Save money, cut administrators

The article “Spokane schools taking a smaller bite” (June 22) compelled me to write as a 34-year teacher. Schools have never gotten anything but a small bite. When a levy is proposed for schools, it’s to remodel or build a new school. Teachers will teach in the old Jefferson School Building. Now it’s the “school away” while the students’ actual school is being remodeled.

The money wasted in schools is astounding. When I started teaching in East Valley School District, there were five people (Superintendent, Asst. Superintendent, Treasurer, Human Resource and one secretary) in the administration building set on the Trent Elementary School lot. Now a building across the street is the headquarters with a staff of at least 29 while the student population decreases.

We know smaller class size is an issue for teaching effectively but balanced budgets trim the staff working with the students while the Administrators add to their lucrative salaries.

Our schools are in dire straits, but the improvement needed is: cut administrators, stop paying for assessment tests and the materials the same publisher sells to pass the tests and go back to the early 1990s. Then teachers were thinking about how learning takes place from philosophers like Howard Gardner, S.N. Perkins, Frank Smith, etc. Teachers were adjusting their classrooms to become noncompetitive communities.

Molly Ivins said, “Bush ruined education in Texas and now he’ll go to the federal level.

Linda Bauer

Spokane