The City of Anaheim is currently served by eight different school districts. There are 65 public schools with grades K-12 within the City’s boundaries. While not all of these districts are comprised entirely of Anaheim schools, many of them are. This myriad of districts throughout the city requires more resources to be dedicated to administration and overhead—as opposed to education—than a single unified district would require.
The division of school districts within Anaheim started in 1913 when the Katella School District broke away from the Anaheim City School District. This was the result of politics and the fact that parents wanted more local control of the schools. This theme of local control is still alive and well in discussions about Anaheim’s schools.
Local control and the parental involvement that it presumes is admirable. A parent’s involvement in their child’s education is the single biggest factor in determining a child’s scholastic achievement. For this reason, local control is a very emotional issue for many. We all want the best possible education for our children. However, if we look at it objectively, we must realize the true costs of local control and how it has negatively impacted our children’s education.
Anaheim’s smaller school districts have been hurt primarily by two factors: resources being diverted from the classroom to administration and poor management by both the boards and administration of the school districts.
The first problem, that of resources being diverted from the classroom to administration, is inherent in the system we currently have in place. Eight districts require eight superintendants and eight payroll systems and simply a duplication of many of the functions that are required within a district. That is not to say we can cut the administration costs by eight, but it might be possible to cut the administration costs in half, or even a fourth of what they are today. This will free up more of our schools finite resources for the classroom.
While the second problem is not inherent in our current system, it is strongly influenced by it. Because our school districts are many and small, they do not have the resources to hire the highest caliber and most experienced administrators. This is not meant as a slight to those who currently work in the administration of our schools, they are all good people who care deeply for education, but the simple fact is that the best people will look for the challenge of a larger district.
Our school boards face a similar issue. Each of Anaheim’s school boards have one or two excellent board members who truly understand the issues that they have to decide upon. The rest of the board members, while well meaning, simply aren’t up to the task of running a top rate school system. In a unified district spanning the city, we would be able to pool those skilled board members to create a board that is up to the challenge of providing the best possible education for our schools.
Here is one example of the poor decision making we now see on our boards: Over the past decade, the Anaheim City School District has benefitted greatly from the housing boom over the past decade. When each of these houses and apartment buildings were built, the developer had to pay a development impact fee to the district to offset the long-term impacts of having additional housing units the schools had to serve. The basic logic is that, given enough new homes, the district can build a new school to teach those additional children. In any case, these impact fees are one time money that is intended to go towards capital improvements for the district. Unfortunately, Anaheim City School District did not spend the money on capital improvements. Instead, they spent the money on short-term leases for temporary, portable classrooms.
Thankfully, the Anaheim City School District has seen the error of its ways. The district is now looking at using the impact fees from the Platinum Triangle to fund the construction of a new elementary school to serve those new homes.
A large school district with more experienced administration and a more qualified board might not have made these same errors in the first place. Instead, it is likely that they would have looked to the long-term well being of the district instead of their immediate problems.
Of course, many Anaheim residents would want to preserve some form of local control of the school district’s board. A good solution would be to have districts for each board member to represent, similar to how the Los Angeles City Council is set up. If the Anaheim Unified School District’s board had seven members, one could be from each of the existing K-12 districts within the city.
Anaheim is a great city. We have a rich and colorful history, and we are one of the top tourist destinations in the world. But the quality of our schools is one of the biggest factors when people decide where to live. If we, as a city, want to continue to attract quality residents, we will need to improve our schools. Local control of our schools is nice, but it carries a heavy cost. That cost is detracting from the quality of education in Anaheim. While a unified school district isn’t a perfect solution, it’s better than what we have today.
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