By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org

HARRISBURG, Pa. – Former Washington D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee believes Pennsylvania school officials should think twice before imposing cuts to kindergarten, arts and music programs to balance district budgets.

Instead they should eliminate expenses that don’t directly impact student learning, and divert those funds back into the classroom, Rhee explained at a recent forum on education reform sponsored by the Pennsylvania Chamber Education Foundation and Team Pennsylvania Foundation, PennLive.com reports.

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“Given where Pennsylvania is right now with less than 50 percent (of students) being proficient, I think the state can ill afford to, and a district can ill afford to, put in place a policy that is going to lessen the amount of time that kids are in school,” said Rhee, CEO of the education reform group StudentsFirst.

We certainly agree.

The problem is that, in school districts across Pennsylvania and the United States, teachers union contracts dictate how most of the money is spend. Far too much goes toward ever-increasing salaries and pricey benefits for employees. That means, during tough times, there is little money left for academics.

EAGnews.org recently released several reports detailing questionable labor expenses in large metropolitan school districts including Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Detroit, with others in the works.

The reports identify millions of dollars in labor expenses that could have been postponed, trimmed or cancelled to help schools save money for student needs.

Far too many school districts are laying off younger teachers and cancelling student programs, while still paying millions of dollars to teachers in the form of automatic, annual salary increases, five-figure retirement bonuses, free health insurance, free pensions and extra pay for everything from playground duty to covering the classes of absent colleagues.

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The situation means students from poor, mostly minority school districts have little chance at a quality education, which prevents upward social mobility. Rhee told those at the recent event that the U.S. ranks at the bottom of social mobility on international measures, PennLive.com reports.

“That is the most un-American thing imaginable. … We are doing this to our kids every day, and it is nothing short of criminal,” she said. “This country is not going to be able to regain its position in the global marketplace until we fix our public education system.”

We can start by spending more of the available funds on students, and less on expensive and unnecessary perks for school employees. After all, schools are for kids, not the adults who staff them. When times are tough and dollars are short, kids comes must come first.