Budget Vote Begins to Heat Up...

The superintendent is standing by his position to bring to the table a 3% raise plus a step for the teacher salary schedule. This Thursday the board will vote to approve the budget, vote it down, or make changes at the table.

Several of the board members have been discussing the need to add more money to the school budget for items other than salary by increasing the PUA (per unit/student allocation), possibly at the expense of a step for every teacher. That sounds like a good use for the money upon first glance, however I am still skeptical for a few reasons.

First, stuff doesn't teach children people do. Nothing has more of an impact on the education of our students than being taught by a high-quality teacher.

Second, HISD is putting a large amount of money (tens of millions) into non-salaried items such as library improvements, stadium upgrades, and other improvements to campuses which should help with improvements to areas identified as in the most need.

Third, our decision-making system is too dysfunctional to increase the amount of money spent by campuses without appropriate oversight.

I could be wrong, but I would venture to guess that only about half of our campuses actually have a functioning SDMC (shared decision-making committee) . You and I know that ultimately one person decides how funds are spent. Where you have a good leader things are fine, but we also know that cronyism is alive and well. That is when dictatorial leadership styles begin to manifest themselves in the worst way.

Spending our money to keep and attract great teachers is the best use of funds. I would agree that we could work on the PUA, but only after we have worked on how schools are run. Only when REAL SDMC's that include teachers, school employees, parents and community members are actually allowed to see the budget and have meaningful input into how those funds are spent should we make increases in campus spending.

Tell your board member to take a stand for attracting and retaining highly-qualified teachers by voting for the 3% plus step and to fix the SDMC before increasing the PUA.