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It seems we're in for another tiresome round of arguments that we have to fire school district staff to focus our dollars in the Classroom. Del Stover recently came across these words from a Maryland State Senator:

We don’t want to cut public education, so we’re going to have to go to superintendents of schools and say: "Listen, you’ve got to find us some administrators, some bureaucrats, some public relations people that we can cut, because we’re not going to furlough teachers."

Stover praises the Senator for wanting to save teachers' jobs, but he bridles at the suggestion that central offices are "bloated, stuffed by people who don't do essential work."

After all, someone has to write those paychecks. Someone has to make sure the schools are compliant with the myriad laws and regulations that exist. Someone has to buy the toilet paper and textbooks.

The venal educrat has become a common figure in school reform morality plays.* In the real world, though, the more accountability we want, the more we tend to ask of our central offices. Just think of the sheer number of hours they will have to devote to proposal writing if the Education Department loads more of its money into competitive grants.

Even some of the best charter schools, which were meant to do an end-run around district offices, are learning that they need their own central offices. And those are costing a lot of money.

As state budgets keep shrinking, you can bet that we'll hear more calls to prune district offices. Maybe champions of the silly "65 percent solution" will get more wind in their sails again. At the same time, districts will face an ever-growing tide of mandates, reporting requirements and other paperwork.

That's a lousy recipe for the next few years.

[Image adapted from Lightmatter.net via Wikimedia Commons.]

*Sentence edited for clarity.