☆ Schools are businesses: AUSD trustee on quantifiable performance metrics

Districts around the Bay continue mixing instruction with ideological agendas, while ignoring basic performance failures and budgetary follies. Atascadero USD board member Rebekah Koznek exhorts CA'n school districts to refocus on teaching students valuable skills and spend funds more moderately. An Opp Now exclusive.

At a basic level, I look at schools as businesses. With a business, you want it to put out successful products; similarly, schools should be mainly focused on teaching students to read, write, and think according to their age. And school performance should be measured through student success metrics. It's like how if you take your car to a mechanic, but he fails to fix it, you probably won't go back to that mechanic.

Along that line, it's been eye-opening for me to serve on the board because part of what we do is approve past months' purchase orders. I can't give any specifics, but it's shocking how much money the AUSD spends on things that I don't think schools shouldn't be responsible to pay for. And we're even a smaller district ($60 million district) in the scope of things.

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