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Arizona Schools Are Creating Jobs for Everyone Except Teachers
An article in last week’s Washington Post headlined “Why teachers are fleeing Arizona in droves” had a big picture of new Arizona Governor Doug 
Ducey at the top. As such a picture would indicate, the article was a thinly-veiled attack against the governor’s administration and its plans for public education in the coming years.
Now, as crazy as it is to attack a governor barely half-a-year into his first term for the perennial problems in public education that, frankly, plague schools nationwide, that’s not the main problem with this article or the wider attacks on Ducey and his education agenda.
Some of the premises of the article are indeed correct. Teacher pay is down along with general classroom spending. But how much of this long-term trend can really be blamed on the young governor? Where the article falls apart is in its failure to demonstrate where the money is actually going.
In short, its still in the schools. It’s just not in the classrooms.
Let’s look at the Mesa Unified School District, the largest in the state. Since 2009, classroom spending has fallen. According to the Mesa district’s budget, spending on “Classroom Instruction,” which includes teacher pay and benefits, is down more than six percent. Spending on “Classroom Supplies” is also trending downward. But overall district spending has actually been flat since 2009, down less than one percent.
It doesn’t take a district-issued iPad to do the math and realize the money flowing away from the classroom and teachers is being spent elsewhere in the schools. The budgets reveal this to be exactly the case. The budget categories of “Student Support Services” and “Other Support Services” are both up, by 12.4 percent and 4.5 percent respectively. Nearly $100 million flowed to expenditures in the “Other” category in 2013-2014 alone. How much are these schools doing “other” than teaching?
To answer that question, take a look at the job listings and descriptions posted on the Mesa Unified School District’s website. Under the classifieds section, there are open positions for a “Catering Manager” at the district headquarters who will make $11 an hour, with full benefits including a pension and life insurance. The district is also hiring a “Service Worker” whose job description is one line: “To refuel and check fluid levels in buses and district vehicles.” That’s it. The lucky candidate who gets this job will also enjoy $11-plus an hour, with full benefits including a pension and life insurance. This district is also hiring general vehicle mechanics, which makes sense, but apparently they’re unable to work a gas pump and check the windshield wiper fluid, necessitating the additional “Service Worker” and all his or her related expenses.
The human resources job descriptions page is even more shocking. It would be reasonable to assume these are open or filled positions in the district. They include the following:
Catering Coordinator – $11.30 an hour with benefits. (Presumably needed to supervise the catering manager.)
Bus Runner- $10.31 an hour with benefits. (This is not to be confused with a bus driver, which is one of seven different bus-related positions listed.)
Sign Painter- $15.60 an hour with benefits. (Only to paint district signs, but not paint over graffiti.)
Graffiti Painter- $14.85 an hour with benefits. (Only to cover graffiti, but not paint district signs.)
The list goes on and on into the repetitive and seemingly superfluous. It features five different positions of HVAC workers (air heating and cooling); seven different accounting clerk positions; seven different accounting specialist positions; seven different mechanic positions; three different plumbing positions; seven different records clerk positions; 11 different secretary positions; and six different warehouse worker positions. Multiple employees per position presumably fill all of these across the district, each making $10 per-hour-plus with full benefits. There are also plenty of other bizarre positions listed for jobs such as “upholsterer,” “tractor operator,” and “sheet metal worker.” It stretches the imagination to contemplate their purpose toward the goal of education.
Again, the root of the issue seems clear, and it isn’t necessarily a need for more a lot more money, as liberals often like to claim for nearly every problem imaginable. Education spending is way up across the country in historical terms, yet education outcomes have flatlined.
The issue is bureaucratic management. Public choice economics tells us that government agencies don’t necessarily have an incentive to spend money efficiently; they just have an incentive to spend money, period. That seems to be what’s going on in Arizona, judging by the performance of its largest school district.
Doug Ducey has made education a priority of his administration. He isn’t blind or deaf to the issues the Post article highlighted. He has a several-pronged plan of attack to correct the undeniable problems in the state’s public education system. Ducey has called for the expansion of high-performing schools in order to give parents the opportunity to send their children to the best schools in their area. The governor is also proposing a plan to direct nearly $2 billion from sales of state land to increase K-12 funding. Should it be approved, it will nearly quintuple the amount of money schools currently receive from this program. Finally, Ducey wants to make sure this money goes to the right place through a new plan called “Classrooms First.” This initiative’s goal is to direct more money as a percentage of each district’s budget into the classroom and to halt the frivolous expansion of ancillary expenditures.
The only downside is that the students may have to seek their catering, upholstering, and sheet metal needs elsewhere.
Published in General
Government spending is simply a ratchet that only goes up. It is human nature. If you are a government administrator, there is no incentive to reduce spending since that means reduced power and influence. Who wants to say they oversee a smaller budget and fewer people than last year?
Weird. One of my great uncles worked for the school district in Cheyenne WY. He worked with about 5 other guys in a central shop and did most of the jobs you listed. They were all kind of “Jacks of all trades”, if there was a malfunctioning HVAC, they did HVAC (if it was more than a small problem taking about a day to fix, they could call in the specialists.) He drove buses when needed, worked sheet metal, light welding, mechanical repair and adjustment, worked on vehicles.
Union intrusion makes those kinds of jobs un-workable. Its silly to have so many specialists just sitting around in case there might be work, and it makes all the jobs take longer.
In the past when they’ve asked for tax hikes for education spending my Dad’s voted against it because he says, as this article shows, the money doesn’t make it to the teachers anyways.
I am one of those teachers “fleeing” from Arizona, moving from my hometown of Yuma to Las Vegas next week. The main reason for me to do this isn’t so much any of the issues you’ve brought up in this article, but just that I feel I got to get out of Yuma. I don’t want to spend my whole life here.
But there is heavy turnover at the school I teach. We can get better pay elsewhere, and, here on the border, I think the culture is just not that inclined towards academics.
I found myself very surprised doing this research. I would have expected the schools to follow the model you have described with general handymen on staff. That makes sense. Certainly there are very critical maintenance needs at schools. Not sure why some of these jobs necessitate a full-time employee and can’t be contracted out to existing private sector firms.
I have had an epiphany in the last two years vis-a-vis the schools and my two children, now ages nine and six.
First, we did Kumon (can read about them at their site), where they essentially learned to read. It did involve my engagement, but the results were painfully better than school.
They rocketed above whatever arbitrary point the classroom was in the process. I like to think my kids are smart :), but they’re not THAT smart.
Second, we started using Khan Academy.
Kumon costs money (~$120/month per subject (math and reading only), per child).
So, pocketing a very sound foundation in reading and math (they were running ahead on math too at their own pace) we moved on to use free tools. They read a lot, and of course still go to school, so reading and writing are no where near neglected, and they both have a real leg up in those subject – and consequently really enjoy them.
Now for math. Khan Academy does require my engagement, but my kids are able to take in whatever they are able and therefore again rocketing ahead of where ever their class is.
Again this has totally demystified education in the fundamentals for me.
Now they are so ahead in math (a full grade level each), that we’ve let that rest for a bit and are on to coding.
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Khan Academy has really great programming instruction. It is largely equal to adult/job focused sites like Code Academy (free) or Code School ($$).
It’s not Salman Khan that does the video instruction, but two lovely young ladies name Jessica and ????! Well, I can’t remember her name off the top of my head, but my kids lover her too!
The subject matter coverage is high-level. Godel’s Ghost will be horrified to know they use the programming language Java Script (I’m teasing, but maybe not!)
Oh, they cover HTML (hypertext markup language) and CSS (cascading style sheets) too. HTML and CSS are the languages used to display content in a web browser. Java Script is used for fancier stuff there too, but it is also a general purpose programming language.
Anyway, my kids are programming. They are six (boy) and nine (girl). It’s free. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. But I am – very pleasantly so. This would never happen at school.
Here’s the kicker – in some sense, the math they teach at school is becoming irrelevant to me. Transcended.
One small step, but that is what stands to happen to the educational establishment in general: Irrelevancy. Transcended.
We’re so conditioned to think education is the same as public schools. It would be so much healthier if this was in the private sphere – and without a fight to the death with the establishment, but simply because something better came along.
Great post and comments. I work in administration for a public charter in Arizona. We pride ourselves on being better than the public schools, but it is a pride of scale. Our charter started out with a focus on the classroom etc.. but I’ve noticed that the more we grow the more we become the public school lite.
That being said we are still decades away from being the public schools and I am hopeful that we can redirect our course between now and then. For example, we outsource most of the jobs listed in the post. It is normally just cheaper to contract it than keep someone on to do it. In fact, we just outsourced our IT department. It had grown from one guy to a department of twelve with big contracts and a no limit budget. This, at a traditional school that doesn’t use a ton of tech but employs the classical learning model. I was heartened to see them make the change.
Still, after five years we don’t pay our teachers any better than we did at the start. This is purely anecdotal, but I’ve noticed that we can only keep teachers for three to four years max. At a certain point they realize they can make five to ten thousand more at a public district school. Although we strive to provide a better environmnet and culture, at some point the money talks and the teacher walks. My wife is in that arena, she just left the charter I work for and can make ten grand more at a local public school (like a Mesa Unified school).
The same issue plays out in the state. Arizona isn’t a highly academic state. I’m not trying to be offensive there. I grew up out east and the schools are much more rigorous on both sides of the class divide. I grew up in a poor rural NC school, my wife in a upper class VA school. My wife did schooling in AZ and back east, they don’t compare. At some point teachers realize they can earn more to deal with the same issues in a cooler (heat wise) state with less academically challenged students.
When nothing else holds them here (family, spouse’s job, etc), they leave.
The governor could do what many construction contracts do for T&M jobs. Put a limit on what % of the fees(spending) can go to overhead.
As a born-and-raised Arizonan I take no offense, and I think you’ve nailed the situation pretty well.
Wow, I didn’t know they had early math. Glad I checked in here. Thanks.
The Khan Academy starts with arithmetic.
I am currently residing in Arizona and have been watching the school funding debate and comparing it to the debate that goes on in the Portland Metro area in Oregon. The debate about funding is very similar. I have watched interviews with officials from the Tucson Unified School District and if I close my eyes and pretend that it’s 20° cooler I’m back in Oregon. Deja Pooh. There seems to be the same lack of financial oversight and the same lack of an outside auditor to monitor how the money is being spent. There is never enough money and the mantra is always: “It’s for the kids.” when the district complains about funding. It seems strange that the money is never enough and the money never ends up in the class room.