Stan Geiger

Should I Listen to School Superintendents?

I should not listen to school superintendents. Neither should you.

This morning, KOTV's morning show put Catoosa's school superintendent on TV. He issued many a platitude, which wasn't unexpected by this viewer.

This fellow's predecessor was fired. The school superintendent for Marble City has allegedly stolen a million dollars in taxpayer money over the past 10 years. Tulsa Public Schools' superintendent's great initiative, the TAC, has been shown to be a grand failure in recent news reports.

If they are not thieves, they are liars. If not both, they are incompetent. Why, pray tell, should I listen to anything any school superintendent might have to say?

I shouldn't. But I did this morning.

The super said, as you might imagine, schools need more money. He screamed for more money from the Legislature, and touted Catoosa's current $10.4 million bond issue that is up for vote today.

He said Catoosa is rife with school buildings with leaky roofs. Dude, if ever I hear of a school building with a roof that doesn't leak I shall take the opportunity to drop my boxers, light up a ceegar and sing the National Anthem.

The super claims there are trash cans all over the place, catching drips from the ceilings. If ever there was a day to shoot some video of that, it was yesterday. There were storms a plenty. There was flooding a plenty. But no video. Just the super's words.

He mentioned buses and computers as things for which bond money was intended as well.

Should leaky roofs, buses or computers be things for which schools borrow money? No. Such things should be paid for with operating money. Borrowing long term to build a new school building is one thing. That building, presumably, has a lifespan of several decades. A patched leaky roof might last for a year before it starts leaking again. A new computer might be obsolete in a couple of years. A bus might last for five. In other words, it makes little sense to borrow money to pay for things when the debt incurred will long outlast the things purchased.

Why do school districts want to borrow for such things? Well, they want to borrow for such things so the operations budget can be left to pay for salaries and benefits, that's why. Borrow for all possible, and leave the taxpayer to worry about it later.

The super complained of the budgeting process. He complained that schools don't know how much money they have until the school year is over. Is it any different in the real world? I mean, does a business manager know, with certainty, how much money will come in over an ensuing 12 months? I think not. Said business manager is expected to put together a budget for that ensuing 12 months, regardless. School superintendents, supposedly the most educated among us, it seems, can't master the task.

School supers just lay out a budget that spends as much as they want to spend. They give everybody raises. They hire new people. Then, 6 months later, when they find out there isn't enough money to cover their generosity, they go running to the Legislature for more tax money. And they get it---year after year.

If the Legislature said no---just once---it might change things a bit. But the whores in office are too interested in themselves. They do not wish to offend the mighty, mighty educators.

The worst thing about the whole deal is the media. People employed in education, that have a personal interest in seeing more money flow to education, get an exclusive platform they can use to spew forth their nonsense. Anyone that might be able to offer a counterpoint gets no such platform.

For example, KOTV could have put a representative from the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs on the same telecast on which it put the school superintendent. It did not do so. The station preferred to give an educator an unmolested shot at taxpayers.

If their position is so bloody strong, educators should have no problem with leveling the playing field so all Americans can get both sides of the argument and make their own decisions relative to education funding. Don't you think?

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