The Issues
Administrative Reforms
Observing the district for several years and serving on its audit committee has made it clear to me that TUSD needs significant administrative reforms. These will improve performance and save money, which is better spent in the classroom.
TUSD has the general problem of a weak culture of accountability and cost control. In bureaucracies, this inevitably leads to performance problems and waste. Administrators should be held accountable for performance in their areas, and sustained mediocre performance should lead to removal from that administrative position and in some cases from any administrative position.
Another general problem is that TUSD has poor mechanisms for ensuring that departments stay within their budgets.
Beyond these two general problems, here are twelve areas for reducing costs and improving performance. Few of these ideas are original, and some may prove to be flawed. I am however sure that they can altogether save millions of dollars, which can be better spent in the classroom. This is only a partial list.
1) Improve procurement practices.
2) Reduce warehousing and improve inventory control, including textbooks.
3) Hold units more accountable for the costs they generate (e.g. use of automobiles).
4) Review curriculum programs across the board, eliminating duplication and keeping only those which teachers say help them in significant ways. This includes rethinking activities such as the “professional development” that occurs on Wednesdays after early student release.
5) Reward or acknowledge employees for more of their “bright ideas,” and implement those ideas.
6) Study best practice in other districts, on a range of issues.
7) Think more carefully about technology decisions, weighing costs and benefits systematically. (As just one “small” example, I do not understand why TUSD spends $28,000 per month on district cell phones.)
Improve technology support and training, including taking advantage of students’ expertise. Technology support is currently fractured and inefficient.
9) Increase financial transparency and restore the internal auditor position.
10) Revisit the issue of school closures, in a way that increases parents’ investment in the decision and minimizes the financial losses from student departures, if schools are closed.
11) Improve planning across the board. Many bad decisions come from haste. Early planning allows meaningful participation by parent and employee and community groups.
12) Make better use of volunteers and non-profit organizations. (For example, the director of one non-profit organization, which provides substantial free services to neighboring school districts, told me that she gave up on helping TUSD because her organization could not cut through the red tape.)
I am optimistic that TUSD’s performance will improve, because over the past year the district has hired several new administrators who seem committed to changing its culture and practices. TUSD is currently working on some chronic problem areas, including the inefficiency of the bus system and the excessive use of paper (as opposed to electronic) data processing.
There is however tremendous work to do, and the Board will have to show strong and steady leadership. (rev. 8/16)
Importance of Teachers
The quality of education in TUSD depends, first and foremost, on the quality of its teachers. Therefore, the recruitment and retention of skilled and motivated teachers is a critical task. To do this in the long run, it is important to raise teacher pay, which in Arizona is thousands of dollars below the national average. Unfortunately, it is impractical to close that gap in the current budget environment.
It is important at minimum to help teachers keep up with inflation, and this has not happened lately. Unless something changes soon, teachers in TUSD will receive no raise at all for two years in a row.
TUSD can however do many things to help teachers and our students’ education, which do not require more money. Teachers should be accountable for what students learn but they should also have more voice in how they learn it. Instead of dictating programs from above, TUSD should give teachers the tools and support that they say they need and then step aside and let them teach. I have taught college students for years, literally thousands of students, and I know these things from my own experience.
This is not just personal speculation. In recent years, a common theme of successful educational reforms, in the U.S. and in other coutries, is to stop micro-managing teachers.
TUSD should take advantage of teachers’ experience to review its curriculum programs and to fix or eliminate programs which teachers have found to be ineffective. (rev. 8/18)
Competing with Charter Schools
The rate at which TUSD loses students to charter schools seems to be slowing, but charter schools remain a huge challenge and long run threat to the district’s funding. Some people in TUSD express the fatalistic view that TUSD cannot compete and must accept a steady decline in enrollment. I strongly disagree with this conclusion. The district can and should compete vigorously with charter schools, for two reasons.
First, while some charter schools are good, many are mediocre. The worst ones seem to exist mainly for the purpose of collecting a paycheck from state taxpayers. TUSD must improve its marketing, so that parents are aware of the district’s true strengths and are less likely to enroll their children in charter schools that offer less.
Second, for the families who find real advantages in charter schools, TUSD should study what those schools offer and work to create similar value or options (where possible) within TUSD. This can improve education for all of TUSD’s students.
Board and Superintendent Relations
One would not normally expect this to be a major issue, but many persons have asked me about it or offered opinions about it. After attending dozens of Board meetings but without having actually being a member, the following principles make sense to me.
(1) Board members and the superintendent should work hard to discuss issues until they reach general agreement on which path to follow and then to travel that path together. (Such discussions must respect open meeting laws.) The district will work much better if the six persons act as a team.
(2) In that team, the main responsibility of the Board is to set policy and the main responsibility of the superintendent is to execute it. If they are working together well, then the Board should be clear and timely in its policy guidance, the superintendent should understand and embrace the Board’s policy, and the Board should trust the superintendent to execute that policy, giving the superintendent discretion over details.
(3) The Board should stand behind the superintendent when its policy requires the superintendent to make unpopular decisions.
(4) The Board should make a serious effort to reach consensus but no one should expect that this will always occur. Failure to reach consensus should not create personal frictions between Board members and should not prevent working toward consensus on the next issue.
(5) The “buck stops” at the Board. It answers to the community and is accountable for the district’s performance, and it should act accordingly. This requires being well-informed and addressing problems vigorously, until they are fixed.
(6) Board members have no legal authority as individuals and should show corresponding restraint. They acquire authority only through action by the Board as a whole. Staff should however cooperate with individual Board members’ requests for information.
(7) Board members and the superintendent should treat each other, district employees, and everyone in the community with respect and a professional attitude. (rev. 8/16)
Override
I support the tax override proposition on the November ballot. The proposition explicitly requires that all of the revenues generated would be invested in the classroom, for three purposes: (1) class size reduction; (2) expansion of a K-8 program that integrates the arts with standard curriculum (Opening Minds Through the Arts); (3) increased pay for teachers in math and science and other fields where TUSD has chronic shortfalls because its salaries are not competitive.
Unlike many programs and revenue streams in TUSD, which target particular groups of students, most of the override funds will go into programs that help all students.
TUSD’s spending per student is about 70% of the national average for public school districts, and even with the override it will be only about 75% of the national average (based on data reported by Education Week and the National Center for Education Statistics). Most other school districts in Arizona, including 14/16 in Pima County, operate with the benefit of a voter-approved tax override.
Overrides pass, even in communities more conservative than Tucson, because improving public schools is an investment in the economic and social health of the community. When businesses decide where to locate, a major consideration is the quality of the public schools which will be available for their employees’ children and which will help to train their future employees.
Some persons oppose the override because they do not trust TUSD to spend money wisely or as promised. I understand that, but we have a new superintendent, who came from outside Tucson and whose management style puts more emphasis on accountability. The Board has also promised to appoint an outside committee to monitor the spending of override revenue, similar to the committee which currently monitors the bond projects approved in 2004. Over time, I believe that the public will see that a big change has occurred in TUSD.
If I am on the Board, then I will work aggressively to ensure that TUSD keeps its promises and that funds are spent efficiently from all revenue streams, including the override if it passes.
Rejecting the override is the wrong way to “punish” the district, because rejecting the override will hurt students, not administrators. To change TUSD’s administration, voters’ best option is to improve the Board.
If you live in the City of Tucson (and in TUSD), then the override would raise your property tax by about 6%. In other words, if you would pay $100 in property tax without the override, then you would pay about $106 if the override passes. For most homeowners, the increase would amount to less than 50 cents per day. (rev. 8/16)
Splitting the District
Many persons say that TUSD is a failed district, which is too large and should be split. This idea seems to be based on the common (and partly accurate) perception that the smaller districts in Pima County perform better than TUSD. The situation looks different however in Arizona as a whole: the worst-performing school districts are usually the smaller districts. In Phoenix, for example, the largest district performs well and there is currently a push to increase efficiency by consolidating the smaller districts.
The problem with all of these proposals, the splitting idea in Tucson and the consolidation idea in Phoenix, is that they downplay the great costs associated with restructuring. This is also often true for restructuring proposals in corporations (and universities). When people do not know how to solve, or do not want to solve, the hard problems of correcting the firm’s product or how it produces or markets its product, then it is easy to propose a restructuring, which simply moves the pieces around. After rearranging the pieces at great expense, the deeper problems often remain. That is why restructuring often fails.
If TUSD were to split into (say) three pieces, then the organization would be distracted for several years and unable to focus on its core mission of education. Staff would wonder who is in and who is out, where the boundaries will be, how resources will be divided, and who will be working where and for whom. It would be necessary to acquire two new administration centers. One financial department would become three financial departments, with associated new hiring; one personnel department would become three personnel departments, with associated new hiring; and so forth. These changes would be expensive in both time and money.
If someone can make the case that splitting TUSD will create specific and concrete advantages, which will more than offset the transition costs, then I am willing to hear that case. I have not heard it yet. It probably makes more sense to focus the same energy and resources into determining how financial and personnel and curriculum and transportation services and procurement can operate more efficiently, and possibly with fewer personnel, than to multiply personnel by multiplying the number of districts. (rev. 8/16)
Mexican American/Raza studies
I support the Raza studies program, because it helps to motivate and sustain the interest of the large part of the student population that is Hispanic, and it is also a tool to help close the achievement gap. The district’s internal studies have found that participation in the program leads to significant gains in students’ performance on standardized tests.
The program has however caused controversy in Tucson. (This is clear from media coverage and from the questions I get about it.) To help forestall this kind of controversy, the Board should establish clear guidelines concerning the content of its curriculum. The district administration should then make it clear to the community that its programs conform to those guidelines or make changes if they do not.
TUSD’s size allows it to provide choices in schools and programs, which suit students with different goals and backgrounds. It makes sense to include a Hispanic studies program as part of that mix. TUSD commissioned an external study of its four ethnic studies programs in 2006, and the study generally found that Raza studies (with an annual budget of about $750,000, or 30% of the ethnic studies budget) was the strongest one and strong by any standard. It also found weaknesses in the program below the high school level.
The Raza studies program has strong support in the district and it is hard to foresee any scenario in which it would be eliminated. TUSD’s curriculum programs are however overdue for assessment and reevaluation, across the board. There is room for improvement in almost any program, and the district must consistently seek to ensure that (a) money is spent efficiently and (b) decisions are made with a tight focus on keeping resources in the classroom and improving student achievement. According to these criteria, Raza studies seems to be performing better than many other programs.
By making the goals and operations of all TUSD curriculum programs as transparent as practical and subject to discussion and criticism, we improve our chances of achieving a high level of consensus across all parts of the community that TUSD is doing its best to promote student achievement, in a way that respects diverse student needs, with the limited resources available.
Because of budget constraints, it is also important to choose the schools that house various programs carefully, according to district-wide demand and the level of local interest.
The Raza Studies program should be understood in the historical and social context of Tucson. The United States acquired most of Arizona through the Mexican War and purchased the remainder (including Tucson) from a corrupt and unpopular Mexican government. Arizona’s future is obviously in the United States, but this history has contributed to many Hispanics’ sense of place in the region and to an ongoing legacy of difficult relations between Hispanics and those who migrated from the U.S. into the new U.S. territory. Reaching a common understanding of Tucson’s past, including the area’s long past before Spanish or Mexican settlers arrived, will strengthen the whole community and help TUSD to reach its full potential as a system that serves and binds it together.
I believe that TUSD’s ethnic diversity is a strength of the district and that a growing majority of persons, from all backgrounds, will eventually share this view. (rev. 8/18)
Advertising on School Buses
The Board recently approved advertising by Geico, which will appear on school buses. The total annual revenues will be less than $10,000. Some students are likely to interpret these ads, which will appear together with public service announcements, as a kind of endorsement by TUSD. I think that the district should try to avoid sending such confusing signals to children and would have voted against the Geico advertisements. (rev. 8/16)
(More issues will be posted.)
