Education Reform, a goal without a plan is just a dream.

Everyone talks about education reform.  To teachers unions that means higher salaries and lower classroom sizes.  To conservatives, it means abolishing the teachers' unions.  Neither plan is likely.  Here are three  ideas for significant changes that could reasonably be implemented to lower costs, the key enabler to education reform.  

1) Privatize the management of building maintenance, cafeteria, administrative, and transportation.  This means eliminating the union positions in school buildings for managing employees like janitors, skilled trades, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, secretaries and other non-certified district employees and contracting managers to run these operations efficiently as possible.  The union can still represent the crew, but it will be a smaller crew.  Some say privatize these entire operations and shed all of the employees, but in many districts that fight isn't practical and will take a lot more time and effort to accomplish.  This plan targets one specific level of the union hierarchy for privatization.

Instead of chipping away at everyone's wages and benefits, focus instead on cutting the headcount. This is a good one for a public battle if the non-certified union wants one.  Do they really want the public to know how little is expected of them in a shift?

2) Convert to a 4-day school week to save building utility and transportation costs.  Huge cost savings potential and best of all its a super-green idea with the 20% reduction in petroleum use and emissions. We can count on the teachers and the other unions to support green initiatives, right?  And a Newsflash to griping parents: No one ever promised the school would be your Monday to Friday babysitter.  People will figure out how to manage it.  School districts can reap huge savings here.    

3) Eliminate popular election of the school board members and make them appointed positions of the locally elected City council or Township board.  There is about zero chance that the people who get elected onto the local school boards are the most capable people for managing district finances.  The unions, particularly the non-certified employee unions whose members are more likely to live in the district can have a large influence on the low-turnout school board elections making it relatively easy to elect friendly school board members that will negotiate their contract.   What a racket.  True, if more voters would get involved in the campaigns and participate in the elections it would be less likely the unions could sway the outcome.  But why should taxpayers even hire negotiators by a popular election in which a lot of people whose jobs are directly affected by the negotiations vote?  A professional school board team hired by the council would be at least one layer removed from local politics and freer to pursue genuine reforms in union work rules and contracts instead of tweaking the status quo like they do now.

Lots more ideas for another time..  That's a start anyway.

A Few Thoughts on Public Employee Unions

I grew up in manufacturing supervising and working with union represented employees.  And one thing I know is that management is at fault when operations are inefficient.  If it turns out that the union workers are at fault, then please refer to the previous statement about management.  Its not just the literal wording of the union contract that drives waste and higher operational costs, but how the place is run day to day.  How the work is planned, how the workers are trained and supervised, how disciplinary problems are handled, how facilities and equipment are maintained, how supplies are provided and stored, how labor is allocated. Is there a focus on satisfying the customers?  Are there continuous efforts being made to streamline processes?

I don't care if you pay the crew minimum wage, if the crew isn't managed well, then there will be waste and the cost of unchecked waste in operations can easily dwarf the savings from bargain basement wages.  If there are workers sleeping on the job or getting drunk and management allows it, then the managers are the  ones that should be fired first.  Don't try to tell me any union contract shields that behavior. 

I'm not sure that we even have the right enablers in place for effective management of union employees in municipal operations.  In the schools, we entrust the management of multi-million dollar enterprises with hundreds of employees to promoted teachers who have education backgrounds. In facilities there are typically members of one union supervising crews from another union and no real management to speak of.   Managers in many civil service positions have a pay scale that is tied to the number of employees under their control so there is no strong incentive to reduce the size of their crew.  Department budgets that aren't spent by the end of the year are prone to be cut permanently so there is strong incentive to spend every drop of allocated funds, whether its needed or not.  If managers don't get rewarded for reducing costs and might actually stand to lose compensation, then what's their motivation?     

Most all union members I have worked with just want clear direction about the job and want the right tools, time and equipment to do the job well.  No one feels good about doing a job half-assed.  And believe it or not, busy workers are almost always happier in their jobs than the ones without enough work to occupy their time.  This is a direct take-off from the definition of inertia;  objects in motion tend to stay in motion, objects at rest tend to stay at rest.   Its no different with the crew.   
  
So we can all kick the unions as the problem, and I'm quite sure that old-school union militancy in all its ignorance is still out there resisting change, but management can almost always enact great efficiency gains even within the confines of the contract.  If they truly can't then the voters need to know that so they can  elect different politicians and local leaders who can negotiate contracts that provide the right enablers for eliminating waste and using the taxpayer's money as if it were their own.

I dare say Government operations at any level that involve union represented employees can learn a lot from the lessons in manufacturing over the last couple decades.  Don't let the inmates run the asylum.  Manage every operation by continuously striving to eliminate waste of all forms in work elements and processes.

Its not impossible to run efficiently with a union workforce.  That's a cop out and a sure sign of a poor manager.
 



  

  

Unionized Teachers. Professionals trapped in their job like no other.

Many public school teachers belong to unions affiliated with either the American Federation of Teachers or the National Education Association.  And its pretty well accepted that teachers represented by unions enjoy decent pay and benefits, maybe not the highest of tax brackets, but comfortable and generally secure, and given the shortened work year with all the holidays off, not a bad career choice for a young person, assuming one can actually land that cherished unionized public school teaching gig..

But there is one trade-off that goes along with the union representation.  A near total lack of job portability unseen throughout the range of professional career choices a student might otherwise make.  Teachers are essentially trapped in the first school district into which they are hired.  Engineers can look around and switch jobs to chase promotions and higher salaries, the same goes for doctors, lawyers, nurses, managers, researchers, marketers, therapists, and every other sort of professional.  But not teachers.  School districts are like a Roach Motel for teachers.  Maybe the Hotel California?

Teacher salaries index up from starting wages to top of the scale depending on years of seniority and level of degree.  A first year teacher with a Bachelor's degree might make $30,000.  In that same district a teacher might max out with 10 years seniority and a Master's Degree at $80,000.  Not too shabby.  Now, if that high seniority teacher with the advanced degree decides to leave and take a job in the school district down the road a mile or two, guess what happens.  Their seniority would start back at zero and they would earn entry level pay scale.  So, they never leave.  Of course they don't. The object is to get the Masters Degree and the 10th year index and ride it out until retirement in the same district. Unless your job was an absolute living hell, there would be no decent reason to cut your salary in half or less and start over in a new district.

This is the downside of that wonderful union protection.  Teachers are degreed professionals with negotiated rules governing their pay and benefits that are essentially the same as they are for the floor sweepers union just with different numbers.  Salary based primarily on seniority, not performance or effort or qualifications.  To the district, you are a commodity, a warm body.  They never share that detail with College students looking to become teachers.

On a side-note, this effect has contributed to the underfunded public employee pension mess.  In the past, school districts looking to cut costs have offered early retirement packages to high seniority teachers at the top of the pay scale so they could replace them with new hires at the bottom of the pay scale.  Voila! The district saved money!  But it was only short term savings that turned into long-term liabilities.  Over time, the ranks of relatively young retired teachers receiving pensions swelled higher and higher, while those new hires indexed up to the top of the pay scale themselves.  So the districts are eventually back in the crunch and the pension funds are overburdened as well.  All in the name of austerity.

And its plausible that some of the general malaise in the classrooms might be traced to teachers who see little or no reason to go the extra mile for the classroom or the students when there's no possibility all that extra effort might impact their salary or earn them a promotion.  If you're a sweeper, better not sweep too fast or you'll just cheese off all your co-workers.

Wisconsin labor dispute. Good luck kicking that hornet nest.

To help curb the budget deficit in Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker is trying to bust the education employee unions by stripping them of collective bargaining powers and ability to fund political campaigns.  Strong and bold measures are needed fast to avoid impending budget disasters in states and localities, not just in Wisconsin but across the Nation.  However, I disagree with Walker's kick the hornets nest, union-busting approach.  The shitstorm he created will do more damage than good and end up costing the taxpayers more than if he had a reasonable plan going into budget negotiations.

Resources are always limited.  The strategy for any enterprise should be to focus on eliminating waste.  Waste in labor, waste in energy, waste in supplies, waste in processes, waste in every level of the operation.   So if I was a Governor and I needed to cut costs in the funding of public education, instead of  boldly cheesing off every single union member into a frenzy of rage and activism, I would propose a few ideas for reducing waste and then challenge others to justify why the waste is preferable.  Not to say I wouldn't upset lots of people with these proposals, but I think the bulk of the people will go along.  That's what leaders do.  Find publicly acceptable and workable solutions.

1) Longer school days but more days off.  Transportation and building maintenance costs are a very large part of the budget.  If schools could implement a 4 day school week with longer school days, there would be huge potential for savings.  As fuel costs rise this will get even more meaningful.

2) Introduce statewide medical and retirement plans in which any district could opt to participate instead of having to negotiate and administer their own plans.  There would still be local negotiations for salaries and extended benefits, but a statewide baseline plan could save costs by increasing the pool of employees.  

3) Publicly promote outsourcing of non-education-related services and be ready to take on the opposition head first.  Schools need to focus resources on education which means they need to minimize resources on non-educational costs such as building maintenance, busing and cleaning.  There is enormous waste in this part of the district budgets and the reason goes to the manner in which the school districts are managed.  Locally elected school boards negotiate contracts and it is far more likely that the non-degreed personnel in the district, namely the janitors, bus drivers, and cafeteria workers live and vote in the district. Teachers are more likely to live outside the district and have less influence in the local elections.  Any school board member who tries to cut into the non-educational part of the school budget won't last long.  Essentially, the non-educational employee unions hold the districts hostage, and the hell with the students, teachers, and  classrooms.  If the typical taxpayer knew how little work is asked from a school district janitor in a normal day they would be shocked.  If the Governor wants to take on any union, these are the ones.  Start by claiming loyalty to the teachers, the ones who actually do the educating, and pointing out the waste in building maintenance and busing costs compared to privatized services to all the taxpayers.  Offer to direct a percentage of the cost savings back into the classroom facilities.  Divide and conquer, just like Sun Tzu said.  If required, put privatization proposals directly for public vote.  This is key for success.   

4. Reduce administrative costs by combining smaller school districts.  Neighborhood schools can retain their names and teams, but it would make sense if at a higher level there was a combining of the school districts to reduce administration costs.

5.  Open up the role of school principal to those with business backgrounds, not just promoted educators.  Schools are very similar to very large business enterprises.  Why in the world do we trust the management of these multi-million dollar enterprises to people whose background is in education?  I'm sure there are a lot of principals who do an outstanding job and keep a close eye on operational costs, effectively manage human resources and focus on long and short term goals and customer satisfaction  but that particular outcome would be more likely if principals had the aptitude, training,and experience managing real-life business operations.  This is another opportunity for waste reduction.  Competent effective management.  Oh and get ready for a union fight there too.  School principals typically belong to their own union!

Well there are a few ideas that I think would accomplish more than Scott Walker's attempt to eliminate public employee unions will.