Reply to The Best Remedy for Maryland K-12 Schooling.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We also came from a state that didn't have a county only school system. The several school districts were independent of the county, townships, and city. If you lived within the zone for that school district your portion of local taxes for the schools went to that district not the city, town or county you lived in. I can't remember whether we wrote the tax check to the school district or simply the city or state and they paid the local school district. Regardless, you do not need a separate municipal government entity to have an independent school district.

Using this system, you could easily have a Silver Spring Unified School System or Silver Spring Independent School System. The community would define the zones -in other states this requires petitioning. The portion of school funding collected by the local government from those residents goes to the new school district.

Pros

1. You get smaller school districts but not so tiny that they struggle to survive. You get VERY representative leadership not only at the school board level but at the principal level. Principals and teachers have a lot more authority and autonomy. There's no vetting through eight layers in the central office to send an email. Resources are put into the schools not the bureaucracy.

2. You get more business/community involvement. Local businesses, bigger firms and other opportunities are more easily pursued. There is no "gee interesting donation or grant opportunity but how will Pat O-Neil benefit? Oh she won't well never mind."

3. You get stable boundaries. Once the school system is established the boundaries are determined by residency and tied to local taxes. Its difficult and not in the interest of anyone to suddenly shift the boundaries despite residents desires. This promotes property values.

4. The community can vote in special tax assessments to fund new things. The money is ear marked not thrown into a big pot to be used on something else. Again -more representative government.

5. You get a much more rationale school system. There isn't a PR department needed to spin the latest boondoggle. There aren't endless millions spent on consultants for navel gazing. Money can be spent on outsourcing services like IT to get IT that works instead of paying millions for in-house work that is always broken.

6. Teacher professional development is much stronger too. There isn't this insular training program that only exposes teachers to central office vetted, changed and messed up materials. Teachers are encouraged to look to broader more established university-level peer reviewed materials and professional development is driven by the teachers.

[/quote]

Wow, that's a lot of assumptions. The mind boggles.

There is no way you could possibly guarantee that a smaller school system will be "more rational," or make better decisions about IT or curriculum or teacher training.

Asshattery is just as prevalent in small groups as in large. Small towns get just as entrenched in corruption and greed as large ones do—and the same goes for school systems. The only difference is in scale. I'm sure we can come up with plenty of examples of smaller systems that get dominated by a single person or faction, and it becomes impossible to get them out because it's too risky to go up against them. Small-town politics can be quite nasty, and I'm willing to bet that smaller school systems are no different.

Sure, if people don't like what the administration are doing, they can vote them out. But we can't manage to do this in MCPS, so why are voters in a smaller district any more likely to do it? I agree that larger systems get bloated with bureaucracy, but I think it's a HUGE leap to assume that everything will be roses and sunshine just because there are fewer people in the central office and fewer voters to select the leadership. [/quote]

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