Lowering Class Sizes by Putting Your Money in the Classroom
Delegate Dave Albo's 65% Plan:
More Money Into the Classroom, and Out of the Board Room
Delegate Dave Albo proposes legislation that, as a condition of receiving state funds for education, every school district in the State, including Fairfax County, must implement a plan to spend at least 65% of its operating budget in the classroom. Specifically;
•Each school district must allocate at least 65% of its operating budget to classroom instruction as defined by the Federal Government's National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES).
•If a school district is currently spending less than 65% on instruction, it must increase classroom spending by 2% each year until the 65% goal is met. (In Fairfax County's case the 65% goal would be reached in less than 2 years.)
•If extraordinary circumstances prevented a school district from reallocating 2% or from reaching the 65% goal, it could ask the Virginia Secretary of Education for a one-year waiver.
•The Virginia Legislature will reduce non-classroom state mandates to free school districts to allocate funds from administration and support to the classroom.
To achieve the 65% goal, school districts in Virginia can cut spending on administration and perks. For example, the Fairfax School Superintendent is paid over $300,000 per year -- over twice the Governor's salary. Reducing administrative and support staff, cutting car allowances and out of state travel and eliminating other such excesses easily could free the needed funds for classrooms and teaching. Dave Albo's 65% Plan only calls for a 3.5% administration & support cut, to be implemented over 2 years. The goal is certainly modest and achievable.What Fairfax County Public Schools can get by merely transferring 3.5% from Administration & Support to the Classroom:
While a 3.5% transfer is modest, its dividends to our children's education is immense!
•1243 New teachers with Masters Degrees
•A significant raise for every teacher ($7, 737/teacher), to bring and keep the best educators in Fairfax County
•Reduction of student-teacher ratio from 25:1 to 21:1
•50,000 laptop computers (A laptop for every high school student)
•An extra $313.30 for each student in Fairfax County for textbooks, music & art supplies, physical education equipment, and educational trips.
65% works in other states and it can work here!
The U.S. Department of Education (DoE) data, collected uniformly for every school district in the United States and reported in November 2004 by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), shows that Utah, Tennessee, Maine and New York spend 65% or more on in-classroom instruction. . (It should be noted that Fairfax County categorizes it budget differently than the categories used by the NCES. While both the County and NCES numbers are the same, the differences in categories lead to very different perceived results. The NCES categories are the only known uniform nationwide source of data. Thus, the NCES results provide the only known basis for comparisons of school districts within Virginia and Nationally.)
Utah, Tennessee, Maine and New York states are very different. They vary, among other things, in school population, climate, geography and wealth. Achievement of the 65% goal in these 4 very different states indicate that Dave Albo's 65% Plan can work in our state and within our budget constraints
A private research firm, Standard and Poor's, compared school budgets and student performance across the Nation and concluded that increased spending does not guarantee a better result in student achievement. Standard and Poor's analysis showed Utah, Maine, and New York public schools performed at a level higher than national average in Science, Writing, Reading, and Math (see also National Assessment of Educational Progress or the "Nation's Report Card").
How money is spent within a school system is as critical, if not more so, than how much is spent.
The ultimate goal is to get the best return on educational funding, as determined by student proficiency in core subjects (reading, writing and math), SOL test results, college prep data (SAT scores and participation rates) and high school graduation rates. The only way to increase performance is by putting the most money possible into the classroom.
Politicians always say they want to lower class sizes and increase teacher pay, but Dave Albo is the only legislator that has a proven method to actually accomplish it.
The 65% initiative promotes local and state government accountability to you, the taxpayers. While School Boards will retain local control and be able to write its own budgets, they must make sure that at least 65% of the operating budget goes toward classroom instruction. Thus, we can ensure that we are getting the most out of our education system and providing the best possible education for our children.
By transferring 3.5% from administration to the classroom within the current operating budget level we can give our students a better education and not need to raise the real estate tax or any other tax to accomplish our goal.
