Call It A Comeback
So what happens when you do that? You leave two unsustainable districts into one–and districts that are doing fine never have to accept consolidating Districts–leaving the pool small for those that do consolidate.
That doesn’t solve anything, it just prolongs the problem.
The gist isn’t that bad, but it’s written very sloppily:
Remember that each district usually comes with a superintendent, an assistant superintendent, a principal and an assistant principal. And that’s just for starters. Some of those administrators are making big salaries–up to $300,000 a year–and working up similarly astounding pensions. Now consider that almost half of those 881 districts have fewer than 150 students. It’s no wonder voters start acting grumpy at the prospect of a tax increase.
The problem is that those small districts don’t pay people anywhere near $300,000. Strictly, the editorial doesn’t say that, but the implication for the average person who is poorly informed is there. The point that there are too many districts is a good and important point–in fact, there are too many in Missouri as well. The problem is that the smallest districts are generally some of the lowest paid at both the administrative and the teacher level.
The bizarre part is portion about the amount of money spent outside the classroom. Let’s look at the salary structure that often gets mentioned in comments here and at Capitol Fax–Palatine over at the Family Taxpayer Network’s database of school salaries.
The Trib offers up a rebuke of those high salaries and suggests a solution of having 65% of the operation budget going towards the classroom anc claim that 59% currently goes there, but if Palatine is truly the measure of high salaries and waste, one ought to be careful.
Of the highest paid employees, 54.8% of the salary goes to teachers–an in classroom expense. Another 9.3% goes to direct support such as librarians, speech pathologists and guidance counselors. This doesn’t include social workers.
Another 18.5% of the high salary group salaries went to principals and 16.5% went to administration.
High salaries are heavily weighted towards administrators so to me I doubt Palatine would have any problem meeting the requirement as is. Salaries make-up about 3/4 or so of most District’s budgets and outside of places like Chicago that have special needs administratively, that’s mainly teaching and direct support salaries. It’s likely that overall, administrative salaries are a much lower overall percentage of salary costs.
What does this mean? The Arizona idea would probably hit the wrong group of schools. Because districts rich in property can affort to pay high teacher salaries, they’d be virtually unaffected by such a system. Who would be affected are relatively small districts that have to fill a minimum number of administrative posts simply to operate.
From a quick glance, the idea hits exactly the Districts one doesn’t want to hurt–small rural districts that have tremendous financial strains.
Ultimately, funding in Districts like Palatine should be local issues where local communities decide how to tax themselves. Whether they pay people too much can be decided at the local ballot box where people can decide what level of taxation they can afford and what level of school funding they like. They should receive a basic hold harmless amount from the state and then be on their own.
The point of school finance reform should be to create a basic minimum by which smaller rural districts and inner ring suburban schools (or ones with such features) get a basic floor at which they can fund their district without killing local property holders. And the Trib gets half of it right in saying there are simply too many Districts in Illinios. The state needs to force consolidation. But the 65% mark won’t help the basic problem–it actually has the possibilty of limiting essential needs required to plan and implement curriculum reform in smaller districts.
It isn’t entirely clear whether Illinois has an overall finance problem, but it certainly has a problem of disparity between Districts. How one solves that problem then determines whether Illinois needs to greatly increase funding or not. The recent ISBE report, as I understand the recommendations from news summaries, is more about improving the worst off while not touching the funding of the best off–that isn’t the only possible solution and many solutions might involve less of an overall increase at the state level and simply changing the prioritization of state funding.
Maybe it’s my contrarian nature, but the Governor is doing the right thing on the landfills bill and it’s not his fault that Mell had another eruption. In fact, the administration is learning and starting to move the sujbect away from the personal and to the policy on this issue which is what they should do.
The bill itself should be uncontroversial and despite Mell’s protestations about other issues, giving the state government the ability to act when public health is at risk isn’t a terribly novel power.
“There are so many aspects of this bill that my agency has needed for so long to increase our regulatory oversight, our enforcement, our ability to address abandoned open dumps in the state of Illinois,” IEPA chief Renee Cipriano said. “To say this is focused on the alderman is simply untrue.”
Part of the problem is the Governor has so annoyed the press that a story like this is too good to pass up, but there’s some glimmer of hope they are learning finally. The other part of the problem is regardless of what Mell says about wanting to keep this private, he’s the one who brought the personal into the public again. The administration deserves credit for the bill.
Lynn Sweet discusses his current problems and how they are unlikely to result in him ever making Speaker. I think this was highly unlikely even before for the simple reason he is the kind of guy who is unlikely to get a unanimous vote in his own caucus. Unless the Republicans had a fairly large majority, there is a faction of Republicans who would have never voted for him including those who defected from reelection of Newt Gingrich in his last election as Speaker. Jim Leach and Chris Shays stick out as two examples who never would have tolerated the guy as Speaker.
The more interesting question to me is what happens to Hastert if and when DeLay gets taken down. Hastert won’t directly be challenged within the Republican caucus, but without a strong partisan in support of him as DeLay has been his effectiveness would be decreased. Unless DeLay’s replacement was as effective positioning for Hastert’s position would become the Caucus sport.
Whether Hastert wants to put up with that is an open question to me because part of the reason the Republican Caucus has been so effective in the House is that there was one power structure that essentially restrained any effort to come up with competing solutions from competing factions. Everything is cleared through leadership and there is no gain from going outside because you lose leverage within the Caucus. Without enforcement of that, the process breaks wide open. A breach causes even more problems for governance because the way a majority traditionally overcomes such factious politics is by spreading pork around. While the drunken sailors are having fun now, there’s going to be less and less money to throw around as pork as the budget stands now. No one would want to end their reign under such annoying conditions. It’s entirely possible that if DeLay is removed, but Majority Whip Blunt moves up one, the apparatus could stay in place and that would lessen the problems inherent in the job, though in the long run, ambition will win out.
Even more fun, is Gingrich pointing out that the stalling and combative strategy DeLay has developed is a bad way to handle the situation. The reason I’m convinced DeLay is toast has to do with two factors. First, the drip, drip, drip just attracts the press to further scrutinize the guy and he’s played fast and loose enough over the years that eventually something is going to stick. Second, his tactics have been to be more boisterous and to raise his profile.
The second is the fatal mistake–he’s fine as long as he’s out of the limelight, but his style and his politics is well out of the mainstream and he creates a great target to hit every Republican in a moderately competitive district. By publicly leading on the Schiavo fiasco and now publicly defending himself, he becomes the target and the debate which is exactly what the Democrats want.
The only thing I think Sweet gets wrong is that DeLay is a realist–a realist wouldn’t be heightening his profile. DeLay thinks he’s on a crusade and he believes he is an essential part of it. He’s not going willingly. He may resign, but it will because his whip organization comes back with a number that says he loses a vote as Majority Leader. .
“Some are inspired geniuses mindful only of the greater good; some are connivers mindful only of personal good; most are wondering what?s for lunch.”
Ken Herman of the Austin American Statesman
Legislating can be a tedious process, even for legislators.
Sen. Donne Trotter (D-Chicago) is playing with his microphone. The microphones are adjustable.
Trotter makes his microphone stand up straight. He makes it bounce. He makes it twirl around. How does he do that?
Just another mystery of the legislative process.
OK, so a bit disorganized with a big report going out, but let’s have who is up and who is down…..
Dan Proft replies to the Cross guys and includes this bit:
On paper, Keyes could have provided a legit challenge…it lasted for about a week before Keyes embarked upon the Road to Damascus by himself. Wish that would not have happened but the easiest thing we could have done was just sit back and watch Barthwell get beat 70-30, and then blame the moderates. Instead, we attempted to make a legit run at Obama with someone with the capacity and skills to make that legit run. Because that person chose not to run a campaign but rather a statewide Pentecostal revival, I regret it as much as anyone. And that is the difference, I suppose…I don’t run around professing the Keyes campaign as a model to be followed, blithely asking people to believe that getting 27% of the vote was a job well done.
Except that no one in their right mind could have thought Keyes wouldn’t have been running a statewide Pentecostal Revival. In 1996 and 2000 the guy ran a nationwide Pentecostal revival (all the more strange since he’s Catholic) with stunts like handcuffing himself to the building at a television station which excluded him from a debate and generally having eruptions during the debates to which he was admitted.
If you don’t believe me, go to the August 2004 archives where I point out what a loon he is and pretty much predict his performance.
The problem of those like Proft who are trying to sell the story differently is that they thought it was a quick and easy way to make a name for themselves in Illinois politics. Instead of promoting party building, they ran a guy who could get lots of attention and they got exactly what they wanted–but sometimes you don’t know what you really want.
And, of course, Greg Blankenship made a similar point from having worked with Keyes.
But speaking of Keyes, he’s been attending the Confronting the Judicial War on Faith. And for $15 you can get a DVD of Alan’s session or the entire event for $99.
Getting back to the message though,
Christian conservatives and a core group of congressional supporters are launching a significant new push to restructure the federal judicial system to reflect a more explicitly biblical world view, in the hopes that these changes will pave the way for broader social and political changes, leaders of the movement said.
The great question to ask is *which* Biblical world view and watch them devolve into doctrinal disputes.
I just heard some jaws hitting the floor, but this time he’s getting screwed by much of the local press. His order to force pharmacies to dispense pharmaceuticals that the pharmacy chooses to carry isn’t being explained very well. Carol Marin, in defending the Governor, doesn’t even do a good job.
An LA Times piece points out what the order actually does and why it should be non-controversial.
If an individual pharmacist will not provide birth control pills because of moral or religious beliefs, the drugstore must have a plan to ensure that the patient receives the pills promptly.
In most cases, that means having another pharmacist on hand to dispense the drug.
The policy does not require that all drugstores carry contraceptives; many don’t, especially in Catholic hospitals.
But if the pharmacy has them, it must dispense them to anyone with a valid prescription ? or risk suspension of its license, said Susan Hofer of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which oversees pharmacies.
This isn’t about requiring every pharmacy to carry contraceptives, it’s about when they choose to carry a pharmaceutical, a legal prescription must be filled.
The Governor didn’t waiver on this, he didn’t grandstand, and he didn’t do anything but order pharmacies to do what they’ve already chosen to do. I’m happy to criticize him when he deserves it, but with that comes a responsibility to point out when he does the right thing. This is one of those cases.
Quick Update: The Trib’s editorial does a good job on the issue.
Apparently enforcing a trademark ruling by a higher court is making a political decision to the Good Senator Box Turtle.
Hale’s going to prison for a long time.
Or maybe Senator Cornyn (R-Box Turtleville) would argue the poor, poor boy was entrapped.
And you know, what kind of judge tries a man for rape?
At some point attacking courts as a convenient target has a toxic effect of decreasing trust—a trust that is generally well deserved in the federal court system. But also a trust absolutely essential to the well working of a society. Just because you don’t always win doesn’t mean the Courts aren’t doing their job.
However, if the Republicans think this crowd is the way to win elections–go ahead. I’m not stepping in the way of a party trying to jump off a cliff.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS INCLUDE
Congressman Lamar Smith, David C. Gibbs, Esq., attorney for Terri Schiavo’s parents, Chief Justice Roy Moore and former Ambassador Alan Keyes.SPEAKERS INCLUDE
Alan Keyes, Phyllis Schlafly, Tony Perkins, Mike Farris, Howard Phillips, Bill Dannemeyer, Morton Blackwell, Bill Federer, Rick Scarborough, Don Feder, Kay Daly, Janet Folger, Jan LaRue, Tim Lee and Patrick Reilly.
Keyes, Schlafly, Constitution Party loon Howard Phillips, local wingnut Federer and Judge Roy Moore…
ArchPundit