School Administrator Sharing Bill Dies In Committee

Air Date:01/26/2011

By Kealey Bultena

The House Education Committee has shot down a bill allows school districts to share administrators.

House Bill 1093 seeks savings for schools by sharing superintendents or other administrators among districts.  Representative Tom Brunner chairs the House Education Committee. He praises the vision of the bill but says schools can already consolidate – they just aren’t.

"That is one of my pet peeves: local school districts, local people wanting us to be the bad guy. They need to get some guts and do this," Brunner says. "And possibly the only thing that’s going to push them is their budgets being slashed to push them into doing that, and that’s very unfortunate, because there’s a lot of savings to be realized in maybe sharing a superintendent."

Several Representatives say lawmakers need to find more innovative and strategic ways to provide for schools, but this bill doesn’t work. The committee killed the legislation by a 13 to 1 vote.

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