In San Francisco, this was not the first such incident. Everett Middle School had incidents of violence and loss of staff, and in February 2020, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Aptos Middle School had a “Lord of the Flies” environment. A small group of students had “managed to wrest control of the school from the adults.”
One reason is that districtwide, schools are operating with as many as 25 percent of teaching positions unfilled. This puts enormous pressure on school principals, especially when coupled with the California Superintendent of Public Instruction’s mandate not to suspend students for misbehavior—because they can’t learn at home and because they shouldn’t be punished for teacher Eurocentrism.
Teachers are quitting because they’re overworked, undervalued, and underpaid. Except that most professions are underpaid, meaning money is not the reason. A profession is the only type of career where as one matures, one brings all one’s experiences to the work. A teacher might teach first grade for 40 years because the thrill of doing it better every year is so satisfying that it compensates for the low pay.
Public schools fail because they are government agencies. Not administered as well as private sector industry, with no serious check on expenses, public schools fail because they waste 20 to 40 percent of the revenue they receive. More to the point, they fail because of diminished marginal utility of the funds. They receive too much.
Diminished marginal utility means that public schools are obligated to use those funds or lose them, so they waste them on daylong field trips, dance, art, physical education, multicultural education, and the latest in technology; plus they spend too many hours discussing social justice (actually the reason many teachers became teachers) during the school day at the expense of core curriculum.
Revenue and Expenditure of SFUSD in 2023
San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) will receive $1.1 billion for fiscal year 2022–2023, according to General Fund 2022–2023 Budget, SFUSD. $677.9 million is labeled “Expenditures,” of which 68 percent is Direct Services (teachers and instructional materials), 9 percent is Indirect Services (administration), 20 percent is Operations (pupil transportation, building maintenance), and 3 percent is Administration (central).Thus, $677.9 million (we don’t want to know where the remaining $422.1 million goes) divided by total enrollment of 50,566 (Facts at a Glance, SFUSD 2021–2022), is $13,404 per student.
It’s not obvious that out of the $677.9 million allocated to “expenditures,” approximately $135 million (20 percent) is lost. The money seems rationally appropriated. Salaries and expenses appear reasonably proportionate. But at least 20 percent of that portion of the budget is unaccounted for. It’s only set up to look reasonable (where’s that $422.1 million?). Here’s an underestimate of how to recoup some of that $135 million:
1) Eliminate most central office personnel. Much of the work they do involves complying with local, state, and federal guidelines. Eliminate these people by making each school independently responsible for carrying out the guidelines, hiring an assistant principal chosen from central office personnel specifically for this purpose. At about $115,000 in salary, the cost of hiring assistant principals for approximately 100 schools would be some $11.5 million, much less than the $30 million (one half of the $61 million for Indirect Services) that is probably assigned for this expense.
2) Restore resource teachers to the classroom. More than 100 of them are simply advising or developing curriculum or working with two or three students at a time. They are probably listed under the $460 million for instruction (it’s not important where they’re listed), but they are not in the classroom. Resource teachers are another source for the new assistant principals. In any case, this saves the district $7.3 million a year: 100 teachers at $73,098 a year.
3) Privately contract for building maintenance. Great efficiencies would result if each principal personally contracted out general maintenance for his or her school. As it stands, principals send written requests to a central building and grounds department, which then dispatches a specific person for a specific task. Obsolete trade union agreements that dictate tradespeople can only perform work in their respective fields should be eliminated. As it stands, plumbers cannot change a light bulb, electricians cannot repair a doorknob. Worse, onsite custodians on the premises up to 12 hours a day are only allowed to clean. If individual schools each hired one general contractor for comprehensive year-round general maintenance, this would generate savings of $16 million, or about 20 percent of the “Operations” expenditure (of which $83 million is for maintenance).
One reason so much savings would be generated is that individual schools, perhaps in alliance with other schools, would act as health maintenance organizations. Each school would have a prescribed maintenance allowance, yet with an incentive to spend efficiently—because money not spent would be retained by the school for new buildings or equipment, hiring more teachers, or paying higher salaries. Efficient spending means taking care of minor repairs before they become major and doing it with fewer personnel.
San Francisco schools are allowed to deteriorate because repairs are not made in a timely manner and because both principals and building and grounds departments have no incentive to keep costs down. They don’t act like owners; they act like tenants, indifferent because it’s not their money being spent.
Plus, building and grounds personnel, as in all unions, have an incentive to keep the number of repairs constant. They keep themselves employed. When third parties pay the bill (taxpayers paying down multimillion-dollar school bonds), who then advocates against expense padding: for example, the costly removal of non-friable nonthreatening asbestos in the 1980s?
School districts nationwide have become dependent on school bonds, yet principal and interest payments on those bonds drain money that would go to instruction. In 2019, the district paid at least $100 million in bond or loan payments. (They no longer make that information easy to find.) No industry in the private sector counts on a yearly bailout to remain in business.
People in business can analyze a financial statement in five minutes. Assets had better be more than liabilities. Income had better be more than expenses.
Publicly held corporations in the private sector are required to produce an annual report for their annual stockholder meeting. Those financial statements always look good. Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank had beautiful annual reports.
Same for a board of education—that’s why the SFUSD Annual Report always looks good. Expenses are proportionate; teacher salaries are never less than 68 percent. Annual reports in both the private and public sectors are always a lie.
Per Classroom Calculation for an Elementary School
At $13,404 per pupil, $402,120 per classroom of 30 students, expenditure can be explained as follows:- $100,000 Teacher salary
$6,000 Books and supplies at $200 per student
$10,000 ($200,000 for principal’s salary divided by 20 teachers per principal)
$7,500 ($150,000 for assistant principal’s salary divided by 20)
$2,500 ($50,000 for secretary’s salary divided by 20)
$2,000 ($40,000 for custodian’s salary divided by 20)
$6,000 Utilities
$30,000 Building maintenance
$1,400 School busing: $28 million divided by 100 schools divided by 20 classrooms
$5,000 School bonds: $100 million divided by 100 schools divided by 20 classrooms
The amount of $402,120 per classroom minus $170,400 in actual expenses is $231,720 waste. Fifty-seven percent.
The school district would really clean up if it offered each classroom a voucher for $170,400 and then pocketed the difference.
Or, use that money wisely. Pay higher salaries, provide an extended day for students who need more time or want more classes (with credentialed teachers, not after-school paraprofessionals).
With well-built, well-located real estate, sports stadiums, auditoriums, music rooms, and art rooms, with academic standards raised to what they were in the 1950s and 1960s, public schools would return to a level of excellence twice today’s level. Students who left would return; test scores would skyrocket. (This writer taught in the SFUSD from 1970 to 2010. Criticized for flunking too many students, he finally succumbed and dropped standards by half.)
Art students spend hours at their easels, dance students spend hours at the barre, and all students spend hours reading and doing homework. They are obtaining (which is the school’s goal) a foundation in European, American, and Chinese classics. Plato, Shakespeare, Lao Tzu.
Students at HSArts are not reading political activist journalism (as are students in the city’s public schools). By studying math, science, and engineering, deriving theorems rather than just solving problems in arithmetic, students at HSArts are the nation’s future.
Pay that school a visit!
