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Schools' Job Cuts Too Crucial to Mess Up

Just for the purposes of argument, let's assume that every single person employed by the Fayette County school system works hard for his or her money.

But now, there's not enough money to go around. Some people are going to lose their jobs. And, as board chair-woman Kathy Lousignont points out, the business of the school system is kids, not adults.

So the job-cutting process must be defined with painstaking precision: Which jobs are more essential to the school district's core customers -- students?

The answer is obvious: those who work most closely with students every day. But many of them now find their jobs on the line under various budget-slicing scenarios.

When you must cut spending, all jobs have to be on the table to determine how much they contribute to your most important goal. So far, Superintendent Ken James has offered up 30 jobs from the extensive job bank that is central office. But there's a lot of potential administrative blubber between 30 jobs cut and the remaining 402 people with districtwide duties.

Unless the school board figures out, in short order, how to evaluate job necessity in central office, any cuts to individual schools are going to be suspect.

The central office issue simply won't go away.

For example, does the Fayette school system really need 144 employees in "instructional support," including nine directors earning as much as $89,459, four associate directors making as much as $85,922, and 20 coordinators making as much as $82,299? And does it need all those employees if keeping them means fewer music teachers and teacher assistants in the schools?

These are not easy choices. Nobody wants to make the call that leaves somebody else unemployed. But if you have to make that call anyway,-shouldn't the advantage go to those who make a daily difference in student achievement?

As school board members now know, there's a strong support network for central office employees who want to retain their jobs.

James said there was a communication breakdown in central office that allowed board directives about central office job cuts to be ignored -- and he promised it won't happen again.

But the message to taxpayers was absolutely clear: This is a school district where one hand doesn't know what the other is spending.

On Monday night, board members professed their allegiance to James. If board members want to bolster James' fledgling administration, the best thing they can do is to put central office staffing under the microscope at today's budget session.

Otherwise, ill-advised cuts may handicap James' administration for years to come -- and, more important, hurt education progress in Lexington.

After all, this is about kids, not adults. Right?


— Cheryl Truman
Herald-Leader
2004-02-25
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/local/8034116.htm

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