Poor use of school funds

Thanks to a law passed by last year’s Washington Legislature (while they were cutting funding to classrooms across the state), every school district in Washington is now required to add an administrative position just to keep track of kids picking on each other. You can look up the new requirements on the OSPI website under “Safe Schools.”

Please understand that every school district was already required to have policies and procedures adopted by their school boards to prevent bullying. That wasn’t enough for our legislators. Now, their new law mandates (but of course does not fund) an administrator to collect reports and supervise timelines on complaints of harassment. And this includes kids anonymously harassing each other on social media, on their own time, away from school.

Is this what you want your school administrators doing? I read frequently that people want fewer administrators, and yet this law requires more. And this new position will have zero effect on achievement or test scores. It is only paperwork collection and compliance reporting. Is this what we want from our schools? Finally, do you suppose that the nations which are currently surpassing us educationally are doing this nonsense?

Robert Crabb

Colbert