Fitzsimon File

Lawmakers continue to review the state financial systems and hear presentations designed to get new members of the General Assembly familiar with the budget. The meetings also give new members a chance to hear strains of the simple-minded rhetoric that distorts the debate.

Wednesday’s topic was education. The subtle but misleading rhetoric brought to you by Senator Robert Pittenger.

After hearing presentations about the budgets of public schools, community colleges, and the UNC system, Pittenger wanted to know how much of each budget was spent on non-instructional activities.

Those questions did not come out of the blue and they are not new. The folks who want to dismantle government, including public schools, always claim that the state’s education system is a bloated bureaucracy that spends far too much money on administration and other non-teaching services.

It is worth a look at the numbers behind those claims as this session begins, to prevent this rhetoric from seeping into the debate and becoming part of the conventional wisdom about public schools.

The Department of Public Instruction is by far the biggest of the three education agencies, which means it is the biggest target of the government dismantlers. The total DPI budget of $6.5 billion pays for administration in Raleigh and the operation of 115 separate school systems across the state.

One of the most common claims by the anti-public school folks is that there are too many principals and assistant principals, and that money ought to be spent in the classroom. There are a combined total of 4837 principals and assistant principals in the state, 3922 of them funded by the state.

There are 2287 schools. That is an average of just slightly more than one principal and assistant principal at every school, less than one each that is funded by the state. Hardly seems bloated.

But what about the administration in Raleigh? That must be the problem. That was certainly the claim last fall by Patrick Ballantine, the Republican candidate for governor. Actually, there are roughly 500 employees who work in the Department, less than half the number that worked there 20 years ago. Those employees oversee programs from standardized testing to school safety.

Republican Bill Fletcher, apparently still a candidate for State Superintendent, criticized Ballantine for his remarks during the campaign. The claim that DPI is overstaffed is simply no longer credible.

Then it must be at the school level that all the money is being wasted on non-teachers, right? Well no. Department data shows that teachers still make up the majority of school personnel. The rest of the workforce is made up mostly of guidance counselors, librarians, service workers and custodians, and teacher assistants who work in the early grades.

It is true that all but the teacher assistants do not work in the classroom, but it is hard to imagine any school functioning without anyone taking care of the library or cleaning the bathrooms or counseling emotionally distraught students.

Wonder where Pittenger wants to cut? Maybe the school secretaries who keep up with all the administrative paperwork that allows Pittenger to actually see an accurate picture of education spending.

Public schools in North Carolina have plenty of problems, foremost among them that 40 percent of the state’s teenagers leave high school without graduating. That’s what state lawmakers ought to spend their time working on this session, not repeating misleading rhetoric about some imaginary bloated bureaucracy.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 16th, 2005 at 3:23 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.