TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/041591/0415100.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 9KB | 180 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 32

Starving The Schools


Trimming budgets is not enough: school districts are being asked
to slice right down to the bone, and children will be feeling
the pain

By NANCY GIBBS -- Reported by Sam Allis/Boston, Ann Blackman/
Washington and James Willwerth/Sacramento


    Every spring around this time, Gregory Gorbach gets
fired. He currently teaches 10th-grade science at Folsom High
School outside Sacramento, and he's good at his job. Last month,
right on schedule, the principal called him in and handed him
a pink slip. But sometime over the summer, once the school
district figures out how much money it really has to spend, it
may hire Gorbach again. This pattern doesn't do a lot for his
morale. "I like teaching," he says, "but if I have to, I'll
leave it. I don't feel teachers should have to carry society's
burdens."

    Here are some of the burdens Gorbach carries: in four of
the past eight years, in schools in Ohio and New York as well
as California, he has taught without any textbooks at all.
Those that he absolutely needs, he pays for himself. "Homework
is pretty well out of the question," he says. At one point he
had an annual paper budget of 2,000 sheets for five classes of
28 children each. So if each student used one sheet a day, he
would run out in three weeks. "If I want to give a test, I buy
the paper myself." Most years he spends several hundred dollars
of his own money on basic supplies. "And I've been in schools
where the budget is a lot smaller."

    There is nothing unusual about Gorbach, except that he may
be luckier than many teachers. During this spring season of
fiscal bloodletting, school districts are slicing budgets, and
a sense of panic is spreading. One by one, districts are cutting
foreign languages, art and music classes, even after-school
sports. Class sizes are expanding, and the school year is
getting shorter. And every one of these trends is about to get
worse, as states are forced to choose between extra cops or
extra classrooms, health care or welfare, higher taxes or less
of everything else.

    Back in election year 1990, when education was championed
as the answer to everything from reducing poverty to increasing
competitiveness, rare was the politician who proposed real cuts
in school spending. But 1991, the year of recession, falling
revenues and rising red ink, has changed all that. Governors are
realizing that they cannot saw away at basic services while
leaving education untouched. Republican William Weld in
Massachusetts, Democrat Mario Cuomo in New York and Independent
Lowell Weicker Jr. in Connecticut, hardly ideological
bedfellows, have all decided to cut school budgets. Like other
embattled Governors, they are also trying to shift resources
from rich school districts to poor ones and encourage creative
and cost-effective proposals for education reform.

    In California, a rich state with weak public schools and
a $12.6 billion budget shortfall, Republican Governor Pete
Wilson has asked the legislature to suspend a law that
guarantees education 40% of the state's outlays. Last week
teachers, parents and politicians flooded the capital to protest
his decision. "I'd give up a pay raise if they'd lower my class
size," said fourth-grade teacher Melissa Stepanick of Fruit
Ridge Elementary School. "I can't be effective with 33 kids."
That is no wonder when 1 in 4 California children lives in
poverty, 1 in 5 speaks English as a second language, and the
school population is growing by 200,000 a year. Says
Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin: "It is ridiculous to talk about
the competitiveness of California in some global market overseas
when we are tearing the heart out of our education system."

    Sadly, California is no exception. Everywhere, schools are
staggering at the thought of what lies ahead. In Brockton,
Mass., any child who lives within two miles of school no longer
qualifies for bus service, so an extra 1,000 have to walk every
day. The company that supplies the schools' milk has threatened
to stop delivery this week unless its bill is paid -- the
district owes about $2.5 million to its creditors. Central
Falls, R.I., has asked the state to take over its schools rather
than be forced to fire almost 100 of its 200 teachers.
Montgomery County, Md., an affluent suburb of Washington, must
locate $65 million in savings next year. "We're trying to find
a way not to cut into classroom programs," says Brian Porter,
director of information for the school system, "but not hurting
classroom teaching is next to impossible."

    Many communities have tried to head off the cuts by
proposing local tax referendums -- which time and again are
rejected by voters who are already being socked with higher
taxes at every level. There is a dismal psychology at work here:
some homeowners are unwilling to pay more to educate other
people's kids; some parents, out of ignorance or indifference,
tolerate mediocrity in their local schools. And some are simply
unwilling to pour money down what seems to them to be a black
hole. In Gwinnett County, Ga., voters were so disgusted at
junketing county commissioners that they voted down a bond issue
for schools. They feared that the money would be wasted -- and
besides, many argued, having computers in the classrooms was a
frivolous expense.

    Poor communities are looking for the courts to save them,
Robin Hood-style, by shifting funds from richer ones. "There are
school districts with swimming pools," growls Steve Honselman,
a school-board vice president in Illinois' Casey-Westfield
district. "Meanwhile, we don't have advanced-placement classes."
He and his wife are part of a class action demanding that the
state equalize school funding. "With three children in the
schools," says Honselman, "we've tried everything from bake
sales to raffles to raise funds. But we can't raise enough."
Last week Texas failed for a third time to come up with a
court-ordered plan to redistribute funds. The state supreme
court has threatened to cut off all school funding, or else will
enact its own plan if the legislature does not act. "It would
mean total chaos," says Houston school superintendent Joan
Raymond.

    Behind all the anguish lies a sense of an opportunity
missed and now lost. The 1980s saw steadily increased funding
for education -- but little to show for it in improved
performance. "It should have been a time of unprecedented
reform," says Ted Sanders, a veteran classroom teacher who is
now Deputy Secretary of Education in Washington. "But there was
no dramatic turnaround. It raises questions about how we are
spending what we have to get what we're looking for." In the
prevailing climate of austerity, the education bureaucracy can
no longer protect the central office while firing teachers.
Teachers' unions are finding it harder to defend lifelong tenure
while allowing the youngest, often most energetic instructors
to be laid off. And the districts are reviewing programs for
special-needs students, which are often exempt from cost-cutting
plans that are slicing deep into core programs at every other
school. In New York City, a special-education student costs
about $16,000 a year, in contrast to $7,000 for the typical
student.

    Officials in Washington express skepticism that more money
would solve the problem. "The mere fact that a budget is going
up or down doesn't tell me anything," says Charles Kolb, a
policy aide to President Bush. "What we need is a debate on why
the country spends more per student than all but three
countries in the world, but gets less." That debate may well be
launched by the newly confirmed Education Secretary, Lamar
Alexander, who brings to his post a record of reform from his
years as Governor of Tennessee.

    Some experiments in creative management are already under
way. In Miami a private company will be taking over one school
and running it next year. The school of education at Boston
University has been managing all the public schools in Chelsea,
Mass., for almost two years. Milwaukee has given some poor
students vouchers to attend private schools if they choose.
Iowa, Arkansas, Utah, Ohio and several other states are
experimenting with various forms of school choice.

    But all the bright new ideas in the world will be of
little use to teachers if they have 50 children in their
classrooms, no supplies and no security in their jobs. It is
also true that the present crisis in education -- both fiscal
and philosophical -- may present reformers with an opportunity
to fix a system that is badly broken. In the process they are
drawing on the will and energy of parents, employers,
legislators and anyone else who can teach them a lesson.