Dirty Little Education Secrets Part 3: Administrative and Programming Costs Suck HUGE Amounts From Common Ed Budget

Since teachers have begun to petition taxpayers and the state government for a raise, and since the taxpayers rejected the Step-Up planning proposal including tax increases to fund public education was soundly rejected by legislators, myself and others have been calling for an audit of the OSDE prior to an increased fund allotment to public education.

After reviewing the OSDE budget request for 2018 - and others - two things simply cannot escape the attention of a thinking, taxpaying public

1. THERE IS A HUGE AMOUNT OF OSDE MONEY GOING TO ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS

This slide is from the presentation of the 2017 OSDE budget.

According to this slide, $126 MILLION dollars of the OSDE budget is required by state and federal law. If Oklahoma would review their state mandates for reduction/elimination and do the same for the federal level, we'd get a whopping amount of money back.

The following slide is from the 2018 budget request. It lists expenditures from 2016 by district. NOTE: Support services including administration are more than the total amount dedicated for instruction. That's money not going into the classroom right there!

 

This is another slide from the 2018 budget request showing that of the mandates, most go to ADMINISTRATION - NOT classroom instruction.






What is the major source of that administration? Support staff. Why are we paying support staff and not teaching staff? I'm sure there are all kinds of reasons but support staff isn't teaching staff. Why aren't we paying teachers more to do these duties instead of hiring others to do them? Notice that the OSDE wants to spin this to say that it's because of teacher shortages? Watch out for talking points.

2. THERE'S A HUGE AMOUNT OF MONEY GOING TO PROGRAMMING

This is from 2018's budget request. Nearly 5 and a half million dollars for data collection. Really? For years before the advent of computers teachers were recording grades in a gradebook and reporting the results to school administrators. This data collecting thing is way out of control and a threat to the privacy of all students and families anyway, it should be eliminated. Look! FIVE MILLION FREE DOLLARS!

Now get this! Your 2018 OSDE Budget request contains this!

15 MILLION dollars to develop yet another program - this to teach teachers to lead. Don't teachers have to take courses each year for Professional Development? Why are we supposed to be paying for yet ANOTHER 'PROGRAM' to teach teachers things that should be done by the building PRINCIPAL or a program already on the books for PD?


Again, there is money in the OSDE budget - 7 BILLION dollars of it apparently when you consider the following numerical facts:

• Total state appropriations for public education in the year 2017 were 2,383,589,158.95 according to the OSDE according to that year's budget
• Total revenue for public education in the year 2017 was listed as $7,822,653,806.10 with "New Revenue Received From School Year 2017" listed as $5,763,260,901
• Total state expenditures for public education in the year 2017 were listed as 5,490,690,280.94

Hopefully this illustrates the absolute necessity of increased scrutiny of the OSDE budget and the IMMEDIATE need for a complete and thorough performance audit of the OSDE prior to any further budgetary allowances.