There is much wrong with Randi Weingarten’s assessment of our nation’s public school funding, Public Schools Need a Bailout, WSJ, May 20, 2010.  Ms. Weingarten begins with the faulty premise that, “years of budget cuts in the vast majority of school districts have already taken their toll”, belying the fact per year per pupil spending throughout the United States has spiraled upward at several times the rate of inflation over the past couple decades with no appreciable improvement in performance, a condition most pronounced in our nation’s urban areas with Washington D.C. spending $21,000 per student per year.

The central problem with the public education system relates to something not surprisingly unmentioned by Ms. Weingarten, specifically the amount of funds the school systems’ public servant administrators drain from the pool of education dollars.  The most highly compensated public servants in the country by far reside in the education system with scores of “Superintendants” pulling down from $200,000 to $800,000 and their hordes of “Assistant Superintendants” leeching $150,000 and up.  In comparison, the most senior Generals and Admirals in the military, public servants who make life and death decisions of national security importance, are limited to $135,000 per year by law.  Schools at every level have extraordinarily increased the number of counselors and vice principals they have employed since the 1970’s, further increasing the financial burden on taxpayers.  Additionally, school board members that were once volunteer part time positions are still part time, but now paid more than teachers.

Not only are school administrators over compensated, but due to rivalries and jealousies in many parts of the nation, administration positions are wastefully duplicated with county bureaucracies layered above city bureaucracies, as is the case in the city of Memphis, TN.  The American Federation of Teachers and the United Federation of Teachers are additional siphons to teacher’s pay, which Ms. Weingarten failed to point out is sufficient to pay her $350,000 salary (some estimates put as high as $600,000 when she was president of both UFT and AFT) as well as the exorbitant salaries of other teachers’ union officials and staff.  While school administrators drain the lifeblood from the classroom, in every community in the United States the public school apportionment of property taxes dwarfs the balance of the tax bill.  Special interests have even been able to implement laws shielding increases in public education spending from voter initiatives, causing further escalation in education spending.

Ms. Weingarten’s suggestion of a bailout is laughable and wholly premature until extensive reforms are undertaken throughout the country in the administrative, operational and pay structures, permitting re-appropriation of the already overly generous taxpayer dollars back into the classroom.  In our technological age, there need only be one Superintendant at the state level, with principals serving as the conduits of information to their teachers.  Any taxpayer bailout of the education bureaucracy should be predicated on every school district accepting a military pay scale with rates and designations dictated by a taxpayer commission.

America already spends far too much on education, with most of the dollars siphoned by an army of self-serving adults who continue to pimp our children as a means to their personal financial and political gain.  Taxpayers have proven their concern for children year after year through their generous tax contributions.  It is Ms. Weingarten and the administration members of her unions who are the ones that need to show they care more about the children than themselves by ceasing to steal those contributions from the classroom.