Fort Bend ISD is a wealthy school district to the southwest of Houston. They are laying off front-line teachers. Property tax revenues are down like everywhere else, so they are facing a budget crunch.
Meanwhile, there appears to be a lot of fat that can be cut on the non-instructional side. Not one high school principal is in the top 10 salary range. I'm no fan of the teachers' union mentality, but it seems to me that a lot of instructors can be kept if they chopped the highly-paid admins that don't teach. (For readers in high-cost parts of the US, to you these salaries may seem reasonable. But keep in mind that the cost of living here is far less. Way far less.)
Today, another kerfuffle. Mary Ann Simpson, Fort Bend ISD's Chief Communications Officer (refer to salary list), says that "Fort Bend ISD has in the past hired a limited number of teachers who hold H1B visas, but only to fill vacancies that no U.S. citizen was qualified to fill. The practice of international hiring has all but stopped in the last year."
Notice the qualifier "all but stopped". I am sorry for being skeptical, but I have my doubts that there are no qualified American ESL teachers looking for work.
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11 comments:
Lou,
Here in the Northeast (North Central NJ, to be specific), all of our state aid was cut. The solution? Cut Middle School sports.
It makes sense, in that if you want your kid to play sports, you can pony up the cash for a club team with volunteer coaches.
We're also cutting the World Language curriculum and some Social Studies positions at all three levels.
"It makes sense, in that if you want your kid to play sports, you can pony up the cash for a club team with volunteer coaches."
Gotta love a school district that will cut teachers and music and sports so they can retain a chief information officer, a chief academics officer, a senior database administrator, a chief human resources officer, plus a principal and vice principal at each school.
In my area (SoCal) they are handling the budget issues by cutting a couple weeks from the school year. Pay more for less services, but hey "it's all about what's best for the kids!!".
The madness has to end.
"We're also cutting the World Language curriculum ..."
I assume that's foreign languages?
Every university DD applied to required two years of language instruction in high school. So will those NJ students be playing catch-up if they want to go on to a four-year college? Will they need to spend two years at a junior college first?
Sheesh.
Conservatives will probably see this as just another form of justified economic darwinism.
Bogalusan
Why should truck drivers, waitresses, and legions of working stiffs, be taxed, directly or indirectly to support 18 year olds that want to get a 'degree' in Queer Theory, Pre Mi-devil English Lit., Criminal Justice or any other fluffed up notion?
If you are 18, you are an adult. Get off the backs of productive working class. If you are a feather merchant academic, make your own way...you people are so ( supposedly ) smart.
Stop lefty academic welfare NOW!!!
Actually, a few local districts are cutting back. Usually, the first ones they let go are people who have undergone alternative certification programs of one sort or the other. So, they get rid of the mathematicians that are teaching math the chemists that are teaching science etc. The people that left really high paying jobs to try and make a difference end up getting tossed away. What is left behind is the people that got education degrees.
The districts really do view non-education majors are disposable. They don't get nearly the chances that "regular" teachers do. Still, when they announce these cuts they usually factor in that 1/4 of their staff will quit and maybe another 1/4 gets pushed out. Some Title 1 schools have 100% turnover rates every four years or less. They use new teachers and throw them at the problems and keep the ones that stick and let the majority walk away.
Speaking from 1st hand experience, teaching today isn't as much about actually inspiring kids or teaching but just keeping kids under control. If you can get something across while keeping them quiet, then all that much better.
"Why should truck drivers, waitresses, and legions of working stiffs, be taxed, directly or indirectly to support 18 year olds that want to get a 'degree' in Queer Theory, Pre Mi-devil English Lit., Criminal Justice or any other fluffed up notion?"
I don't support the Ward Churchill fluff degrees, but I do support engineering, science and math programs at our state schools. Those programs are vital for our state. They could probably spend the money more effectively, but I think investing in those programs is not a sinkhole.
DWR, what's your solution? Do you think you can run an entity with 8500+ employees and 66k+ students without an HR manager, an IT manager, decent systems people, and someone to control academics and set standards?
DWR is right somewhat. The problem with cutting teachers is you end up bumping up class size. From everything I've experienced, smaller class sizes thend to be much better learning environments.
Small classes with whiteboards you made yourself out of showerboard (yes, I had to do this) with only 1 teacher pc is more productive than a packed classroom with every bell and whistle known to man.
You've got it right on the non-teaching administrator side of things.
Consider one district I know: the
Deputy Supt for Curriculum has a Coordinator of Core Curriculum and a Coordinator of Non-Core Curriculum
Each of those then has a Director for each subject area reporting to them. Those directors each have "specialists" for their subject on the elementary and secondary levels reporting to them. By the time you are done, you have a salary expense that approximates the combined salary total of an entire middle school faculty -- without a single child actually receiving one second of instruction from any of the employees in question.
The World Language Curriculum is focused on the elementary schools in our district, not the high school.
Thanks so much for this post, pretty worthwhile material.
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