Legislative Update from Schools for Equity in Education

Shared Services Initiatives

On Wednesday the governor along with several legislators held a press conference announcing a bipartisan proposal to require school districts and charter schools to participate in a state-wide shared services purchasing program. The intent of the proposal is to reduce costs and eliminate redundancy by pooling the purchasing power of all the school districts in areas including school materials, supplies, tools, equipment, technology, food services and transportation. The state would negotiate contracts with select vendors and all districts would be required to used only state approved vendors.

The chief author, Senator Terri Bonoff, discussed the SF10 bill in the Senate Education Committee on Thursday. Sen. Bonoff called SF10 a major education reform proposal. However, the bill was merely discussed and not officially introduced because the author stated the share services portion was a framework and she wanted to work with stakeholders to create a system that would work for all districts.

Included in the SF10 bill were several provisions:

Reading proficiency initiatives sponsored by Sen. Kathy Saltzman and Sen. Gen Olson. The bill defines the 5 strands of reading and would require teachers to pass an assessment in comprehensive scientifically-based reading instruction before getting their license.
Establish a quality rating system for early childhood learning programs
Establish the shared services purchasing program.

Most of the discussion revolved around the mandated shared services program when education organizations continually expressed support of the concept and pointed out that many districts are already participating in joint purchasing programs to achieve cost savings. However, concern was expressed that mandating participation in a state run program would cause other problems such as loss of local school business to local vendors, increased costs for services for some districts and generating consulting fees at a time when resources are scarce. For more detail go to Brad's Blog.

To keep everything in perspective, the consultant estimated the potential savings from shared services could be around $100 million dollars. Every penny does count and school districts will pursue options to capture these savings even without mandated law. However, this is a distractionary drop in the bucket when the state is facing a $4.85 BILLION dollar deficit.