Letter: Is $60 million necessary to empower schools?

Ed Hayes

Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2007 | 7:16 a.m.

In reading reports about Gov. Jim Gibbons' proposal to more fully empower schools, I'm in complete agreement if I understand the concept correctly.

As I understand, it means allowing principals of individual schools to have control of how to distribute their allocated funds within their schools. In addition, they are given the freedom to make their own decisions regarding hours of operation, teacher disposition and other day-to-day operating procedures, including school interaction with parents and the public.

This enables individual schools to experiment with procedures that work in other schools and to abandon those that don't work in theirs. Not really a new idea, it's the way most schools were operated when I went to school and even when my children were being educated. If a particular school fails to perform to district standards, the principal is replaced.

What no one is talking about and what seems startling to me is why this empowerment of schools should cost $60 million of education money that could otherwise be put into classrooms. Do principals, who should already have some ideas to improve the operation of their schools, need that kind of financing? I thought the reason for empowering schools was to enable them to function more effectively and efficiently.

Ed Hayes, Las Vegas