If you didn't see KCPT's "Kansas City Week in Review" this week with Nick Haynes interviewing Dr. John Covington of the Kansas City, Missouri School District and you're interested, at least, in what's going on in town, I recommend you go online or do whatever you have to, to see it.
It was really a good, if brief, interview. Fascinating stuff.
Some of the things Dr. C. owned up to:
1) He nor no one else in the District knows how many employees they have. That's a shocker right there. He did say it's somewhere between 3300 to 3400 but they just don't know.
2) of the employees they do have, the don't know who they all are;
3) of those same employees, they don't know where they all work;
4) of those same employees, they don't know what they all do.
That is incredible.
Can you imagine trying to run any organization without that knowledge?
That is no way to run a business, to be sure.
So get this--that's why they are having all the employees come down to the District offices to get their paychecks.
And we just thought that showed--more--of how screwed-up the District is. No, no, for once, it's intentional and it's a good thing.
A pain in the butt for the employees, sure, but a good thing.
A quote from Dr. C: "The Kansas City Missouri School District is over-staffed. We don't need the number of employees that we have to deliver instructional programs and services for 16,000 plus students." (Correction on my part. I had earlier put up this figure as 1600).
Good for him.
This should have been said and taken care of years ago. It would seem that the School Board members of the past--and quite possibly the present--are protecting all those jobs, to the detriment of the District, frankly.
More information from the interview: in the district Dr. C. just left--Pueblo, Colorado--it had approximately the same number of students KCMO has now.
Their staff size?
2400
What's that tell you?
It looks strongly like, if Dr. C. has his way--as I think he should--1000 more employees of this District are going to get the ax.
Let's see if the School Board or anyone else gets in his way.
They do have a deficit to contend with, besides the fact that they need to get the kids performing.
So it seems like Dr. Covington is on the right track and is doing what he needs to, to get the KCMO School District closer to performing and functioning well. Good luck to him. He's a tough guy, it seems. He'll need all the toughness he can muster.
But the fact is, it's going to be up to the students themselves--and their mothers and fathers and families--to do the work that has to be done so the District is successful. Dr. Covington and the District and and should do what they can to lay a good foundation for success but it's up to the kids and their parents.
______________________________
Side note: Did you see where Dr. Amato was fired this week from his latest Superintendent job? Yeah. Isn't that great?
And get this--they gave a quote on the show that he left that district "in chaos."
Sound familiar? It does to anyone who worked for our schools while he was here.
I just wonder how many hundreds of thousands of dollars they had to throw at him, to buy out his contract and get him to leave.
Link: www.kcpt.org/news/kcwir/shtml
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4 comments:
I watched the show, and Covington did not state there were sixteen hundred students in the district. He actually stated the number to be over 16,000.
Over $32 million of the budget defecit is directly attributable to abated taxes in the district through LCRA, PIEA, TIF, 353). These programs are all administered by the City Council.
thanks for the note. that was a typo on my part and I corrected it, as you may see.
on the budget, anonymous, what's your point about the source of money and the Council? Curious.
The District has a deficit and the money or cuts have to come from somewhere. If they're administration-heavy, it seems it would, at least in part, have to come from cuts, doesn't it?
The more troubling thing about cuts is the WAY they are handled. Because of the teachers union, cuts are essentially based on seniority rather than objective evaluation and performance. This could mean that less tenured but more effective teachers will be booted while more tenured teachers who perform lower stay on. On top of this, teachers who are more tenured cost more--sometimes double the salary of a new teacher. This could lead to the district cutting new, cheap, effective teachers AND increasing the staff:student ratio because of the increased salary needed to keep older teachers.
Crazy.
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