Save AISD Schools

To encourage a continuous flow of ideas have a perpetual contest that pays anybody a tiny percentage or amount that helps stimulate thought but does not become a financial burden or offset the revenues/savings if the thought turns into an implemented plan.

So, if a person makes a suggestion that is implemented and proves to generate money for the district or reduce costs beyond some threshold, then that person is paid. You could even have tiers of awards such that if the idea is outstanding enough the person receives a series of payments, maybe once a year. For example, if your idea is “gold level” then you get 1% of the revenues/savings or $5,000 (whichever is lowest) for 5 years, or if it is “platinum level” it’s 1% of the revenues/savings or $2,500 (whichever is lowest) for 3 years, or if just accepted it’s 1% of the revenues/savings or $1,000 (whichever is lowest) one time. You get the idea.

To advertise such a program simply place it on the back of all the school buses and maybe a few commercials a year.

For some high school students, their senior year is partially a waste of time. Now mind you, some students need their senior year to catch up before graduating into the real world, but others have already taken their SAT’s, applied to colleges or trade schools, and spend their last year “phoning it in.”

I propose a program entitled, “The Leadership and Career Building (LACB) Program.” Excelling seniors can volunteer for a half-day schedule of their remaining core classes, college credit classes, and/or a resume and college prep workshop – and the rest of their day is spent volunteering time at the elementary, middle, and lower high school grades as teacher aids, office administration, tutors, and other positions that will be vacant with the upcoming cutbacks. There will still be layoffs with this plan, but at least all the schools can remain open.

The classes can be increased to 60 students, divided into two adjacent rooms, with three volunteer student aids and one teacher over both rooms. The teacher would stager 20 minute lectures of the material between the two rooms, with the student aids overseeing independent and group work between lectures. The students in this type of classroom setting would benefit from a 15 to 1 student to “teacher” ratio and will have a mentor relationship with the student aids. The seniors will also benefit from this program by learning leadership skills, practice public speaking, and would be able to add their volunteer time to their resumes and college applications, with recommendation letters from the teachers they worked with.

Work with the City of Austin to place a tiny (as little as 50 cents or a dollar) local education surcharge on utility bills. Setting the policy so the fee would be impossible to increase for a long period (at least 5 years or more) would help mitigate the initial resistance to this policy that’d be expected.

Partner up with the University of Texas to shuttle fans to/from UT home football games at Barton Creek Mall. The contract should be enough to handle fuel costs, driver pay (which they would probably desire), bus depreciation, and leave enough for profit.

If this was successful, AISD could even consider handling “smaller” events (UT games are 100,000 people) for UT or even city wide events by using the Tony Burger center for parking and their buses for shuttling. South By Southwest and Austin City Limits Festivals might also have transportation needs that AISD could contract for.

Most of these types of events are on non AISD work days.

Get AISD into the camp business. It’s big business. Partner up with businesses as well as running them directly.

Use AISD’s human resources to conduct camps in drama, writing, science, music, various sports, just about anything. One of the great things about Austin is there is an endless supply of talent. Use it! A lot of these potential instructors could probably use extra money in the summer and over spring break. It may take a few years to get on a roll, but AISD has 3 of the most important things possible for this exact business- locations (and locations and locations), facilities, and people with the skills to lead camps. Cheap ones these days are $200 a week. It’s a booming business.

This is a temporary fix; if things don’t get better in the tax revenue department, it will just delay the inevitable, but at least folks will have an idea something’s coming instead of getting blindsided like we are now. I think most folks would rather have a bit rattier, not-as-nice school than have a school closed. 

Instead of building permanent gold-plated “Big Box” schools for RE developers in sprawling Austin suburbia, I would like to see AISD recommit themselves to the only proven elementary school model that works, that is, SMALL NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS. I have a proposal for modern school design that is efficient and GREEN and that would provide an opportunity to put AISD on the cutting edge of education. The school design model is simple and as it turns out, a school like Barton Hills Elementary is already part of the way there. Simply put, a combination of hard and portable buildings is absolutely the most efficient school design there is, especially when you take a longer view for changing demographics in our inner city neighborhoods. The first and overriding premise is, existing or new neighborhood schools sites should have a minimal amount of permanent building space. BHE, for example, is already a model for this, where they only have admin office, K-1st grade classrooms, cafeteria, library, music room and gym as permanent buildings. Their cafeteria and gym are perfectly sized to hold the entire student population for school assemblies. The only current problem at BHE is that the current portables are dated and probably inefficient. However, these can be replaced easily. Modern portable classrooms have come a long way, as evidenced by the products offered on sites like this: http://www.triumphmodular.com/green-building-standard.php. These buildings are state of the art, sustainable and operationally efficient. They can be easily moved from site to site as the needs of different schools change over time. They will always be more GREEN than permanent space because the district can lease or purchase new buildings over time and take advantage of the latest GREEN technologies. The current aging classroom buildings on campuses like Zilker and Becker could be replaced over time by these more efficient portables. The only additional infrastructure required to run these is accessible, relatively flat, somewhat impervious parking sites with water and electrical hook-ups. There is a long list of other advantages to this overall school design model that I won’t go into here, but I think everyone can get the point. This is the same type of efficiency model used in modern made-to-order manufacturing plants, where the majority of the factory is flex-space and modular to adjust to the changing needs of the company. If AISD and the Task Force wanted to explore and test-drive this model, I’m sure there are Dell and other GREEN high-tech groups in Austin that can provide cutting edge design consulting for them.

Allow for limited corporate sponsorships of AISD facilities.  Not going to be a lot of money, but it is still a source of revenue not currently being pursued.  Sufficient restrictions could be done to make sure they are in alignment with core values (no fast food, for instance).

See: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/education/16naming.html

Dr. Carstarphen receives a $1,000/mo vehicle allowance. I think she can afford to maintain her own vehicle. When it is used for work, she can submit in a mileage reimbursement like everyone else. It’s not a lot, but it’s something – and it’s definitely wasteful spending.

Mandate 5-10 furlough days a year for AISD CAC employees. Furlough days may need to be staggered during the school year for employees within certain departments (so as to not leave the central office vacant) or be during the christmas holiday.

HP, Applied Materials and other large companies have company wide shut-downs, usually during the xmas holiday, in which the offices are essentially closed for approx. 10 days. Employees must either use their vacation days during that time or take those days unpaid if they have already used their vacation time. If big corporations are doing it (and AISD clearly likes to behave like a big corporation) then maybe it will work for AISD to help reduce some spending.

The is a tract of land that AISD has owned for about 30 years now. It was originally set aside for an elementary school which the Travis Country residents back in the 80′s voted against (foolishly). The land is tucked back in the neighborhood and is used by a few of the neighbors as open space/park area. There will never be a school built on this property as it is the absolute smallest amount of land necessary for an elem. school. It serves no purpose and a developer would love to get their hands on this land to pop a few new homes down in a desirable neighborhood.

Eanes ISD has been able to successfully bypass Robin Hood and keep money within its own district through the Eanes Education Foundation. They are able to fully fund teacher positions, athletic programs, and facility renovations/maintenance.

Foundations can be set up for individual schools or programs and the money raised goes directly to the school or program and is not distributed state wide.

Building a few additional vacation days into the school year could potentially have several cost saving benefits as well as potentially bring in additional income… how?

If there were a few more vacation days added during some of the months when there are typically more sick kids and teachers, the district may be able to reduce the need for substitute salaries (on days teachers are sick or need a day for dr. visits, personal appointments, etc). It may also increase attendance as it may cover some of the days students are absent due to dr. appointments, illnesses, VACATIONS (we all know parents pull their kids out of school for vacations), etc.

Every day a student is absent, regardless of the reason, the district loses approximately $40 per day per student. Recapturing this money is a big boost income wise for the district-wide.

Additionally, it would decrease the summer break by that number of days when summer programs, like Extended School Year for special needs children, would be operating.

This option has many cost-savings as well as revenue generating facets.

Although there is a long list of excellent ideas on how to avert the current budget crisis in this discussion group, my thoughts are, “Is there a permanent solution to the current budget crisis and also future budget crises that seem almost inevitable?”  I believe there is, and it is in the form of a new bill that is being proposed by Rep. Kelly Hancock in the Texas House.  It is a bill called the “Parent Trigger.”

This bill opens up the opportunity for creating many more charter schools.  A charter school is different from a traditional public school in that the management of the school is turned over to a private non-profit company free of union rules.

Although a few bad management companies have given charter schools a bad name, there are now companies with a long track record of excellent management.  You may have heard of KIPP Academy, which has 99 schools nationwide.  They have 17 in Houston, 5 in Austin, 3 in San Antonio, 1 in Dallas, and 1 in Galveston.  I don’t mean to advertise KIPP schools; I just mean to show that there are charter school management companies that have established excellence.

The “Parent Trigger” bill would allow the parents of kids that go to a particular public school to petition their school board to turn their school into a charter school.  If the parents can collect signatures representing a majority of the kids attending the school, the law would “trigger” and require the school district to convert the school to private management in the form of a campus charter school.

If passed, this bill would give parents the power to convert every public school in the state to private non-profit management, one school at a time.  This would be the most dramatic change in public school management in our lifetime.  It will empower parents to make management decisions on a contractual basis with a private management company.  It will return effective ownership of the school to the parents in that neighborhood.

I would ask all members of “Save Austin Schools” to call or email Rep. Kelly Hancock of Ft. Worth and thank him for proposing the “Parent Trigger” bill.  Then call your own Representative and State Senator and ask them to support the “Parent Trigger” bill.

Bob Schoolfield
Chairman
Texans for Parental Choice in Education
512-327-9195 office
512-461-3126 mobile
bob.txpce@gmail.com

I have no idea what is the status of AISD’s current teacher’s contract, but one idea is to reopen the contract and request teachers to forego any raises for the next two years. As part of the negotiation, we could also offer guaranteed raises in later years of the contract. Teachers should share in the pain as well as everyone else. I would rather that teachers not get a raise as opposed to laying off hundreds of teachers. There is ample precedent with the City and in the private sector.