
With state budget in crisis, many Oklahoma schools hold classes four days a week - baxtr
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/with-state-budget-in-crisis-many-oklahoma-schools-hold-classes-four-days-a-week/2017/05/27/24f73288-3cb8-11e7-8854-21f359183e8c_story.html
======
lghh
Oh boy, this is my topic. My wife is a kindergarten teacher at the same
Oklahoma City area 99% poverty school that I went to when I was a kid. She had
(school ended this week) 27 kids in her class, most of which require special
attention due to poverty or poor home situations. She's at the point where if
she gets any more kids, her class will be standing room only. She's already
given up her desk to sit several kids. There are two other teachers in her
grade, each with as many kids. They share an aid that they got when they lost
their 4th teacher last year, they are losing the aid this upcoming year.

I don't think this is entirely a "red state" thing. It seems most of the non-
elderly Republicans I know really do want to fund schools, at least more than
they are now. Though, it does seems that a large number of politicians want to
force private schooling, of which there are few in OKC and none that I know
that are secular, or homeschooling amidst the budget crisis.

There's also the issue of brain drain, with many teachers opting to move to
Texas or quit the field entirely. This year's Oklahoma Teacher of The Year is
moving to Texas next year to teach, for example.

I can answer any questions about this situation to the best of my ability or
ask my wife, who is more knowledgeable than me about it and I will try my best
to keep my personal politics out of it.

------
habosa
We should all be ashamed. How can there not be enough money to send children
to school? What did we spend it on. Maybe we took that money and bought an
estate tax break or a more powerful missile.

Even if these schools could stay open for 5 days, I doubt any state willing to
do something so reckless with education can provide an education worth
getting.

A bunch of adults did this by treating politics like a game, but children will
be the ones who suffer.

~~~
rayiner
This article is talking about the state budget. States don't buy missles,
that's federal.

And there is enough money to send kids to school. Oklahoma's per student
spending is at the OECD average. If it were a country, it'd be between Spain
and Italy in education spending per student.

~~~
CalChris
Oklahoma has the 4th lowest state per pupil spending.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/06/02/the-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/06/02/the-
states-that-spend-the-most-and-the-least-on-education-in-one-map/)

~~~
matt_wulfeck
Utah, Arizona, and Idaho all spend less, yet they manage to stay open 5 days a
week. This issue is political in nature and content.

~~~
CalChris
It is also political in intent and result.

------
jaredtking
The Oklahoma state government is grossly incompetent (I grew up here). A few
years ago they cut the oil and gas production tax down to as low as 1% for the
first 3 years. After a new well has been in production for 3 years the tax
rate goes back up to 7%. The problem with that is that most of the production
happens in the first 3 years. When the normal tax rate kicks in the wells are
mostly dry!

And yet to this day, with the school system falling to pieces, the state
government is still debating [0] whether to re-impose this tax on oil and gas
producers. Keep in mind that this tax cut directly benefits companies like
Devon that have an $18B market cap, as well as other larger out-of-state
producers. As a comparison, neighboring Texas seems to tax oil and gas
production at 4.6% [1]. It's a very shameful situation.

In my opinion this is the crux of the problem. Law makers have messed up
priorities. In an ironic twist some oil and gas producers are even asking for
the tax to be raised [2]. Even they know it is too generous.

[0] [http://newsok.com/article/5548887](http://newsok.com/article/5548887) [1]
[https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/crude-
oil/](https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/crude-oil/) [2]
[https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
states/oklahoma/articles/20...](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
states/oklahoma/articles/2017-04-03/oil-gas-producers-ask-oklahoma-
legislature-to-increase-tax)

------
germinalphrase
The emphasis on food security is no joke. A shocking large number of families
in this country rely on schools meals to assure their children get an adequate
number of calories.

~~~
tuna-piano
I don't necessarily disagree, but I have a hard time squaring your point with
the fact that the poorest children in the US are the most obese. How can they
be calorie deficient and obese at the same time?

[https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/images/databriefs/51-100/db51_fig4....](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/images/databriefs/51-100/db51_fig4.png)

[the lower the PIR (poverty income ratio) the poorer]

~~~
tacomonstrous
Because the cheapest food is also the unhealthiest.

~~~
tehwebguy
Probably, if time to shop for & prepare food and cost of having access to a
kitchen are included. Or if comparing something like McDonalds value menu with
other dining out options.

But cooking food at home is cheap as hell compared to paying for prepared food
if only looking at the cost of the food or ingredients.

------
HarryHirsch
On the other hand, we hear that the economy is doing well, unemployment is 4.7
% nationwide and 5.2 % in Oklahoma, we hear talk of full employment, yet the
state can't pay its teachers, and parents can't pay for food. What gives?

~~~
blatherard
These are not mutually exclusive.

From the article, third paragraph: "But funding for classrooms has been
shrinking for years in this deep-red state as lawmakers have cut taxes,
slicing away hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue in what some
Oklahomans consider a cautionary tale about the real-life consequences of the
small-government approach favored by Republican majorities in Washington and
statehouses nationwide."

~~~
narrowrail
I hate this conflation of "small-government" and small _federal_ government.
It's just too difficult to manage a country this large and populous from D.C.
We all would have better control over our own lives if we did more at the
state level, and the smart people will move to the better run states.

------
austenallred
Something is weird here, and I'm trying to put my finger on it.

> O’Brien said the schedule change helped Newcastle shave about $110,000 out
> of its $12 million annual budget

That's literally less than one percent. Teachers make the same amount, so by
cutting 20% of the school days they save <1% of the budget? That's insanity.

Are budgets so tight that this is the best way to squeeze it? It seems like
part of the story is not being told.

~~~
gregable
It sounds like this is being done in order to retain teachers. The pay is too
low to keep educators with experience, but by cutting their hours teachers are
more willing to stay, probably because they can now work a second job.

------
keithpeter
_"...and with no money for new textbooks, children go without"_

Would printing out a CC licensed textbook help at all?

 _" And the number of positions filled by emergency-certified teachers — who
have no education training (or, in O’Brien’s words, “are upright and
breathing”) — is now 35 times as high as it was in 2011."_

What is the actual percentage of qualified to non-qualified in most affected
schools? Is anyone monitoring that? You can absorb some non-qualified teachers
in most teams but there is a point at which the team support gets thinned out.

UK: Free school dinner percentage is a standard metric of local poverty in UK.
88% is very high, 60% is remarkable.

------
jccalhoun
Maybe I'm becoming cynical but I am starting to believe that current
educational policies actually are intended to keep the population ignorant and
uneducated so they are easier to take advantage of.

------
gms7777
I'm all for more education spending, and I do think it seems like Oklahoma's
education budget is in crisis, I'm not convinced that this particular approach
(four day weeks) is actually problematic on an educational performance level.
As mentioned briefly in the article, studies either haven't found significant
negative effects [1] or have found that four-day school weeks (with a
corresponding lengthening of the school day as found in this case) are
associated with a weak positive effect on academic performance (at least in
rural regions) [1]. There's less context switching with longer periods,
attendance improves moderately and having the extra day off results in less
cognitive fatigue over time. The article does mention Tim Tharp's dissertation
that suggests that over time this effect drops off and performance may decline
[3]. Concerning purely educational performance, money saved with this program
may be spent better on retaining teachers and retaining elective and extra-
curricular programs.

That said, I do think there is an important concern about the increased burden
on low income families -- both in terms of child-care costs and food. The
article mentions the one district that arranged "low-cost" child care on
fridays for $30/child/week, but for a two-child household that corresponds to
an extra $240-$300 per month. For low income families that may be 10% or more
of household income.

Indeed the cost of their "low-cost" childcare is a bit fishy. The article
mentions that the Newcastle school district has an enrollment of about 2300
students, and save $110,000 per year by switching to four-day weeks -- Around
$48 per student per year. Yet they charge $30 per student per week for
childcare on Fridays. How is that cost being justified?

[1]
[http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ987605.pdf](http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ987605.pdf)

[2]
[http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/EDFP_a_0016...](http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/EDFP_a_00165)

[3]
[http://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/10780/](http://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/10780/)
\-- Worth noting perhaps that this is a dissertation, and the corresponding
research has never been published in a peer-reviewed venue. Not to say its
flawed, but it hasn't necessarily undergone a close methodological review

(Disclaimer: Not an education expert. I just went hunting for articles
discussing academic effects out of curiosity. Would love to hear from those
that know more about the subject.)

------
PretzelFisch
This just political trolling, either you believe vouchers and private
education are the solution or you support public education. In this state they
are seeing the intentional death of public education system.

------
c517402
Oklahoma is also one of the few states that has Pre-K. That is an extra year
of state supported education for each student.

------
irishcoffee
> If we spent... $200 billion less on defense, which we easily could afford to
> do, the Federal Government could kick that money down to the states for
> other purpose

I read comments like this all the time, and while I don't disagree, I'm not
sure anyone realizes just how many jobs will be cut if "we spend xxxbn less on
defense." All of that money goes somewhere, the vast majority of it goes into
either parts (created by labor) or labor itself. I realize on HN "defense
spending" is the prime evil, but that money also supports (if I had to swag
it) hundreds of thousands of US jobs.

~~~
BoiledCabbage
> I realize on HN "defense spending" is the prime evil, but that money also
> supports (if I had to swag it) hundreds of thousands of US jobs.

If we spent that same money in a different industry it would support hundreds
of thousands of jobs there too.

At the extreme we could also spend this money paying people to dig holes and
full them and still support just as many jobs.

As a country we have to stop thinking of govt spending as a flat cost and
instead get back to thinking of it as an investment.

What does this money gain the country and when? Are we efficiently allocating
our capital to maximise our return. When consider at the margin, will
additional investment/production in area X get us better return than an
additional dollar in Y?

In my opinion education has one of the highest returns available to a govt.
And a pittance of the cost compared to other high return options.

~~~
rayiner
> In my opinion education has one of the highest returns available to a govt.
> And a pittance of the cost compared to other high return options.

Studies repeatedly show that spending is uncorrlated with student outcomes:
[http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/04/25/468157856/can-
more...](http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/04/25/468157856/can-more-money-
fix-americas-schools).

~~~
MarkMc
> Studies repeatedly show that spending is uncorrlated with student outcomes

That may be true of education budget in general, but what about these Oklahoma
schools that are only open 4 days a week? Would boosting these school budgets
be worthwhile?

~~~
rayiner
Cutting to 4 days is a political statement, not a rational reaction to a
budget shortfall. Faculty salaries make up the vast majority of school
operating expenses. These teachers are not getting paid 20% less to work 4
days a week. So the savings are from ancillary expenditures (electricity,
hourly workers, materials, etc.) and are going to be a lot less than 20% of
total costs.

The way a rational private organization would respond to such decreased
revenue would be to have layoffs and increase class sizes. (While there is
some evidence that smaller classes are on the whole better, we're be talking
about a pretty small difference here, in a range where the expected effects
would be small.)

~~~
c256
Oklahoma schools have been laying off teachers and increasing class sizes for
many, many years. Typical class sizes there now are already 30-40% larger than
the legal (state law, which has itself been adjusted upwards several times)
limit. In most of these places, there are 3-5 class groups in a cohort (that
is, there are 3-5 4th grade teachers). Even aside from the terrible impact on
teacher attention, these classrooms have already run out of space to hold
students -- students are already sharing desks that are explicitly designed
for one student. Laying off a teacher and redistributing their 26+ students to
the remaining 2-4 classrooms doesn't work any more.

------
microcolonel
> It also runs contrary to the push in many parts of the country to provide
> more time for learning — and daily reinforcement — as a key way to improve
> achievement, especially among poor children.

Isn't this a mythical outcome though?

> But funding for classrooms has been shrinking for years in this deep-red
> state as lawmakers have cut taxes, slicing away hundreds of millions of
> dollars in annual revenue in what some Oklahomans consider a cautionary tale
> about the real-life consequences of the small-government approach favored by
> Republican majorities in Washington and statehouses nationwide.

And yet they managed to keep the schools open on a budget a small fraction of
the size in the past. Suddenly it has become so expensive to run the schools
as they're currently structured that they can't even operate them. I don't
think that reflects as poorly on the budget as it does on the school boards
and administrators.

> The four-day week is a “contagion,” said Paul Hill, a research professor at
> the University of Washington Bothell who has studied the phenomenon in Idaho
> and who worries that the consequences of the shift — particularly for poor
> kids — are unknown.

Somebody who has studied the effects of moving to a four-day school week says
that his worst worries are that the outcome is "unknown". If he had observed
negative consequences elsewhere, you might expect him to say that the
consequences could be _negative_.

> Democrats helped pass bipartisan income tax cuts from 2004 to 2008.
> Republicans — who have controlled the legislature since 2009 and
> governorship since 2011 — have cut income taxes further and also
> significantly lowered taxes on oil and gas production.

Wonderful, I wish somebody were doing that job where I live.

And for what it's worth, I don't see how a four-day school week would lead to
cost savings. The biggest recurring expense, to my knowledge, would be
teacher, administrative, and custodial salaries; none of which would be
reduced by a four-day week. Utility costs would probably only decrease
slightly, if at all. I don't see the budgets they pass around at these
schools, but I can't see it generating a considerable cost savings.

~~~
zo1
>" _I don 't think that reflects as poorly on the budget as it does on the
school boards and administrators._"

Of course, they can't ever solve the problem because the only viable solution
involves reducing their own salaries or admitting that they are redundant and
only cause unnecessary overhead to an already-strained system.

~~~
microcolonel
If a school has designed its programmes so that operating for all of the days
in a school week is infeasible with their budget (which doesn't make sense to
me, since I don't think they could reduce teacher salaries by removing a day,
and I can't imagine any other cost making it worthwhile), then they have done
something wrong.

Wouldn't it be great if, at the cost of children playing latchkey for a day
during a school year or two (or however long it takes them to fix this), they
finally get their act together again.

------
zo1
" _But funding for classrooms has been shrinking for years [...]in what some
Oklahomans consider a cautionary tale about the real-life consequences of the
small-government approach favored by Republican majorities[...]_ "

Well, I'd argue that reducing budget is the only way some of these programs
can ever be taken out of existence. Then it's no surprise that republicans are
trying to reduce budget. Small-government means that people pay for their own
things if they're not absolutely essential. They've managed before, they can
do it again.

Of course, this is the horrible adjustment period because people have gotten
accustomed to certain things being given/paid for them. How about we slash
some ridiculous foreign expenditures, and divert them instead to these poor
folks who can't afford an interim solution to their education. That's what we
should be talking about.

~~~
CalChris
Oklahoma per capita spending is $5,637. United States average is $5,711. [1]

So Oklahoma isn't spending a lot less; they're just spending a lot less on
education. And ridiculous foreign expenditures is federal not state. Education
is primarily state funded.

A better idea is for Oklahoma to fully fund education.

[1]
[https://ballotpedia.org/Total_state_government_expenditures](https://ballotpedia.org/Total_state_government_expenditures)

