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“Local Control” and the Holy Roman Empire
California keeps following the failed political philosophy of “Local Control.” The state basically runs like the medieval Holy Roman Empire, which “was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an “empire” [Voltaire]. It was what was left of the Western Roman Empire but was really led by a mashup of local dukes, lords, barons, clergy, sects, towns, accessible towns, guilds, … aka Local Control. But in the end, most local control didn’t have the knowledge, competence, or education necessary to run a successful government that works well for all its residents. Add greed and corruption into the mix, and it’s no wonder little got done. The empire kept breaking apart, and various wars started. The Romans’ strong central power structure in their long history was gone. This version of the Roman Empire was too decentralized and distracted by various power struggles. This time is often referred to as The Dark Ages.
Bay Area has a general problem with Local Control
California also loves the fairy tale of local control, but it didn’t lead to much success here either. It has been pointed out that the Bay Area has some 27 Transportation Agencies. Instead of syncing their efforts, they compete with each other. Yet, everybody will fight any effort to merge some agencies. San Mateo County has close to 20 city managers. All are closing in on the salary of the U.S. President. Each makes two or three times what the Mayor of Paris is making. While Anne Hidalgo is planning the Olympics, San Mateo County will have difficulty coming together to run a Frozen Banana Stand for profit. For 50 years and counting, this county – through an organization called C/CAG – “is working” on a handful of North-South and East-West bicycle connections.
Education has an even bigger problem with Local Control
The idea of local control is most flawed, however, in education. The Best Practice would be a centralized setup where curriculum, regulations, and control are handled on a federal or state level; the city would manage school buildings, and schools would only care about education. The city would be in charge of all athletic facilities and pools. They could be maintained at a much lower cost. This way, buildings, athletic fields, and swimming pools – paid for by the public – would benefit the public rather than just a handful of students. Each school would report to the county superintendent. There could be a roundtable of principals in each city to exchange knowledge. That is basically all that is needed. Instead, California has 1,000 school districts. The salaries of 1,000 superintendents and their huge administrative overhead are eating right into the Education budget with little accountability.
“Since 1920, the state has been pushing elementary districts to unify with the high school districts that serve their communities. The periodic drives to reorganize schools slowly reduced the number of California school districts from about 3,500 in the 1930s to nearly 1,000 in 2011. Of those, only a third are unified.” (www.siliconvalleycf.org)
The people complaining most about lack of funding are the ones eating it up, and most importantly, whenever funding is increased, who gets that salary increase first? We know it’s not going to the teachers.
43 School Districts in Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley—even more so than California—likes to claim exceptionalism and superiority in everything. And yet, Silicon Valley has 43 school districts. A 2012 Silicon Valley Community Foundation report found that student performance is far from the typical story about low-income students vs. the rest. These districts have problems educating all kids.
“If we were succeeding with our kids, perhaps we could tolerate an inefficient system. The fact is we are not coming close to succeeding and therefore we need a system designed to support quality education for all of our kids. Over the years, with surprising degrees of success, various groups with vastly different viewpoints […] have agreed that we have too many school districts and have advanced efforts at consolidation.”
The report is adding on:
“What seems clear is that our current system makes district accountability virtually impossible and systemic innovation too hard. In the current system, there are close to 300 independently elected school district board members who make decisions in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. Moreover, recent state legislation to push more decisions to the local level means that school board members will need to have an even greater understanding of educational issues to be successful. It is also clear that at a time when every dollar counts, we should actively look for ways to avoid duplication of services and personnel.“
San Mateo County has one of the most expensive and inefficient setups, with 23 school districts and only three being unified. How badly this system works became most apparent during the pandemic. When local control had its chance to shine, it faltered.
Trading Checks and Comparing Balances
Sure, you could call the San Mateo system a system of checks and balances, but it’s really more like ‘trading checks and comparing balances.’
When looking at the balance sheets, two numbers always show up prominently.
- How much percentage of the budget goes to classroom teachers and education?
- How much percentage of the budget goes to administrators?
- How does this district compare to similar districts in the State?
According to California’s Education Code §41372, a whopping 60% of the General Fund budget should go to Classroom Education. This would be heaven, but the Community Foundation’s report came out in 2012 when school districts claimed to be underfunded.
2012 RCSD: 38.6% goes to teachers, and 6.9% goes to Administration (CA average 41.8% / 5.5%)
Even the CA average is already violating the CA education code, but 10 years later and with much higher budgets:
2022 RCSD: 29% goes to Education, 7% to Administration (CA 34% / 5%)
Interestingly, with an increased budget, the local control in our Redwood City School District (RCSD) managed to wrestle even more money away from Education. While California’s average spend on administrators was reduced in those 10 years, RCSD has managed to increase its exposure.
Now, ‘underfunded’ districts that value education would never be underfunded on the education side, ever. They would also never be overfunded on the administration’s end, ever. And once money comes, you would also expect local control to fill up the education bucket first. And yet, that bucket is getting smaller and smaller.
We will find time to explore the impacts of Local Control on Education. We will also have deeper dives into how RCSD pushed teacher spending down and how it has managed for over 30 years to avoid the devastating and apparently ever-looming administrator shortage.
Post.Scriptum.
The Holy Roman Empire had one of its high times during the reign of the Holy Roman Emperor and Kaiser of the First Reich, Frederick Barbarossa (1122 – 1190). But even he was so fed up with leading his unruly Reich that he preferred joining the Third Crusade instead. And then he drowned himself in what was then Armenia. His staff wanted to bury him in Jerusalem. In the spirit of decentralization, however, they say his organs only made it to Tarsus (Turkey), his flesh went a little further to Antioch (Turkey), and his bones made it to Tyros (Lebanon). But due to lack of accountability, locals lost control of his remains and forgot to write down where they buried him exactly. This led to the Kyffhäuser Legend, which says the Kaiser must be still alive and just hiding from the horrors of Local Control. And the blame for keeping the legend alive goes to The Brothers Grimm.
Editor’s Note: The views and opinions expressed in all blog posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Redwood City Pulse or its staff.
We’ve known students, teachers, and administrators in Redwood City since 1978. With all due respect, they deserve every ounce of the *small* measure of local control that remains. We are VERY fortunate to have the leadership that we have for our schools, given the financial pressure of living here as educators. The last thing they need is a heavier, more remote bureaucracy to deal with.
As for the Holy Roman Empire, it was a vision that worked for over 700 years…the USA should be so lucky!