State Board of Education

[bombermwc]

I would definitely like to see the control in more than one place. There's no reason any one group should have control over every aspect. The current make-up of the board is pretty reflective of how the state government looked until Jan. One party at the head of the table, and the other party running the rest of the show. Of course now we're all (R), but we've got two opposing sides on the education front. That can be a good or bad thing as stated above.

On one hand, you can take the point of view that they should require more effort to get something passed. Hey, if they both agree, it must have been good, right? On the other hand, that stance can cause the whole system to sit haulted in progression and nothing ever changes. I feel that's sort of where we've been for 20 years. There have been a few changes made over the years, but most of those are because of federal guidelines...they happen on a district level, and only because it affects funding.

For me, one huge issue is consolidation of rurual districts. There is absolutely no reason why you need school districts with an entire administration system for every town of 500 people. That sort of stuff has always lead to corruption in the local boards and ineffective use of funding. The best thing for counties like that, would be to go to a county-wide school system. Take Beaver county for example. Do you really need more than one district? No. Could you save a substantial amount of money by not having 30 (randmon number out of my rear) superintendents? yes. To that effect, it really could work at all levels and help to bridge the gap between low and high income areas as well.

[Midtowner]

For me, one huge issue is consolidation of rurual districts. There is absolutely no reason why you need school districts with an entire administration system for every town of 500 people. That sort of stuff has always lead to corruption in the local boards and ineffective use of funding. The best thing for counties like that, would be to go to a county-wide school system. Take Beaver county for example. Do you really need more than one district? No. Could you save a substantial amount of money by not having 30 (randmon number out of my rear) superintendents? yes. To that effect, it really could work at all levels and help to bridge the gap between low and high income areas as well.

This is sort of a red herring. While we do waste a few million on Superintendent salaries (isn't it nice that I'm so cavalier about a few million dollars?), it's really a very, very small part of the whole picture.

And I'm not sure that consolidation would stop the corruption and the good 'ol boy politics, or even affect the number of administrators. It would probably make it a lot harder to hide corruption, however, since watchdogs would have a lot less work to do to ferret it out.

No more needle in a haystack. More like a toothpick in a bowl of spaghetti.

[rcjunkie]

I only feel compelled to correct the egregious ones, i.e., the use of non-words or the use of apostrophe s to indicate a plural. Think of it as a teachable moment rather than an excuse to become upset. We can only judge your intellect and thoughtfulness by your written words. If you're using non-words such as "irregardless," and not in an intentional, ironic way, then you are not making a favorable impression on many of us.

Are you sure you should stoop so low as to respond to my posting, I'm honored and humbled by your show of concern for the grammer used by this lowly peasent. I'M NOT WORTHY

[Midtowner]

Are you sure you should stoop so low as to respond to my posting, I'm honored and humbled by your show of concern for the grammer used by this lowly peasent. I'M NOT WORTHY

Spell check wouldn't hurt either.

[rcjunkie]

Is it bad that I feel compelled to correct this mistake?

Oh crap, another one that feels compelled to help those less fortunate. I'M NOT WORTHY.

[rcjunkie]

Spell check wouldn't hurt either.

Two responses in the same day, I feel so privledged.

[bandnerd]

Oh crap, another one that feels compelled to help those less fortunate. I'M NOT WORTHY.

It's what I do for a living. It was a glaring mistake to me.

[Double Edge]

Adding content wouldn't hurt either.

[bombermwc]

Consolidating a superintendent is only one thing that would come out of that. Think about all the other administrative duties....primary and secondary education directors, human resources, accounts payable, accounts receivable, transportation, etc. All of those duties get consolidated. You have 1 person wearing many hats in a small district, but those are still positions that would end up being consolidated....economies of scale.

With corruption, i think you made my argument for me. It makes it more difficult to hide it. First off, you go from having 30 school boards, to one. So you go from having 400 board members to 10 or something. Just like in a large district, they are representatives of a larger geographic area. Fewer people get to "good ole boy" their way into an elected office. And if you've got someone from one town and someone from the next town, chances are they are going to be looking for the other guy to do something wrong. It's not perfect and corruption still happens, but you would see less of it. It's politics, so of course there's corruption and hundreds of thousands of dollars lost. But when it's a small town where everyone knows one another, you just don't see the same amount of distrust of the officials that, honestly, you need.

And we're not talking about making a 6A school out of these districts either. You don't have to consolidate to one high school or anything...but administrative duties can make a huge difference. Take a look at the ASDM (that's average daily attendance) for the class A, B, and C schools. http://www.ossaa.com/Portals/0/docs/...sification.pdf. You can't tell me that having a 9-12 school with an average attendance of 30 people is efficient. And for each of those 30 student schools, there's an entire school district with all of the extra fat that goes along with them.

[Midtowner]

I'm definitely not against administrative consolidation, and in many cases, school consolidation in theory. In practice? How do you draw the lines, etc.? How do you consolidate bond debt? It gets pretty dicey.

A sweeping legislative mandate without study is not the answer. What I'd like to see is the legislature create a commission, assign both rural and urban interests to it, give it some broad principles, and then a default arrangement (maybe county districts) should the commission fail to come up with more adequate recommendations.

A simplistic approach probably isn't the best way to tackle such an obviously complex set of problems.

[MustangGT]

I agree the way too large number of school districts should be studied and then something MUST be done. Sadly they will more than likely study it to death and do NOTHING aobut it. Do the study about how to do it then downsize. A study with no action mandated is idiocy.

[Midtowner]

I agree the way too large number of school districts should be studied and then something MUST be done. Sadly they will more than likely study it to death and do NOTHING aobut it. Do the study about how to do it then downsize. A study with no action mandated is idiocy.

One big problem is that the state needs to redistrict its House and Senate districts more in line with the actual population. The idea of one man/one vote is laughable when you compare the number of people in some rural districts versus some urban districts.

[bombermwc]

I don't think ayone would say that it should be decreed from on high that everyone should consolidate. It has to be on a case-by-case basis. But someone has to put a fire under a butt otherwise it won't ever happen. You won't be able to force anyone to consolidate, they have to want to. Unless you say you aren't going to provide funding to districts with less than X number students and schools with an ASDM < X, then they have no reason to do anything. They're living it up right now with everyone in town being on the board.

Personally, I'd like to see consolidation at the district and school level to make A be the smallest class. If that means class A is super big (which consolidation should mean some of the current A's would move to 2A, etc), then split it to an East/West thing or something. I just don't see the value in having a school where each clas of students only has 25 kids.

[Spartan]

Here we go with the Republican's throat ramming, full speed ahead...

Republican leaders in the House and Senate say they will unveil a bill Monday to strip power from the state Board of Education.

House Speaker Kris Steele and Senate President Pro Tempore Brian Bingman said Friday the bill would transfer authority to run the Department of Education from the board to the state schools superintendent.

Read more: http://newsok.com/legislators-look-t...#ixzz1DDFnyGhL

For the record, I voted for Barresi and support her.

I agree with you. I think this is kind of like where you see cities change from a weak-mayor to a strong-mayor form of government, and what a bad idea that usually is. I voted for Barresi and I like her approach to educational reform which Oklahoma badly needs. Garrett, the predecessor for too long, was terrible, and ran the schools into the ground with her systemic mentality. I would still be wary of what ideologues in the state legislature would do about education.

[Spartan]

Oh crap, another one that feels compelled to help those less fortunate. I'M NOT WORTHY.

Man junkie, you were on a roll in several threads with quality comments...

[rcjunkie]

Man junkie, you were on a roll in several threads with quality comments...

Quality comments to quality postings.

[Larry OKC]

Thought it was interesting, the Oklahman ran an editorial about how awful it was to have a board that might contradict the elected person's choice. Yet if the insurance office had a similar board that questioned the hiring of former legislators without any insurance industry experience, would they have been as upset, or would they have applauded them for doing their job?

[ABryant]

The English language is ours to destroy. I think that is a good thing to teach our kids.

[urbanity]

'The new normal'

With an ongoing budget shortfall, the state Department of Education zeroed out funding for National Board Certified Teachers.

http://www.okgazette.com/oklahoma/ar...ew-normal.html