More about the gimmicky 65% solution . . .

This from the June 4th Star Triune op-ed page:

Rep. Karen Klinzing's bill to put 65 percent of every operational dollar into "regular instruction" appears to be another unfunded mandate.

The word "classroom(s)" appears 14 times in Klinzing's May 27 Commentary page article but only once in House File 616. "Regular instruction" appears four times in her legislation but not once in Klinzing's commentary. Yet the bill requires that 65 percent of operational expenditures be for regular instruction, not for classrooms.

Money spent on severance pay and ongoing insurance benefits for people who don't work for the school district is called regular instruction if the person used to be a regular classroom teacher.

Special education and vocational education are not regular instruction. Capital outlay revenue does not cover the cost of maintenance and repairs so operational dollars are used to fix roofs and parking lots. Klinzing's legislation says the operational costs for special education, vocational education, maintenance, food service, community service and administration cannot exceed 35 percent of the total operational expenditures.

If a student with special needs moves into a district, special education expenditures will go up. HF 616 requires regular instruction to go up also because of this additional special ed student. Some special education students cost a district $60,000 a year or more.

Get sued for cutting a special education program so 65 percent of your operational budget is spent on regular instruction and your legal fees go up along with the settlement for not following the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and your nonregular instruction expenditures go up. Again, HF 616 says you have to increase your regular instruction budget.

Add a vocational program and regular instruction has to go up, which means districts will be reluctant to add, or even maintain, vocational programs. Bus fuel, in a district with an area of a couple hundred square miles, goes from $1.25 to $1.95 per gallon and regular instruction has to go up.

It will probably be better to run a poor food service program at a loss than a profitable one with higher expenditures, even if a profitable food service generates the revenue to pay for itself, because the higher expenditures for a profitable program force regular instruction expenditures to go up.

Community service programs, which generate the revenues to pay for programs, will also require higher regular instruction expenditures under this legislation unless a prudent district cuts out the programs.

HF 616 is a Catch-22 that will drive up the cost of education.

Bruce L. Montplaisir is superintendent of the Lewiston-Altura School District.

The 65% solution is a national conservative gimmick that is floating around as another way to prove that public schools are failing, and play gotcha with the districts, just like NCLB. It has appeared in several states, first in Arizona Spotty recalls, where its legislature ultimately rebuffed it.

As most of Spotty's readers already know, Tim Pawlenty jumped on this bandwagon in the final days of the regular session. And Geoff Michel, that great champion of public education, or so he says, jumped right with him. Spot has written about this before.

Spot says that Geoff Michel will be known by the company he keeps That sounds to Spotty like a great theme for his next post!