Sunday, August 1, 2010

Good Leadership Shares in the Pain

Good successful leadership knows to share in the bad times as well as the good times. In our state we see both occurring. Today we can pat the State Supreme Court on the head and say “good supreme court, good supreme court” because they have come up with a way for judges to share in the pain of pay cuts.

Contrast that with school administrators who want to sue a state with no funds while they hire more administration and raise salaries for administration and sports coaches while cutting services to our children and cutting the pay and jobs of those directly working with students. School administration is out of touch and out of control when it comes to school reform and budget issues in our state.

Legislators refuse to control or deal with educational administration because they say they can’t because of constitutional issues yet that did not stop the state supreme court from finding a way. School administration uses public money to lobby legislators so they will tell voters that our constitution has tied their hands and that only school administration can control the dollars given to each school district.

Real reform cannot and will not start until these issues are dealt with in our state. School administration should not be in control of setting their own salaries. There should be caps on how much a school administrator can earn per year in salary. There should be limits on how many school administrator jobs each school district can have that is based on enrollment. Lobbyist should not be allow to lobby for salaries for top school administration which includes all levels of state funded education.

We need good leadership that cares more about successful positive school reform that shows care for frontline jobs and our children. We should be very pleased and proud of our elected judges and our state supreme court.