Outsourcing the Superintendent?

Public school districts are facing a major budget crisis in Michigan after almost a decade of disastrous fiscal management and poor policy decisions and school budgets are now facing considerable pressure. Almost every school district in the state is looking at cutting teachers salaries and benefits and many are also considering outsourcing or privatizing support services including custodial, food service, or transportation. Although these options likely do need to be considered, very few districts are looking at another potential source of savings- outsourcing school administration services.

In our district, our administration building supports teachers in many important ways, including budgeting and financial reporting, taking care of accounts payable and accounts receivable, managing the payroll, taking care of grant reporting, keeping track of banking and investments, and service the debt in the district. Administration runs the human resources office, which hires employees, keeps their paperwork current so they remain highly qualified, manages benefits, and provides other services to employees in the district. We have a purchasing office which oversees purchases in the district, whether they be big or small, and we have a technology department to provide technical support to teachers and staff. This whole operation is managed by an expensive and highly paid Superintendent, who works with the community and school board and manages the whole operation.

All of these jobs can easily be provided by private businesses that may possibly cost the district less money or provide them with better services.

Private management firms are out there, providing these sort of purchasing, payroll, HR, and management services to small businesses in our nation so that those businesses can focus on doing what they know best. These firms have many clients and because of the large numbers of clients they can provide more efficiency based on economies-of-scale, lowering the costs of providing these services to a district. They also can draw on substantially more experience and resources than found in school districts, potentially providing better services than would be found in-house. And because these firms would be hired by the district, they would always fear losing their contract and thus be more responsive to the concerns and pressures of the district, perhaps more so than the districts own employees, many whom view their jobs as virtual lifetime guarantees.

If teachers and custodians and bus drivers are being asked by administration to consider all options and are being looked at to see if they can be outsourced, administration also needs to know that there are companies out there that can do what they do and that they do not have some sort of monopoly on job security and pay. If I were a union official in a tough bargaining fight, I'd make sure that I brought to the table this line of thinking, because perhaps a district could save vital dollars by privatizing or outsourcing its school administration and spare cuts to teachers and other support staff who actually work with students.

This post was inspired by something that I read on Pamela Hornberger's blog, Pamela Hornberger for L'Anse Creuse School Board, which itself was inspired by a report from the Mackinac Center. One possible company that I found that may provide the sort of services I imagine is The Leona Group.