Cutting the library’s funding

Last week, the Ohio County School Board cut the funding for the Ohio County Library from $884,547 a year to $589,698. As the Intelligencer reported last Wednesday, the school board president said that the money was needed for improvements to athletic fields.

How bad of a decision was this? In a weekend editorial, the Wheeling News-Register detailed the negative educational effect the cuts would have and then criticized the decision:

We call on the board of education to restore full funding to the library as soon as possible. Locker rooms and lighting for a sports field that were not even part of the original bond package are a poor excuse to damage one of our city’s finest treasures.

I agree.

The Ohio County Schools app

This morning’s paper brings word of some of the other ways that the school district is spending its money. Reporter Jocelyn King’s front-page story, “Ohio County Schools App Getting the Word Out,” tells us that the district has consolidated the various mediums (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) it uses to reach the public by adopting a one-post-fits-all phone app. (According to King, it cost the district $8,000 up-front plus $20,000 a year for maintenance compared to the old method’s $13,000 a year.) I downloaded the app and found, as King had, that the app covered sports teams, extracurricular activities, and future meetings. (Note – I could not find the number of downloads for the app. Unless the app is reaching a lot more people than I think it does, it strikes me that this is an expensive way to reach its intended audience.)

The innovators

What surprised me the most about King’s article was that Oho County Schools employs an innovation coordinator. (The coordinator is the source for much of the material found in the article.) Apparently, this is a full-time position. Is there that much “innovation” in the district that it requires an administrator to coordinate it? Even more surprising as I roamed around the app, the district also employs an innovation coach.

I know I have a few teachers who read this blog. Okay, it’s been quite a while since I taught in the public schools and back then the teachers were expected to be innovative on their own without a coordinator or a coach. Are these coordinating and coaching jobs now commonly found in school districts? And what exactly do they do to earn what I assume are salaries that are higher than the average teacher’s salary?

I guess, as I was reminded throughout my teaching career, you can never have enough administrators.