School Budget Cuts

I for one am really stumped with the overall cuts in public schools across the country. But I am not directly effected by most of them, but the ones here in Greenville SC have a direct impact on me. Since my children are being educated by them.

I have seen several articles about cuts in the budget, furloughs for teachers (which i will address in a future post) cutting teacher jobs, eliminating other key positions and some fluff from the budget. It all seems more like shell games to me. And while I will not say that I have the answer, I do feel confident that by implementing some of the strategies I will offer it will save jobs and still educate our children.

First the biggest issue is that we have educators trying to run the business of education. Let the education experts educate and leave the business of running the education industry to business experts. Replace superintendents who are professional educators, with professional business men or women. People with experience in running successful businesses, and this will prove a significant efficiency in the process and in the savings. Moreover, it will put the experienced and trained in the appropriate positions.

Secondly, In this school district there are 14 high schools and all are mid-sized to large. I believe I have a solution to savings millions of dollars and it is simple but certainly not popular. In Greenville, county SC our high schools have a total of 324 athletic teams spread out over 14 high schools for an average of 24 each! many of these high schools are only a few miles apart and each has duplicate teams. there is a huge cost in operating athletics at these schools: i.e. coach salaries, equipment costs, facilities maintenance, transportation to and from games, bus drivers, operational costs, practice facilities, practice equipment, uniforms, etc. By eliminating some of these teams and or combining them with other schools there would be a significant savings. For example; two high schools, Eastside and Riverside are 3 miles apart and each has 23 teams! By combining teams such as Golf, tennis, cross country, cheerleading, wrestling, etc, it would save thousands of dollars. The logical thing to do here is to eliminate all non-revenue generating athletics and save the teachers. Eliminate all middle school athletics, and save the teachers.

Greenville currently has little league baseball, softball, football, cheerleading, swimming programs, golf programs, tennis programs that are not being run by the school district where the kids can play these athletics, there is no need to duplicate the process via, school sponsored teams, and certainly not every school having every team.....combine some of them or eliminate them. Start there.

The education system has one goal and one only, to educate the children who will be the leaders of our country in future generations. To instill in them the fundamental things needed to succeed in their life. I was an athlete and loved playing but times have changed. We cannot continue to sacrifice the education of our children for athletics. its time that the school boards started making the tough decisions, and did what was right for our children.

Start with replacing the superintendent with someone with experience in running a business, and secondly, look at cost saving measures that doesn't involve sacrificing the education of our children. There are thousands and thousands of dollars of waste in our system, I've only mentioned one easy solution, not popular, but easy and it saves teachers, and programs that educate. Cut the waste before we sacrifice another generation.