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Location: East St. Paul 651 forever (or North St. Paul) .
2,860 posts, read 3,385,461 times
Reputation: 1446
Quote:
Originally Posted by 13levine
I worked in the schools for many years as a custodian and as a custodial engineer (maintenance) and I never saw such waste in my entire lifetime as in schools. If other companies I've worked for wasted that much they'd be out of business in a heart beat. The schools know that they can always get more money when they want it. If they don't get it, most of the time on the next attempt they threaten to cut some sports program or something the public values more than education and most of the time they get their money.
By waste, I mean when the pets or snitches, if you will, want a new machine or new truck or something else expensive they get it even if the old ones are perfectly alright to use for years yet. The food that goes in the garbage is beyond your wildest imagination. Kids that should be in a home because there is not the remotest possibilty of them even learning their name have to be looked after by someone hired only to push their wheel chairs around and thousands of dollars are spent to buy lifts to get them in and out their wheel chairs and the like. I have no problem whatsoever with the kids that are crippled and can learn. Money should spent on ramps and stuff so they can get from one place to the other.
There is no one to answer to for the money spent.
This isn't to mention the filth that can causes illness. The Health Department always gives them lots of warning to clean up their act but there is still a fortune spent on fines because the school didn't get the mouse turds all cleaned up or some other infraction. A fortune is spent for special cleaning that should be done on a daily basis just because the Health Department is on their way. The place is **** and span when the Health Department arrives but it soom slides back to where it was when they leave. You may wonder why this is wasted money but I'm sure kids wind up in the nurses station and money is spent on them who would not otherwise be there. I often wondered why they get more than a one minute warning when inspection is coming so that they would have to keep it clean all the time. The worst germ spreaders are not the toilets by the way it is the key board where kids punch in the food they got and the water fountains where the stream is so low that they have to get their mouthes right down on the bubbler. Both are generally cleaned once a day.
Everytime a new Head Custodian starts he/she has her favorite cleaning products so the old ones get pushed back on the shelf or stored somewhere else and eventually they pay Haz Mat a fortune to haul it away and dispose of it. Absolutely nothing wrong with the product and if anyone wants some they can have it free.
Also very few custodians buy their own garbage bags, towels and the like. A fortune in stuff goes in the garbage and picked up after work out of the dumpster.
I've seen 10 overhead projectors go in the garbage with not a thing wrong with them (oh, the mirrors might be dirty or they need a new bulb or switch) and in week or so there was 10 new projectors to replace them.
The food that goes in the garbage is unbelievable. The bags from the kitchen weigh a ton. It was all I could do to lift them into the dumpster and I can easily lift 75 pounds. All bags from the lunch room have to be double bagged and heavy duty. I've had to go through 13 bags, with help of a bunch of kids, because some kids retainers got knocked off the table into the garbage. That is definitely the most disgusting job I ever had to do. Cleaning the manure out of barns is a much nicer job.
The above is just a few examples and the tip of the iceburg. In fact if wasn't for the taxes constantly being increased the whole education system in America would go down just like the Titanic.
Same thing goes on with the DMV. Just notice the next time you see them in a pack on a freeway you will notice they like to drive one to a car. Government waste in this country is incredible.
I worked in the schools for many years as a custodian and as a custodial engineer (maintenance) and I never saw such waste in my entire lifetime as in schools.
I could give you hundreds of examples of massive waste by large corporations. When I worked at Honeywell in the late 80's through the early 90's, I saw tens of millions of dollars wasted. I could mirror every example that you gave which is all of the small stuff. Additionally I could include large ticket items that were wasted well north of several million dollars. From million dollar purchases of capital equipment that later sold a years later for pennies on the dollar to the "small stuff" like tossing out perfectly working office equipment that was only bought two years earlier. People hopped on planes for a $1000 airline ticket that they could have easily planned and paid $200. This of course was for a 30 minute meeting that could have been done on a phone. People bought computers for their group and kept them at home "for work" and they disappeared when others forgot about them. As I said, I could give hundreds of examples and it just isn't Honeywell.
I realize that Honeywell is a not the same as a public institution like a school. But the reality is it's human nature to waste someone else's money and it always will be. I do think there is acquitted pressure on the more efficient districts to reduce most of the big ticket item waste. That's why I voted against the 1st couple of levies until the schools were forced to become leaner. If I refuse to vote for a referendum because I still find waste, that will choke off the critical dollars as well. There will ALWAYS be waste.
Watch this video by Milton Friedman (Reagan's chief economic adviser). He explains in simple terms why there there will ALWAYS be waste when you spend someone else's money.
Private corporations figured out incentives to reduce waste long before government funded institutions. It's called profit sharing or dividends. Learn to work frugally and the savings come back to all through either dividends, profit sharing, or capital expansion via a salary increase. Public schools have no such incentive. The closest thing they do have is continuing education whereby teachers keep pursuing more education to increase their pay.
The real key to change is to change the makeup of your school board. They are the ones that threaten to cut funding to programs that parents and students like, want, and need, if you don't agree to their new tax levy. But tread softly, the board is controlled by the teacher's union. If you want to change the board, you hate teachers. If you hate teachers, you hate kids. This sales tactic is used because it works.
Kids that should be in a home because there is not the remotest possibilty of them even learning their name have to be looked after by someone hired only to push their wheel chairs around and thousands of dollars are spent to buy lifts to get them in and out their wheel chairs and the like. I have no problem whatsoever with the kids that are crippled and can learn. Money should spent on ramps and stuff so they can get from one place to the other.
There is no one to answer to for the money spent.
Your last example is where some of the big $$ waste goes (special needs). The District may spend $60K on a student and their goal is to tie their shoes before the end of the year. That's a real example by the way...
The District DOES have someone to answer to as to why those $$'s are spent. They answer to the parent who hired lawyers to force the district to shell out one-on-one care. The parent doesn't care how they spend the money. Remember, it's not their money that they are spending. The Lawyers get paid handsomely when they win so they will have "free" representation. So the districts rollover, and hire fleets of Para's and special needs teachers. Sadly, that's the way of the world these days.
I've talked with school board members and that's the new reality. They have to hire police, psychologists, etc. So don't sweat the rags prematurely tossed or the wasted cleaners. Most of the waste is being forced on the districts. To make budgets, the districts will aim at school teachers wages. Hence teachers unionize or their (underpaid) wages would be slashed. The unions will protect the lazy teachers and so the cycle goes.
Private corporations figured out incentives to reduce waste long before government funded institutions. It's called profit sharing or dividends. Learn to work frugally and the savings come back to all through either dividends, profit sharing, or capital expansion via a salary increase. Public schools have no such incentive. The closest thing they do have is continuing education whereby teachers keep pursuing more education to increase their pay.
You are thinking as a purist. It may work in the text books but not always in reality. When I worked for any company, I'd spend their money a lot differently than how I spend my money as a small business owner. People are not questioned as often as you might think. After all, workers are "empowered".
Incentives to cut costs can be obtained by a selling off divisions to hit those short term bonuses. That might be a bad business decision but it's done to hit that "incentive". Some decisions might also include massive job cuts of needed workers to make the big bonuses. My point is the corporations do run more efficiently than the government but do not assume they always make smart business decisions for the company. There are lots of examples of decisions to benefit themselves (upper management). Maybe like paying more in taxes because you lied about your revenue (think Enron, Global Crossings etc). Bad business decisions are made all the time in the spirit of hitting those "incentives". I could go on and on.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wtfci
[b]
The real key to change is to change the makeup of your school board. They are the ones that threaten to cut funding to programs that parents and students like, want, and need, if you don't agree to their new tax levy. But tread softly, the board is controlled by the teacher's union. If you want to change the board, you hate teachers. If you hate teachers, you hate kids. This sales tactic is used because it works.
I have talked for hours with our districts school board members. The reality is the bulk of the dollars spent are forced on them. Basically it's professional babysitting and it consumes the bulk of the budget dollars. Dig deeper by having a one-on-one conversation and listen what they have to say. Like healthcare and other big money, there are several problems that are near impossible to change. Putting it another way, if I put you at the helm of your school district you would soon see how you would be forced to spend money in the form of lawsuits.
Private corporations figured out incentives to reduce waste long before government funded institutions. It's called profit sharing or dividends. Learn to work frugally and the savings come back to all through either dividends, profit sharing, or capital expansion via a salary increase. Public schools have no such incentive. The closest thing they do have is continuing education whereby teachers keep pursuing more education to increase their pay.
The real key to change is to change the makeup of your school board. They are the ones that threaten to cut funding to programs that parents and students like, want, and need, if you don't agree to their new tax levy. But tread softly, the board is controlled by the teacher's union. If you want to change the board, you hate teachers. If you hate teachers, you hate kids. This sales tactic is used because it works.
You obviously have spent very little time in big corporate America or in a school. There is waste everywhere but the reality is that in most schools there is minimal waste. As for the example from the custodian above, overhead projectors are out of date. Teachers create their lesson plans on their computers. To transfer that data to an overhead sheet is time consuming and a bigger waste of time then adding in Smartboards, etc. What else are they going to do with the overhead projectors? The trash is the obvious place for them, although a lot of schools are utilizing EBay to get rid of things like that.
Smartboards are a wonderful advancement for education. Last year when our daughter missed over 3 weeks of school, she was able to access classnotes online because the teachers can write on the smartboard, save that on their computer and upload it for kids to use at home. They can also do demonstrations on the smartboard via Powerpoint or whatever. They even have programs for math classes to show how to use the graphing calculators, etc. They are just wonderful tools for teachers and students.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MN-Born-n-Raised
Your last example is where some of the big $$ waste goes (special needs). The District may spend $60K on a student and their goal is to tie their shoes before the end of the year. That's a real example by the way...
The District DOES have someone to answer to as to why those $$'s are spent. They answer to the parent who hired lawyers to force the district to shell out one-on-one care. The parent doesn't care how they spend the money. Remember, it's not their money that they are spending. The Lawyers get paid handsomely when they win so they will have "free" representation. So the districts rollover, and hire fleets of Para's and special needs teachers. Sadly, that's the way of the world these days.
I've talked with school board members and that's the new reality. They have to hire police, psychologists, etc. So don't sweat the rags prematurely tossed or the wasted cleaners. Most of the waste is being forced on the districts. To make budgets, the districts will aim at school teachers wages. Hence teachers unionize or their (underpaid) wages would be slashed. The unions will protect the lazy teachers and so the cycle goes.
Special needs education budgets were originally supposed to be 100% funded by the fed's. Never happened, now almost the full burden is on the school district. It is a huge drain on their funds and resources and like you have found, they have 1 on 1 teaching plus an aid in hopes that they learn to tie their shoes. This is not something that should be funded out of the general education funds. Yes, its just a transfer of dollars from one agency to the next but I think people would have a HUGE eye opening experience if they saw the funds and the programs dedicated to a very, very small portion of the students at school while other kids suffer for lack programming to meet their needs.
One school I was associated with built a new middle school. In that middle school they built a center for the contained special ed classes, those kids that could not function on a cognitive level above that of an infant. The space was beautiful, open, airy, designed for their needs as compared to the previous space that was a converted wood shop room. Well, the state disability board came in to approve the space and would not allow them to use it for it's designed purpose--why, it was 50 sq feet smaller than their old space. Didn't matter that their old space was larger than they needed and quite frankly a dump. The program had to stay at the old school. So, in the end that district ended up having to build another school about 5 years before they would have if the special ed kids could have moved into that other space. The district had no choice but to follow this plan, as stupid as it was. Federal law states that they can not take away "programs" the special ed department already has and that includes moving them to a smaller room. Stupid.
I have talked for hours with our districts school board members. The reality is the bulk of the dollars spent are forced on them. Basically it's professional babysitting and it consumes the bulk of the budget dollars. Dig deeper by having a one-on-one conversation and listen what they have to say. Like healthcare and other big money, there are several problems that are near impossible to change. Putting it another way, if I put you at the helm of your school district you would soon see how you would be forced to spend money in the form of lawsuits.
Replace them. These are absentee board members. They are not leaders. Leaders would be organizing parents to change these rule sets. Forced upon them or not, resist. Who do they work for? They work for you. This is your money. These are your children. These are your communities.
What are you going to do about it?
This is not a purist approach. This is a realist approach. Our rights are only as strong as we defend them. A good start is to reject a devil's bargain whereby funds are handed over in exchange for control handed back.
Replace them. These are absentee board members. They are not leaders. Leaders would be organizing parents to change these rule sets. Forced upon them or not, resist. Who do they work for? They work for you. This is your money. These are your children. These are your communities.
What are you going to do about it?
This is not a purist approach. This is a realist approach. Our rights are only as strong as we defend them. A good start is to reject a devil's bargain whereby funds are handed over in exchange for control handed back.
Um, most of these rules are forced upon them by the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.....
Private corporations figured out incentives to reduce waste long before government funded institutions. It's called profit sharing or dividends. Learn to work frugally and the savings come back to all through either dividends, profit sharing, or capital expansion via a salary increase. Public schools have no such incentive. The closest thing they do have is continuing education whereby teachers keep pursuing more education to increase their pay.
The real key to change is to change the makeup of your school board. They are the ones that threaten to cut funding to programs that parents and students like, want, and need, if you don't agree to their new tax levy. But tread softly, the board is controlled by the teacher's union. If you want to change the board, you hate teachers. If you hate teachers, you hate kids. This sales tactic is used because it works.
You hit it right on the "money".
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I could go on and on. 
