http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/oct/06/school-closure-plan-trickling-out/
I worked for this district for 25 years, so I know something about the history. I’ve seen the district cut and reorganize several times, claiming each time that now it’s a mean and lean machine, then gradually bringing office and bureaucratic positions back to the prior point. The district justifies the huge salaries to the bureaucrats that tend to make things worse, but has no problem in cutting the actual workers.
I’ve seen schools like Crown Point with very low enrollment kept open due to community pressure. This school, along with other low enrollment schools could have been turned into satellite campuses, which would have cut some of the bureaucracy. I’ve seen several high schools (Crawford and Kearney, for example) turned into campuses with unneeded multiple principals and thus more staff at each, when it made much more sense to have one principal over each school and several vice principals to run the various sub-campuses. Apparently that plan didn’t work because Crawford is now on the cutting board.
So, regarding the UT article, it doesn’t make fiscal sense — exactly what SD Unified is lacking — to keep schools open in areas with declining enrollment. I’d like to see if the district can fiscally justify busing students from overcrowded schools to these low enrollment schools. (Would that be cheaper than building new schools?)
We’ve seen this problem throughout government — elected officials unwilling to make fiscally sound choices, but instead passing the growing challenges to the next generation of politicians. Just look at San Diego, Sacramento and Washington, D.C. Aren’t they just applying Band-Aids?).
We need to elect people that don’t care about reelection and will get the problems solved.