An example for Proportional Cuts

Though not a story about the Cincinnati Public School district, this recent item in the Enquirer about the Winton Woods district highlights the need for something like my plan for “Proportional Cuts.”  Central office administration should never be immune in a tough economic climate when services to kids hit the chopping block.

Check out this excerpt from The Enquirer:

For Winton Woods, this is the fourth time in four elections that school leaders are asking for a 7.95-mill operating levy.

It would generate $4.2 million a year for operating expenses for the 3,800-student district, which spends about $41 million but has been cutting millions from its budget in recent years.

The measure would increase taxes on a $100,000 home by about $236 a year.

District officials recently said that if the measure passes, busing for high schoolers to public and private high schools would return in October.

But if the measure fails, all sports and extracurricular activities for kindergarten through eighth grade would lose funding, including Robotics, Chess and Harry Potter clubs.

Girls Scouts and even the PTAs would need new places to meet, because school facilities and athletic fields, except the high school’s, would close to the public every weekday after school.

Jack Lee, Winton Woods’ board president, said levy proponents are working to remind voters to vote Tuesdayor cast absentee ballots.

The same measure lost in November by 177 votes out of nearly 15,000 cast. In May only 4,242 votes were cast, or 28 percent of registered voters, but the measure fell 55 percent to 45 percent.

This is an example of the backwards thinking my plan would seek to address.  Why aren’t we hearing about the substantive cuts to the district’s central office administration?  Why are we so quick to take things from kids, like buses or extra-curricular activities?

If the Winton Woods City Schools had utilized something like my plan, the board would have reviewed their expenditures—identifying which costs directly impacted services to students, and which ones were top-heavy and administrative.  Cuts that take things away from kids would be reflected proportionally in cuts to central office administrative budgets.  This would send a strong message that those at the top were never going to take things from children without also taking things away from themselves.

No matter the future of Cincinnati’s upcoming levy, we still face tight economic prospects.  My plan for Proportional Cuts might not solve every budgetary woe, but it is a step in the right direction towards restoring faith and getting our priorities in order.