AUSD Bailout

by Dennis Green

Are Alameda schools “too big to fail?” Or just too small to succeed?

If your $80 million per year business were facing a serious deficit, you’d cut expenses, trim payroll, maybe sell off some assets, eliminate a losing division or two. You wouldn’t ask the taxpayers to bail you out, to simply hand you $112 million MORE without any accountability or measurable return on their investment. Unless you were AIG…or AUSD.

Because that’s exactly what the Alameda Unified School District is doing. Although they will collect more than $80 million this year in property tax and parcel tax revenue and from other sources — $8,435 per student — that’s not enough.

Rather than justifying the money they do spend, the district officials simply complain that they don’t spend as much as some other nearby school districts do, that the State of California doesn’t spend enough, and that it’s a lack of funding that makes American public schools so inept. Or they blame the parents, and the students, or the culture. Or technology…

With nearly a third of high school students in America dropping out before graduation, and one in three schools failing the “No Child Left Behind” standards, however, our schools have more “recalls” than Toyota. GWB’s “No Child Left Behind” program hasn’t, apparently, worked, except to force faculties to “teach to the test.” President Obama’s “Race to the Top” program calls for better training, preparation, mentoring and accountability for teachers, weakening the grip of tenure and unions. But California didn’t qualify in Round One RTTT funding, largely because of opposition from the unions.

In a universe of one hundred billion galaxies, the problems of one little island off the coast of Oakland would seem almost inconsequential, but there it is. Three schools in Alameda have already gone “charter” and another — failing Chipman Middle School — is about to do the same. At least seven private schools also compete.

So what are the likely consequences if the AUSD proposed new parcel tax — more than double the current two parcel taxes combined, and extended over a period of eight years — fails? In a meeting I had with Trustee Mike McMahon, he said, “We will probably have to close one high school, one middle school and three elementary schools.” He did not name which ones.

But if you examine the holdings of AUSD, the land it owns, only one high school property contains sufficient acreage for future expansion, and that’s Encinal High, near the West End. Alameda High School is surrounded by private property, and owns only one nearby older building, seismically unsafe, currently housing central and district administrative offices.

Likewise, the smaller, under-enrolled elementary schools include Franklin, which serves students from families residing in the Gold Coast. Only in the face of a failed parcel tax initiative, and enormous deficits, would it be remotely acceptable to close Franklin Elementary, but the Superintendent may have to do just that.

Simply giving the schools more money without any greater accountability is like the infamous bank bailout of 2008. Any new funding should be tied to higher teaching standards, greater accountability and transparency.

But in 20 years, there won’t be any classrooms left as we know them. Fixing public education in America will take exceedingly radical changes, such as moving toward the Virtual Classroom, sharing the best teachers across district and state lines, and replacing textbooks with the electronic versions, probably Steve Jobs’ “iPad.” Maybe we can even replace some Superintendents…and Trustees.

©2010 Dennis Green