K-12 education is in the midst of a national crisis: no money. School states across the country are struggling with the long-term viability of their public education budgets—Illinois, California, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Alaska are among the most visible states in this long parade—due to declines in local tax revenue and state support, and many local school boards are now discovering how the average taxpayer feels: It sucks to be broke.

However, one has to wonder whether if, just as every other government agency must, this might be an opportune time for our public schools to do some truly deep soul-searching regarding their mission and methods.

This is not the first time I have proposed this idea; this is, however, the first time that I have believed it might be possible to radically rethink how we manage the business of educating our children because our ability to tax and spend (or borrow) to support the status quo is rapidly reaching its functional limit—so we really have no choice but to put our public schools under a financial microscope.

Skyrocketing facility, personnel, and transportation expenses—now turbocharged by terrifying legacy pension costs—are dragging many school systems toward insolvency. These are dollars we would be glad to spend if our nation’s schools were paragons of excellence, but right now our taxpayers are left with the worst of all possible outcomes: high cost and poor performance. This clearly cannot continue.

So what can we do? There is certainly a lot that needs to quickly change, but there are three areas where I believe we can easily begin when it comes to dumping superfluous and sometimes expensive (especially when compounded over time) educational artifacts of a world now long gone:

School Libraries

I have my own fond and dusty memories of spending my study hall time at one of many long wooden tables while I finished my Social Studies homework surrounded by encyclopedias and plastic-covered copies of biographies and classic literature, but I cannot figure out why we are still purchasing, shelving, and circulating physical books when students are walking around with incredibly powerful computers/web browsers in their pockets and backpacks that allow them to read anything, anywhere, at any time.

It would be smart to eliminate the dollars spent on library infrastructure, supplies, and salaries; we should instead upgrade our school Wi-Fi networks and pocket the savings.

I apologize to all the schools of library science pumping out happy and hopeful graduates, but this is a profession that is soon going to be as antiquated as telephone operators—and an educational expense that must be eliminated.

Guidance Counselors

Everybody loves guidance counselors and believes them to be essential—but are they any longer necessary? Back in the day, guidance counselors fulfilled three primary functions: helping students create their class schedules, apply to college, and decide what career to pursue. Is there any of this that cannot now be done with a website or an app?

If I can book a round-the-world trip from my armchair, we can certainly sign up students for Algebra II online; college information and the entire application process are now available online, and an incredible array of career information and interest inventories are likewise available online. The key word in the previous sentence: online.

The same information that your guidance counselor is accessing regarding jobs and colleges is now accessible to anyone with a smart phone or other similar device. It is worth asking whether we need to keep paying a carrying charge to help our students obtain information that is both free and incredibly easily accessed.

To continue to pay someone to do something that has now wholly migrated to the web speaks to the total lack of interest the public education establishment has in making smart and targeted job cuts; after all, if that job is no longer necessary, might mine be next? There is, of course, a legitimate concern about the need for adults to keep students on-task, particularly when it comes to meeting deadlines for class registration or college applications. However, if we are essentially paying for reminders, why not speak the language of your target audience: Use text message alerts to student (and parent) phones to push our children along.

Contract workers could, of course be brought on board on a limited basis to help students during registration or other crunch times, but these full-time jobs with benefits and pensions seem hard to justify given the improvements in web-based information technology over the past decade or so.

Central Office Administration

One of my former colleagues once summed up the mission of our school district’s bureaucrats this way: “Much work remains to be done before they can announce their total failure to accomplish anything.”

Some believe that any suggestion to cut public school administrators is out of line—perhaps even a cheap shot—but a look at the numbers is instructive. A comprehensive study published in 2013 looked at the growth in student population across states and the nation and sought to answer a key question: Are we adding non-teaching personnel at a rate far exceeding the numbers of students being served?

The answer for most states: a resounding (and unequivocal) yes.

Over the period studied, 1992-2009, the numbers of teachers in the United States grew at roughly twice the rate of the student population—likely due to the explosion of Special Education and remedial in-school services over this time period. However, the number of non-teaching administrative positions exploded by nearly three times the rate of the student population. Is this really the wisest course of action in difficult budget times?

The increase in the number of teachers is worthy of further study in order to ascertain whether resources are being properly utilized; the increase in non-teaching administrative overhead is an absolute scandal that requires immediate action.

That the public education system has been adding layer upon layer of administrators—many of whom are making more than state governors, U.S. Senators, or even the President—while the rest of the economy has been rapidly shedding bureaucracy should be a clear warning to beleaguered taxpayers that they are being ripped off. The world will not grind to a halt if many of these individuals were sent out the door to seek gainful employment elsewhere and the dollars saved were reinvested in our classrooms to benefit our students.

Let’s Start A Conversation

These three suggestions are, of course, only the start of a much larger discussion. Much more can be done to both reduce expenses and refocus schools on their core mission: educating our children to a standard congruent with what the rest of the developed world now receives from their own investments in public education. To reach this goal, every option for improving the cost effectiveness of our nation’s public schools must be on the table. I realize that not everyone will agree with my suggestions—and many may have a few of their own.

Therefore, I urge readers to post comments with their own thoughts and ideas for cuts that would save money and free up funds to do what schools should be doing: educating our children. I will continue to share my own ideas, and I am happy to also focus on suggestions made by readers in my future posts.

We need to talk—and continue talking. If we fail to have this conversation today, we should not be surprised by continued cuts to essential educational programs, and we may condemn much of our public school system to financial ruin due to our fear and inaction.

Also published on Head in the Sand (headinthesandblog.org) July 5, 2016