This is the time of year when the bureaucrats in charge of education hit the public with bad news. There isn't enough money for the schools. They don't mean the schools are closing down, they just want to prepare everyone for the news that, for a change, they can't "afford" to pay teachers a respectable, professional salary. That's the usual tune. If they give in to teacher requests, they claim, they will have to cut everything else, and the kids will be the ones to suffer. In other words, they set up a dichotomy that scares everyone. It's either teachers or kids who get the goods.

Is that really what has to happen? If you don't understand the money, it looks that way from what the "experts" say. So the rest of us prepare to cave in, which is what the folks in the carpeted offices want. This year, though, things are somewhat different. Class size reduction has become the focal point for this year's annual budget scare, and the attack is stronger.

One of its leaders is James Fleming, superintendent of Capistrano Unified, who happens to be paid $198,456 per year. (His salary is not on the table.) He is joined by such superintendents as Santiago Wood in Fresno, Ronald Leon in Rowland Unified, and William Numan in Redondo Beach, plus Michele Barraza Lawrence, whose Berkeley Unified School District not only pays her $185,000 salary but also the interest on her home. (If you complain about these perks and salaries, you are often told that it is necessary to pay big bucks in order to get really good people to fill the jobs. Isn't it odd that the same logic doesn't seem to apply to hiring good teachers?)

Just in case you've been snowed by too many press releases from the administrative offices, here's a reminder of the importance of the class reduction program that is under attack as being too expensive. A Vital Search study found that 20,000 LAUSD students in smaller classes did better than kids in larger classes. English language learners especially received benefit from being in smaller classes.

Other studies - CSR Research Consortium study of June 2000, Princeton class size reduction study of March 2001, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee SAGE study of January 2001 - all reached the same conclusion: student achievement is higher in smaller classes than in larger classes. As if you didn't know that already!

So why the push to scuttle the small class program? Obviously, it is necessary to look at the figures on funding, since there is no argument at all about the desirability of maintaining the class size reduction program.

Can California afford it?

Let's start with the cost of a teacher, that mythical "average" teacher. She or he has a salary of $52,289, and the average cost of benefits is $11,426. That makes the total cost of the average teacher in a California unified school district $63,715.

Next, the average daily attendance revenue per child per year in such a district in 2000-01 was $4,600; in addition, the class size reduction funding provided by California was $888 per child. Do the arithmetic: that means a classroom of 20 students in, for example, Irvine, where they have cut class size in grades two and three, generates a total of $109, 760 for the district. If the teacher costs $63,715, that leaves $46,045 per classroom to pay for everything else, like lights, cleaning, textbooks, support services, etc.

Now consider what happens if they do away with class size reduction and put 30 children into that classroom, or even more. The classroom now generates $138,000, which is $74,285 more than the cost of the teacher.

When teachers get larger classes, they think in terms of the difficulties for their students, not in terms of generating revenue for the school district. Kids bring in money, and teachers cost little enough that there is money left over for the auxiliary needs of the school system. Without these kids and their teachers - and that's the whole point of a school system, kids and teachers in a classroom - there is no income. No need for a superintendent and his/ her big salary at all. Keep that in mind when the bureaucrats cry poverty.

In plain language, increasing the number of pupils per teacher adds to the basic income of the school district - money which, if not spent on teacher salaries, can be spent on whatever the bureaucrats want to buy. That could be textbooks, or it could be higher salaries and more perks for administrators, the ones who do not generate money at all - merely spend it.

With legislation like AB 2160, teachers might have some say about how that money would be spent - which books, which programs, and so on. As things are now, the budget reflects the priorities of the bureaucrats, the ones who know about classrooms only through thirdhand information, if any. If they spent real time in our classrooms, they might learn something, along with the kids, but don't look for that to happen in our lifetimes.

Meanwhile, the drive goes on to claim such poverty that we need to pack the kids into classrooms without limit. The bureaucrats want to free up as much money as they can in order to increase the funds they control, funds which help to provide district offices with the perks and the bloat that provide nothing for the children.

Should we pile kids into classes in order to pay the interest on a superintendent's mortgage? To increase the number of "experts" who have authority to tell teachers what and how to teach? Or to pay aristocratic salaries to people who've never taught classes, like Alan Bersin, superintendent in San Diego, who is paid $275,000? We must not forget that public education is based on a single, clear concept: kids in a classroom with a teacher. All the rest is simply there in order to help the kids and their teachers, not to have precedence over them.

We've learned a thing or two about budgets and financial statements from the Enron fiasco. What the public is told is not necessarily what is so. We as teachers must demand that those who administer the funds - which are supposed to be dedicated to kids in the classroom with a teacher - tell us the whole truth.

Make no mistake about it. CTA will fight to maintain and expand California's class size reduction program. When we stand together, we have the clout to achieve our goals, and we can and must maintain strong programs which help our kids learn. If there are to be any financial penalties, let them land on the fat cat bureaucrats who manipulate the educational funds so that they have the money and the kids get what's left over. Smaller classes mean better education and that's that. Let the "experts" learn that lesson!

Lee Lipps of CTA's Research and Finance Department provided the budget numbers to make this article possible.