Fellow blogger Ben DeGrow wrote an op-ed piece on August 17th in the Denver Post regarding the education jobs bailout recently passed by Congress. DeGrow argues that the bailout is “excessive, short-sided, and fiscally irresponsible.”

Justification for this statement is based on at least two premises: funding for education was/is out of control, and the claims of how many teacher jobs were lost were not accurate.

DeGrow argues that the estimate of job losses was grossly overestimated. He’s right. The reason for the over-estimation was because schools made decisions to save as many teacher jobs as possible, at the expense of support staff. Ben addresses this, but misses the point when it comes to the impact that this will have on schools.

Take the high school where I teach for example.

We reduced our deans by 50 percent, reduced campus security by 50 percent, and reduced support staff to those areas by 20 percent. This means a reduction in prevention, limited access by parents to deans (they now need an appointment), and an increase in teachers to supervise hallways, lunchrooms, and to communicate with parents for “smaller” discipline infractions.

We reduced our counseling department by 20 percent (we have four counselors for over 2,000 students). The entire department has been reorganized. Students will no longer be assigned to counselors for four years by alpha. Instead, counselors will be responsible for various resources and students will need to see those specific counselors for assistance. There will be one counselor available, every period, for students who have walk-in needs. Parents need to preset appointments to see counselors—no more drop-ins.

Our main office clerical staff was reduced by 25 percent. Custodial staff was reduced by 33 percent. Janitors will no longer clean rooms on a daily basis. They might get to them twice a week. Library resources were reduced by 33 percent. This will impact teacher and student support and the hours of operation for the library.

And finally, and to my response to DeGrow about loss of teacher jobs, we reduced our teaching staff by 3 percent. Yes, not as many teachers lost their jobs. But I think it is obvious as to the cost that the school has paid to protect as many teacher positions as possible.

DeGrow argues that over the past few decades teaching staffs have increased at a higher rate than did student enrollment. No argument here on that point. But the question has to be why? DeGrow argues, among other points, that this was due to a jobs grab by unions. But what he fails to mention is that over the past two decades the purpose of schooling changed. We no longer rank and sort students based on a curve. We expect and instruct all students to be successful. This shift takes resources that were not needed decades ago.

Finally, because of the economy, many of our community’s families are struggling. Research shows us that financial hard times impact schools negatively. Schools are looked upon for social services. Students come to school less prepared because of the severe economic downturn. Because of this schools need more resources, including teachers, to help students who come to school less prepared.

I think this justifies a “bailout.”

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Summer may be the season for beating dead horses (not literally). If so, I’ll take the indulgence of bringing some extra attention to a thorough and commonsense debunking of the $23 billion education jobs bill by the Washington Post‘s Charles Lane. Thankfully, Congress appears to have retreated from adding one more profligate and ineffective bailout onto the backs of the American people and from further increasing our schools’ obligation to the federal treasury.

Even so, Lane takes valuable pains to do the math, to discredit bill proponents’ claims and to deflate the NEA scare tactics with facts and context:

…Notably, however, even these sources usually describe the threatened positions as “education jobs” – not teachers. That’s because the figures actually include not only kindergarten through 12th grade classroom instructors, but also support staff (bus drivers, custodians, et al.) and even community college faculty. And 300,000 is the upper end of a range that could be as low as 100,000. Nationwide, there are about 3.2 million K-12 public school teachers.

Moreover, springtime layoff notices are a notoriously unreliable guide to actual job cuts in the fall, because rules and regulations in many public school systems require administrators to notify every person who might conceivably be laid off — whether they actually expect to fire them or not….

And so it goes. Certainly worth a full read. (Mike Antonucci of the Education Intelligence Agency capably did similar work a week ago. Bottom line? Even the scarcely believable worst-case scenarios only would send our nation’s class sizes back to the dreadful dark ages of 1996 or 1997.) Piling on, Alexander Russo reminds us with a helpful graphic of the other options school districts are pursuing to tighten their belts apart from teacher (and other education employee) layoffs.

Finally, Robert Enlow makes a terrific point in a May 25 USA Today op-ed: If the feds are determined to travel the route of wild spending, misguided “stimulus” and generational debt, the least they could do is attach the money to needy students in the form of vouchers. Still, I much prefer the message: No more bailouts, please. Let’s find a smarter way to deal with the short-term shortages while building long-term reforms. Sharing in a little of the pain now beats the alternative we all face.

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