the old WASL/MSP paperwork. Instead ...more »
Decrease school district superintenant pay by 6%. Even with their pay freezes, its not doing enough for the schools and the hundreds of teachers losing their jobs.
Why does the State of Washington have 295 school districts! Why not use a model employed by other states - base school district boundaries on county boundaries for most counties and on student population for counties such as King County. It probably would not be prudent to combine Seattle School District with other districts, given its existing student population. As an example - Thurston County has 8 school districts ...more »
1. Save $1.47 billion by cutting education programs that can't prove they are raising student achievement: Compensatory Education, $947 million, Other Instruction $133 million, Community Service $54 million, and 25 % of Districtwide Support, $339 million. 2.Remember that 83% of school district spending is on salaries and benefits, or $8.1billion out of a total $10 billion. A ten percent salary and benefit reduction ...more »
Start a massive, emergency program to merge towns, cities, and counties and school districts and fire and police districts. Reduce the number of councils and committees and mangerships and all number of overhead upper management. Some states like PA and others are being forced into this as many of its municipalities are broke. Merging such local governments creates larger tax basis's, smooths out zoning and code ...more »
Put Competition in School System. Parents should have the Right to say which Schools get to have their Kids Tax Funding. Result would be Better Schools and Less Unions holding the States Education Hostage with Strikes. Current Attitude of Schools is "Yeah well, what are ya gonna do about it? Nothin cuz you have no choice".
We need to make sure in some way, that our public schools spend their money wisely, and effectively. For Example, If there is a school that plans on building a "Retainment Pond" (a simple 16 foot pond) ends up paying $400,000 for said pond, when it could have cost $80,000. The School should be fined.
So, Ultimately, more responsibility of schools with their government funding.
The budget has $530,000 to provide grants for school employees looking to become principals and superintendents. These are people who already have a job--this money should be going into workforce development, not giving time off for people who are already drawing a paycheck.
The fact that we're allocating $900,000 to make principals better while cutting teachers and parapros who are closest to the kids is unreal. This program is the classic example of fat in the budget, and maintaining it while Rome burns is absolutely unacceptable.
Navigation 101 is a nice enough program, but when we're talking about things as drastic as cutting levy equalization even nice programs need to go. Nav101 can come back later, when things get better. Right now, they ain't better. This would save $3.2 million dollars per year.
The McCleary lawsuit established that we're not funding education the way we should. The state is clearly violating the paramount duty clause of the constitution; appealing the decision is a fool's errand that will cost $950,000. Drop the appeal and work on actually making progress.
Implementing the most recent education reform bills (6696 and 2261) will cost billions that we don't have, but we're already spening millions on commissions, meetings (hi, Quality Education Council), and paperwork. Suspend all that activity until we have the money to actually do something about it.
We really need to get 'smart' and implement year round accelerated public schools. What a tremendous waste of staff and facility resources having hundreds of closed buildings and thousands of employees idled for several months each summer all over the state. This type of year round accelerated school program would reduce our overall education costs while improving our children's education levels. States that have done ...more »