LA County still has only one Board of Supervisors to provide all sorts of services for millions of people, and that seems to work out ok. I would think that one school district and one large admin staff would be better than 100 mini districts each with its own mini staff.
Then the problem becomes one of “Who works there, and where is “There” to begin with?”
Let’s pick Alpine, Mono and Inyo Counties for example. Where is the District Office going to be located? Are people who live in Alpine County supposed to drive down to Inyo County to attend School Board meetings? Given the common bureaucratic tendency to ignore anything far away from wherever the bureaucrat is located, how will a District Office in Independence address problems in Marleeville, or vice versa? It’s bad enough in just 1 county, when the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools has to deal with one-room schoolhouses in Yermo to the problems of inner-city schools in San Bernardino. The more local the control the more responsive the Administration (usually.)
OK, maybe one district per county. Where do people go to attend a meeting of the county Board of Supervisors? The people in Needles have to drag their asses to the county seat in San Bernardino.
San Berdoo County has 33 school districts. That just seems excessive.
Well, first of all, the board of supervisors sits at the top of a large system of government. And each of the five supervisors in LA County represents two million people, which is even more than one’s congressperson. Is that a good thing? How effectively can they represent such a large and diverse population?
So are school districts too small or are boards of supervisors too small or are some counties too big?
All three. There’s no right answer. It’s a matter of balancing the advantages of local control versus central control.
They have this idiotic self-righteous view that all money spent on education is good and damn the evidence. Right now there’s a case in NY where the taxpayers are going to have pay about a gazillion dollars each to increase the Board of Ed budget, because one school is doing better than another one. I think that NYC is spending about $13,500 a year per child for education. If you have a group that can take that much money and can’t do the job what are the chances they could pull it off for $20,000? It would be like giving me $50,000 to buy a car. After a year I say “Sorry, I couldn’t do it, I spent the money but couldn’t get a car with it.” So you give $100,000 to try again.
Who is this “they” that you are calling idiotic? The voters & taxpayers of NYC? It’s their money, they can spend it in a way you consider ‘idiotic’ if they want.
Sounds like your typical urban legend story. Have you got any cites for this?
For next year, they have requested $14 billion, to serve 1.1 million children. That works out to $12,720 per child requested. What they are actually spending is less than that. We’re spending about 3 times that much in Iraq every day – do you consider that a better use of our taxes?