Downsizing Admin overhead

[lurker]

Sometimes someone brings a good idea to Topeka but, alas, the final sentence is the obit of most good ideas taken to Topeka.

Plan would scale down school administration

By Chris Green

Harris News Service

TOPEKA - At least one lawmaker wants to downsize school bureaucracy.

Rep. Shari Weber, R-Herington, unveiled a bill this week that would limit each of the state's 105 counties to a single superintendent of schools.

In addition, no district would be allowed to employ deputy, assistant or associate superintendents.

Weber said she sponsored the bill to help "change the paradigm" in Kansas education by putting more focus on students and teachers.

That's a popular idea among those Kansans who think the state's school districts have too many highly paid school administrators.

"You hear the public asking to put more dollars into the classroom," Weber said. "Our administration has grown a great deal over the years."

Last year, state schools across the state employed nearly 360 superintendents or deputy superintendents, according statistics from the Kansas Department of Education.

District central offices employed nearly 1,300 workers, including special education directors, clinical or school psychologists and social workers.

Under Weber's plan, all central administration for the state's 300-plus school districts would be consolidated into a single office for each county.

Boards of education would cooperate to select a superintendent and school districts that span more than one county would be run from their home county.

Although county superintendents couldn't hire a deputy, they could employ principals and other supervisory positions.

Weber said she envisioned some administrators going back into the classroom under her plan.

However, education lobbyists weren't too impressed by the proposal.

Kansas National Education Association lobbyist Mark Desetti said it wouldn't make a lot of sense for Sedgwick County to have the same number of superintendents as a sparsely populated, rural Kansas county.

"That's s very overly simplified approach to a very complicated issue," Desetti said.

"One size does not fit all."

Mark Tallman, lobbyist for the Kansas Association of School Boards, said the suggestion also underestimates the value of superintendents in promoting good education for students.

He noted that a recent study of Kansas schools by Standard & Poor's financial analysts showed that shifting additional dollars into the classroom didn't produce better results or more efficiency.

In fact, the study concluded that good administrators played a central role in the success of 16 districts the organization deemed "highly resource efficient."

"The problem is education is like any other enterprise," Tallman said. "You need good leadership."

Weber said she hoped the bill would start the ball rolling on talks to reduce administrative overhead in schools, something she said House leaders support.

But House Education Chairwoman Kathe Decker, R-Clay Center, said she doubted the committee would have time to discuss the bill.