My favorite proposed cutback item, as discussed last evening by a community group at School District headquarters, is an imaginative attempt to ding parents when their favorite child skips a day of school.
More substantive, more daunting cuts were reviewed, but this one is intriguing.
As you know, public education is about how much the School District has in its wallet rather than how much your child has in his head.
When a student misses a day, he costs the District a loss of $39 in state funding. Therefore, a hopelessly optimistic soul — I think his name was Edsel Ford —suggested that the District knock on said family’s door and request $40 to offset the loss of revenue.
The knocker probably will be invited in for brie and wine, although if I were the knocker, I would bring along my own taster.
Formula May Need a Test Run
Since the School District potentially stands to lose $2.65 million in state funding — 2.4 percent of the budget — beginning with the autumn term, the Community Budget Advisory Committee spent 2 1/2 hours hashing over tolerable or desirable cuts. A final vote is due on Wednesday, Jan. 30.
I am incapable of imagining a scenario where a meaningful number of families would dash off, say, a $120 check at the end of a month because a child missed three days of school. The person who advanced the idea deserves an “A” for vision.
A Dream Stream of Revenue
Merely the embryonic suggestion awakens my mind to exciting possibilities. If a regular reader misses thefrontpageonline.com for one day, could I bill him, say, $10? I can always bill. Would a critical mass of readers respond? If this works, we could transfer the newspaper’s headquarters to Tahiti.
Two other proposals deserve closer inspection. Both are deliciously fascinating.
How about cashiering the relatively new Director of Security, which would save the School District a nifty $120,000? The group talked about it. The reasoning is sizzlingly compelling:
The Director’s staff is sufficient.
With 13 security personnel behind the Director, safety of the students would not be jeopardized, one woman told me, “and the $120,000 salary we would be saving is a serious chunk of change.”
A Definition of Vulnerable
You don’t have to be insightful to detect a hardly subtle message: The Director of Security is not essential to the protection of the campuses.
Maybe the community group was not suggesting he hides out in his office each day, burying his eyes in the latest Sears catalogue.
Maybe they feel still burned by the previous Director of Security. The District reportedly sent a jet pilot with lots of fuel to fetch the soon-to-be ex- Director because he had wandered so far from home base.
The third neatest suggestion — and it won a consensus — was for every employee of the School District to agree to swallow the same percentage of salary reduction. That is like consuming a lighted rocket for lunch. This undoubtedly would set off explosions across Culver City. Even miles away, I heard the gulping reaction of Union President David Mielke.
The Good Guys Are Saved
Under the rubric of Attitudes That Never Change, whether it is a community group or educators doing the bidding, the big chiefs with the most feathers usually manage to escape from cutback massacres with all of their pimples intact.
The larger cutback picture remains befogged.
And it will not necessarily be clarified on Jan. 30.
The only certitude seems to be that numerous employees will lose ground. Clerk-typists were deemed vulnerable last evening. That was the bad news. The good news is that we can sleep tonight. Thank heavens the leadership team remains intact. Not a scratch. I was perspiring bullets for a moment. Gee whillickers , if the leaders were affected, or had anything to worry about, who would show us the way?