me vs. Berman

I was invited to speak on a panel discussion put on by The Louisville Forum.

The topic: the number of and salaries of Jefferson County Public School (JCPS) administrators-- and asking whether there are too many and whether they are paid too much.

The discussants: me, Debbie Wesslund-- the head of the School Board, and JCPS Superintendent Dr. Sheldon "Shelly" Berman. I thought Berman was going to send a proxy (a common thing). But to his credit, he made the time to participate. Because the School Board rep had little to say (and even less that was independent of what Dr. Berman was saying), the forum reduced to me vs. Berman.

We were each given six minutes to present. A beautiful irony: I stayed within the six-minute threshold. Dr. Berman went past by a minute, was warned again but went on another minute, and then said he would take another minute (which became two more minutes)-- for 10 minutes in total. So, in essence, he was trying to make the claim that he's conscientious about money budgets-- while he has unable to adhere to a simple time budget and brutally (and forcefully) overshot it!

Something else the audience might not have caught: Because the other two speakers were more sympathetic to the status quo, the moderator told me she would have me speak last. Apparently, Dr. Berman asked that I go first. Who can blame him for wanting the last word, huh?

My six minutes were fine. I focused on an analogy to restaurants-- as if the restaurant system were to be nationalized and run like our education system. One would consume all meals for free at the restaurant in their neighborhood-- with the tab being picked up by taxpayers. (To JCPS' credit, they allow some/limited choice between govt-run schools.) If a family wanted to pay their taxes and then pay for private meals, that would acceptable but only accessible to those with sufficient resources. With a relatively captive audience, one would expect trouble with quality, menu flexibility-- and to the point of the forum, bureaucracy, red tape and higher costs. (In contrast, the Catholic schools have far less administration-- with more than 20% of JCPS' student count but only a tiny fraction of its admins.)

I thought the Q&A would be more even-- with some heat thrown my direction. But everything was directed at Dr. Berman. I took the opportunity to chime in when I could, but people were clearly more interested in messing with him.

In the Q&A, he often wanted-- and took-- "the last word", including at the end. That was fine, since the strategy was apparent to objective viewers. And frankly, the more he talked, the worse he sounded.

All that said, he did do a nice job, given the circumstances. Unfortunately, it's difficult to defend a government-run entity with tremendous monopoly power-- on bureaucracy and costs, or much of anything else.

There was considerable media coverage of the event-- with Connie Leonard at WAVE-3 (wanting to follow up on the absence of charter schools in Kentucky), an WFPL interview with Gabe Bullard, and repeat broadcasts of the Forum event on Louisville's channel 25.

One other thing: I misspoke at one point since I had misinterpreted a mistake in the JCPS outside/GLEP report and said that it called for $16,000 per student in funding. The second column of text on p. 60 confuses SEEK and adequacy funding-- and I drew the wrong inference. The GLEP report recommends nearly $7,000/student of additional funding-- instead of nearly $3000 in current SEEK funding-- an additional $4,000 per student, resulting in a total recommended spending level of more than $13,000 per student.