The Willow Glen Resident

S.J. Unified sticks up for local control

School board votes to oppose '95/5' initiative, which seeks to slash bureaucratic costs

By Rebecca Wallace and John Pancharian

"Slash the bureaucracy." "Cut the red tape." These are sentiments that have become increasingly popular in recent years. But in voting March 12 to oppose Proposition 223, San Jose Unified School District board members showed they're more interested in a different goal: local control.

Also known as the "Education Efficiency Initiative," the proposition, headed for the voters in June, aims to cut administrative costs in state schools and redirect the funds to classrooms and libraries.

The goal sounds admirable, but many school district officials say the proposal is just another example of the state's sticking its nose in where it doesn't belong.

"Our government is legislating in areas that really ought to be left to the experts with the local supervision and input of community," said SJUSD spokesperson Maureen Munroe.

The SJUSD board voted unanimously to oppose Proposition 223, except for Carol Myers, who was absent. Myers could not be reached for comment.

The initiative is known as "95/5" because it requires that at least 95 cents of every dollar collected by a school district be spent only on programs and personnel with which students are directly involved. And on the flip side, no more than 5 cents may be spent on administrative activities.

Under 95/5, all districts would undergo an audit every five years, at which time staff the would account for all expenditures made and demonstrate how they directly affect student achievement. Any district found in noncompliance would get slapped with a fine of $25 per student or 5 percent of the district's revenue limit, whichever is greater.

SJUSD staff members have estimated that the district would be fined $5,725,514.61 if found out of compliance.

Tyrone Vahedi, who came up with the initiative, says California schools spend about twice the national average on administrative costs--and students pay the price for this inefficiency. The ballot argument for 95/5 states that the proposal would shift at least half a billion dollars a year back to the schools without raising taxes.

"This initiative is meant to maximize every dollar taxpayers put into the system," Vahedi said.

No fat cats here

Munroe said that if 95/5 passes, the SJUSD would then be considered to have too many administrative costs and would have to reorganize its accounting procedures so that many district costs would be shifted to the schools.

This would, in essence, just be shifting things around without making a substantive change, Munroe said. But she added that she doesn't yet know how much the reorganization might cost.

Even though its administrative costs are higher than 5 percent, the district's structure is not wasteful, she said. Some types of expenses simply need to be centralized in the district budget because it's not practical to have the schools handle them.

"We all imagine that there are fat-cat bureaucrats that aren't really necessary to the process of education. ... If the administration were to be cut to 5 percent and not reorganized, the [burden of the costs] would go back to the schools," she said.

"The schools would be negotiating their own maintenance contracts and doing their own hiring. ...There aren't enough hours in the day for the schools to do that; there needs to be a centralized administration," she said.

Munroe is not alone in casting a wary eye at Proposition 223.

"This is further encroaching into the area of local control. ... The better way is the quality systems we have," said SJUSD board member Gary Rummelhoff.

Rick Pratt, governmental relations representative for the California School Employees Association, said, "Our problem with it is that the 5 percent is a purely arbitrary limit."

He says he thinks larger districts such as the Los Angeles Unified School District will have a much easier time cutting administration costs down to 5 percent because they have economies of scale working in their favor. Smaller districts may be unable to comply with the initiative because they need to do the same administrative tasks that larger districts do, but lack the per-student revenue.

"We'd be in a pickle," said Linda Latasa, business manager for the Los Gatos Union School District, when she contemplated meeting the cut to 5 percent. "We'd have to fire a lot of people."

San Jose Unified is one of the largest districts in the state and thus does not face this problem, Munroe said.

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