School Board members can’t opt out on goal of spending more on teaching students

Second of two parts.

Lake County school officials wants to spend more money directly on teaching students and less on everything else.

But, how to do it?

Superintendent Susan Moxley presented a rundown of possibilities to School Board members recently and got no help from the automatons who gave little prepared speeches of thanks but raised no real questions and offered precisely zero critical thinking, with the exception of one question. More on that later.

The meeting was part of an extraordinary process designed to change the way the district spends money. The idea is to spend more on teaching students, with the goal of raising academic performance. Now, that's a concept Lake officials talk about ceaselessly but never put money behind.

This year, the district got $840,000 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to study where the money goes and to change the direction of the stream. Officials learned, for example, that Lake puts 53 percent of its cash toward students while the average of eight other comparison schools is 58 percent. It spends 7 percent more on the cost of "central office" operations, and 4 percent more on operations and maintenance.

Now that officials know where they money is going, job No. 1 is to find $5.5 million to divert to students next year.

"How we use that money is equally critical. It has to be on proven programs," Moxley told board members.

Unfortunately, the district will start next year $3.8 million in the hole and with 500 new students, she said. That's a total of $9.3 million the district must find if it really is committed to spending its money on students.

Here are some of Moxley's suggestions for how to do it:

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School Board members can't opt out on goal of spending more on teaching students