Seth Rosenblatt

Seth Rosenblatt

With the continued dubiousness around public school financing in California once once more (and the possibility of "trigger cuts" to education if the governor's tax measure fails in November), California schoolhouse children face the possibility of a schoolhouse year that is shorter past as much as four weeks. An article in the Sacramento Beeoutlines the choices that many districts are facing. It states: "The Legislative Annotator's Office has estimated that eliminating a school week statewide would salve $one billion." The LAO is wrong – eliminating a week of school actually saves no coin at all.

Coming from the business organization world and then serving on a school board for five years, I have come to appreciate how much people oversimplify the application of business practices to authorities, and very ofttimes citizens are quick to judge government equally incompetent before understanding all of the context and the complexity of the issues. I have written many manufactures discussing how often these government critics are misguided. Just there are indeed some areas where government can learn from business, and one of them is regarding the unique, very strange, but all too common public sector toll-cut arroyo called "furlough days." What it means is that public agencies tell their employees not to come into work a sure number of days so that the agencies can reduce the employees' pay proportionally.

Almost every article written on the topic (and about every give-and-take among government officials) just assumes that the only way to reduce employees' salaries is through furlough days. In the authorities dictionary, salary reduction = furlough days.

This linkage echoes a century-sometime, hourly-wage framework when reducing employee costs meant reducing hours worked. However, teachers – and most government workers – mostly fit the task description of a salaried professional more so than a factory worker. Plainly reducing someone's income is a horrible footstep to be forced to take, but if it must exist washed for financial reasons, why in the public sector does information technology automatically mean anybody should work less? Note that when private sector businesses reduce salaries (which many have had to do over the last five years), employees tend to work more, not less (even if just to pick upwards the slack for other employees who were laid off).

And so the LAO is wrong because the furlough twenty-four hours in and of itself saves no money (except maybe for a little bit of electricity saved by not turning on the lights). Information technology is the salary reduction that saves the money. Nonetheless, this manifestly obvious analysis seems quite foreign to near in government. In near all school districts (and other government agencies) across the state, it's merely assumed that yous accept to offer furlough days to relieve coin. This is a case where government is just being dumb – furlough days are blowsy and hurt children.

The obvious alternative is to cutting compensation, but exit the workload intact. But the electric current mindset is and so ingrained that we have assumed the coupling of reduction of bounty with reduction of workload when we should exist talking about them separately. There could exist reasons (employee morale, etc.) to adjust the workload of employees, but we demand to address these issues separately and non presume an automatic linkage. And, absolutely, any change like this volition likely have to be negotiated with labor groups, which may push back very hard on a "salary cut only" scenario. As well, such negotiations oft include a provision to restore this pay as the first priority when funding returns.

It saddens me profoundly to see so many school districts shorten the school year and besides cut not-student days, which are used largely for professional person development to make instruction amend. These actions directly hurt our kids, even so no ane seems to exist speaking for them. Of grade our educational system is woefully underfunded, and it's devastating that employees have to sacrifice financially considering of it. Only if such cede is required, why besides injure children for no reason other than that's the fashion we've ever done it? We know the land system is declining our kids – merely let's non exacerbate the harm by the failure of local schoolhouse boards to stand for them on this result. Parents should be up in artillery and demand to both their local school board and their local unions that we only can't accept them whatsoever longer.

Seth Rosenblatt is the president of the Governing Lath of the San Carlos School District, currently in his second term. He also serves as the president of the San Mateo County School Boards Association and sits on the Executive Committee of the Joint Venture Silicon Valley Sustainable Schools Chore Forcefulness. He has two children in San Carlos public schools. He writes frequently on issues in public education, in regional and national publications every bit well every bit on his own weblog. In his business organization career, Seth has more than than 20 years of experience in media and technology, including executive positions in get-go-up companies and big enterprises. Seth currently operates his own consulting firm for technology companies focused on strategy, marketing, and business organisation evolution. He holds a B.A. in Economic science from Dartmouth Higher and an Yard.B.A. from Harvard Concern Schoolhouse.

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