A Painless Education Cut To Make

The McHenry County Board appointed a new regional superintendent of schools this week, but should the office even exist?

I'm sure Leslie Schermerhorn is a nice, intelligent and capable woman. But this column isn't about her. It's about wasteful spending and ineffiency.

For some perspective, last year Gov. Pat Quinn cut funding for the 44 regional school superintendents. They weren't paid for four months. Eventually Quinn relented and restored the funding.

Think about that for a minute. If you work in government and Pat Quinn thinks your position is useless, it's probably pretty useless. I mean it's Pat Quinn, not the TEA Party.

Sure, the title sounds important: Regional Superintendent of Schools. It must be vital, right? Here are some of its duties:

• Inspect schools for safety. Sounds important, but I'm fairly certain building inspectors from local municipalities and fire marshals can and do handle this with aplumb.
• Issue certificates to teacher's and bus drivers. That's fine and all, but do we need 44 regional offices to do that? Is that how we handle other professionals like attorneys? No. The Illinois State Board of Education should be able to process certificates.
• Administer GED programs. Between local school districts and community colleges we really should have this covered.

There are other duties, like providing legal advice to school districts even though every district I have ever encountered has their own attorney on retainer.

Quinn has toned down his efforts to cut the entire $13 million budget for these offices. Now he is trying to reduce the number from 44 to 35 and save $1.5 million. Even this relatively modest and sensible reduction has met some resistance.

McHenry County Board member Anna May Miller said some of the offices duties, such as dealing with truancy, are very important. Although she does not believe a wholesale elimination is warranted because it would burden local school districts, she does favor consolidation and the reduction of the number of offices.

"Hopefully they are looking very seriously at creating regions and reducing the number of offices," Miller said.