Dr. Faber is the "Elephant in the Living Room"

I sent this to my state legislators and the Governor a couple of months ago.
I invite you to peruse the February issue of the West Bloomfield School District’s “The Laker.” There you will find an article by the Superintendent, Dr. Gary Faber, called The Elephant in the Living Room, dealing with the current controversy over whether to expand “Schools of Choice”. It makes several nonsensical claims and is fairly long-winded. My greatest objection to the piece, however, is that the Elephant in the Living Room is not “Schools of Choice”, but rather Dr. Faber himself.
Over the years administrators have gotten their salaries increased and created all sorts of curricular and instructional reforms and studies which require additional funding. This serves to enhance their prestige, as well as the size of their empire. School Board members, rather than providing a check on all this, have often acted as enablers or even as cheerleaders.Well, now we are in a real financial crunch, and something has to give. The bottom line for Dr. Faber is not all this gobbledygook about “coming together”, it’s about ensuring that every vacant chair in every classroom be filled by an (income-generating) student.
I suggest we look elsewhere for financial savings. How about cutting all administrators’ salaries by 20%, and/or vastly curtailing the scope and mission of Intermediate School Districts, which often act as dispensers of patronage. We could tie administrators’ salaries to teachers’ salaries, so as to slow their rate of increase.
Elsewhere in “The Laker,” there is a “Special Report” on school finance, again quoting Dr. Faber, in which he says school consolidation is an option, but that the law was recently changed “to make consolidation less attractive”, and should be changed again. (I suspect that here “less attractive” means that the school districts would not get enough of the money saved.) The report urges parents (not all taxpayers!) “to contact their legislators and demand that they partake in a well-thought (sic) bipartisan , …resolution to the state’s economic problems.” So, I am hereby urging (not demanding) such action on the part of my legislators and the Governor.
To this end, in addition to my suggestions above, I support the 2% excise tax on some services that has been proposed. I also think that Governor Engler’s Proposal A should be amended so that School Districts can have elections to raise their operating millage, at prescribed times and with prescribed caps.