Flexibility Key With Any Funds

Last fall, Congress posed for the cameras and announced it would send 100,000 new teachers to the rescue of the nation’s public schools.Well, not exactly. Actually, that was 100,000 over seven years, with only the first year funded. More recently, the Senate cast votes indicating the new federal aid may expire next year.

This month, Congress struck another pose for education, announcing that its “ed-flex” bills will snip a few of the regulatory strings that limit the use of federal education dollars. Good idea. However, the details aren’t final and there’s a fight brewing over how many new federal rules local school districts must satisfy in order to qualify for the promised regulatory relief.

Out here in the real world, school administrators are still waiting to find out if they can use any of the celebrated federal assistance.

Out here in the real world, school administrators are looking mostly to the state Legislature for help, because that is where the majority of their funding comes from.

In the 1999 Legislature, the challenge involves teacher salaries.

Class-size reduction, the goal of Congress when it was making the big noise about 100,000 more teachers last fall, is seen by those who actually manage schools as a nice but expensive proposition. In Spokane Public Schools, Superintendent Gary Livingston says he has just three or four classsrooms in which he could install new teachers if federal funds to hire them do become available. That’s not much expansion room, in a school system with 35 elementary schools.

To achieve a reduction in class sizes, schools would require not only teachers, funded from a reliable source, but also new buildings.

Meanwhile, Washington’s ongoing school reform project has begun to achieve gains in student learning by focusing on basic skills and better teaching - this, at no additional cost.

If new dollars do become available, administrators like Livingston want flexibility to hire aides or teachers who would double up the number of instructional personnel in certain classrooms. They’d like money for after-school programs and summer-school programs to provide catch-up assistance for students who are lagging.

Even in the push for pay raises, flexibility is wise. A flat-rate, across-the-board raise would do little for low entry-level salaries. A third of Washington’s teachers are nearing retirement. The state must make it a priority to attract new teaching talent.

In both Olympia and Washington, D.C., lawmakers should ask whether they’re offering the kind of help schools actually need.