(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers Nov. 16, 2015)
Statehouse habitués are gearing up for another session where the most frequently used phrase will be “spent in the classroom.”
That’s the school finance phrase that draws the most attention, that sounds on its face as a reasonable use of those state dollars. You send your kids to school, and when they come home seven hours later, well, you want to know that all those $4 billion plus in state tax dollars went to teach them things they didn’t know when they arrived.
That’s where this “spent in the classroom” phrase comes in. Everybody wants tax dollars for public education to be spent on educating his/her kids or grandkids or neighbors’ kids—in those classrooms.
But there’s a lot that school districts do that doesn’t involve direct pupil-to-teacher contact in a classroom.