CFO Glenn Gustafson blames NCLB for growth of Central Admin

School District 11 Chief Financial Officer Glenn Gustafson told community members that the D11 administration was indeed growing under the watch of superintendent Terry Bishop. At a citizen’s committee meeting on Monday, July 30th, Gustafson blamed this growth on the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program.

It is fashionable in education circles to blame NCLB for every shortfall or problem faced by the nation’s public schools. The real problem that public educators have with NCLB is that it forces school districts to have their data exposed to public scrutiny. This is unacceptable to a multi-billion dollar enterprise that never meets its supposed goal of education America’s future.

In D11, Gustafson is just one of many who use NCLB as an excuse for every failure. What Gustafson failed to do at the July 30th meeting was to explain, specifically, which NCLB mandates have caused D11 to have to hire more administrators. NCLB requires school districts to improve student performance. The hiring of more friends and family of current administrators can hardly be seen as an attempt to improve student performance. Has there been a recent change in NCLB reporting requirements that caused a need for more administrators? No, there has not been. What could Gustafson possibly be talking about?

During the beginning of the 2006-2007 school year, I asked Gustafson and Deputy Superintendent for Instruction Mary Thurman to provide the school board with a list of unfunded mandates in D11. I and other reform board members had suggested that, since there was this claim of unfunded mandates in D11, the district should forgo accepting federal funds. Using simple math techniques, it was clear that if federal mandates were dipping into D11 operating funds, any logical person would conclude that there was no reason to take these federal funds. After having to prod for several weeks, the D11 administration finally issued the board a report that conclusively showed that D11 was suffering under no unfunded mandates whatsoever. According to this report, of which Gustafson had a part, all NCLB mandates were being funded by federal dollars.

Since Gustafson now claims that the hiring of a massive administrative staff is due to NCLB, and since he officially stated that there are no unfunded mandates in D11, that would indicate that these new administrators are all being paid with federally supplied dollars. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The new administrators of which Gustafson is so proud are being paid from the same general operating fund as is Gustafson himself.

Gustafson’s excuse for the current central administrative hiring binge is completely false. There is nothing in NCLB that requires D11 or any other school district to expand its administrative work force. As more and more D11 schools prepare to fall under sanctions for poor performance, there will be requirements for training teams to enter these schools to assist with training for the school staffs. These teams should be comprised of competent teachers, not the current group of bureaucrats who have done nothing but push CQI gibberish on schools. For the record, if Gustafson is claiming that these training teams are the reason for the administrative surge, then that is not the fault of NCLB. The fact that D11 has failing schools rests squarely on the shoulders of Gustafson’s comrades in administration and on the labor union leadership, all of whom have fought any type of improvement in the schools.

The D11 administration is under a board mandated administrative hiring freeze. By law, the administration is required to obey this freeze since it has never been lifted by the current board. The administration pays no heed to the freeze at all. This is the perfect example of how hapless the current D11 board is and of how little respect the current administration has for its bosses.

As has been the case for over a decade in D11, the student population (and hence, the funding) in D11 continues to dwindle, while the high paid administrative staff continues to grow, unchecked. While labor union activists continue their cry for more money for public schools, they sit by silently as more and more D11 tax dollars get pulled from the classrooms to fund the ever expanding club of high paid bureaucrats. Don’t expect the property taxes of these new administrators to help fund D11 schools. These administrators will live anywhere BUT D11.