Comments on: How much do school districts in California spend on teachers?

By: Turanga_teach

Turanga_teach — Sat, 15 May 2010 04:49:10 +0000

Hey Anon,
Excellent point. There are sanctions for breaking the percentage law. Ironically, it’s a fine, which I believe the district has been coughing up on an annual basis in order to maintain its out-of-compliance spending pattern.

Maybe if we stopped overpaying the state because we’re overpaying the administrators, we might not have to underpay the teachers.

By: Katy Murphy

Katy Murphy — Sat, 15 May 2010 02:07:07 +0000

Here is the Mercury News story that ran today on Matthews’ appointment: http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15083513

By: TheTruthHurts

TheTruthHurts — Sat, 15 May 2010 00:00:41 +0000

Just heard the state is screwing us further with their “May Revision” of the state budget. More cuts to K-12 education. Just peachy!

By: anon

anon — Fri, 14 May 2010 21:21:34 +0000

I don’t understand how school districts are allowed to break the law. I just had to pay a weighty fine and go to traffic school for breaking one of California’s laws. May I please have a list of laws that are okay to break?

By: CarolineSF

CarolineSF — Fri, 14 May 2010 21:06:21 +0000

Ah, I remember Vince Matthews back when he was running Edison Charter Academy here in SF, back in ’01, and giving fake test scores to the trusting press to show what an alleged miracle Edison was…

Meanwhile, great idea about the state administrator. Why not join me in calling for saving money at the state level and abolishing the state Board of Ed too? All it seems to do is promote charter schools, and they already have the California Charter Schools Assn. to do that.

By: Steven Weinberg

Steven Weinberg — Fri, 14 May 2010 18:28:36 +0000

Here is one possible piece of good news for the OUSD budget: Vince Matthews, the well-paid State Administrator, is becoming the Superintendent of Schools for San Jose Unified. The Board of Education and Superintendent Smith and the entire Oakland political establishment should be pressuring the State Superintendent of Public Instruction to appoint a part time (and much less lavishly paid) State Administrator.

By: Cranky Teacher

Cranky Teacher — Thu, 13 May 2010 19:33:38 +0000

Wait, so it’s 52% according to the same people who said a minute ago it was 56%? But the county said it was 45%? Hmmn.

Bottom line: All of them are too low; the money needs to get right to the frontlines. And the measure is an interesting one, because it can be bumped up in either of two ways: Raising salaries OR increasing the number of teachers so you can have more prep and/or collob time, or smaller class sizes.

And yeah, I think the small schools thing got really out of hand.

The first ones, like ASCEND and Urban Promise Academy, were organically built by team’s of like-minded and passionate educators. By the middle of the decade, under Ward and the state, it was just pell-mell creation of dozens of schools with high turnover of teachers working under freshly-minted 32-year-old principals with like five years of teaching experience. Just all hope and glue and bits of straw!

And even the best small schools have mostly succeeded with improving school culture and safety but have struggled to make significant headway in closing the achievement gap.

If there are classrooms all over the district that are half-filled, that is on the admin to better manage our resources. (I will say as a teacher, even more than less students or more money I want more TIME for grading, planning and collaboration.)

I have a hard time believing Smith can pull off closing more than a couple schools a year, though. As we saw in the past, even the most dysfunctional school is very beloved to some folks, if even just by its location, and so he better be a LOT more politically savvy than Ward!