By J. Lyn Carl, GalleryWatch.com
Austin, TX – Sen. Florence Shapiro (R-Plano) took aim at the state's regional education service centers Tuesday in the Senate Education Committee. Shapiro is author of SB 929, which among other things would place limits on compensation for certain services offered by the centers, and would restrict state funding to the centers.
Shapiro also suggests a performance review of the service centers be performed by the State Comptroller's Office.
Shapiro noted that the Region X Service Center alone has an unexpended balance of $5 million, in a time when the state is facing a nearly $10 billion shortfall. She suggested that the money appropriated by the state should go directly to school districts for the districts to contract with the service centers.
She offered a substitute for her bill and said the substitute makes it clear that no federally mandated funds would be kept from service centers. The only funds to be moved would be core service funds from the state, she said. Removing Section 11 of the bill accomplishes that goal. Another change to the bill, she said, is a clarification of the detailed list of items the comptroller will use in her review of the service centers.
With the centers to receive $72 million from the state for the biennium, Shapiro said it is "an appropriate time" to review the service centers, to investigate how they pay for services, how much revenue they have and how that revenue is generated.
A superintendent of a small Texas school district testified in support of the bill. He noted his district is paying a little more than $100 for every in-service attended that was sponsored by a regional service center. He said the district could have saved approximately $2,200 if it had bought the service outright. School board training costs his district $520, while similar training in another service center is nearly $200 less. He said it is conceivable that districts could save "tens of thousands of dollars" by using private services instead of the regional service centers.
He said most superintendents do not take the time to figure out what the cost of in-service or specialty training cost through the service centers.
DeSoto Superintendent Jim Hawkins said he also serves on the regional advisory committee for the regional service center that serves his district. He cited an example in which the service center is considerably cheaper than a private vendor. One service he cited that would cost $30,000 in the private sector only costs $2,500 through the service center. Shapiro told him that was an exceptional deal and urged his school district to continue looking for such savings. "There is nothing in this bill that keeps you from doing that. In fact, I encourage you to do that," said Shapiro.
Hawkins said he is confident that the "light of day" will show that the service centers provide a necessary and important service.
Shapiro was unrelenting in her questioning. She continued to drive home that the center that serves his district has a $5 million unexpended balance and $19 million in assets.
Hawkins said school districts now get the benefits of economy of scale and voiced his concern if the core funding goes directly to school districts, they will spend the money for other things and not with the service centers, resulting in higher costs for those districts that continue obtaining services through the centers.
Shapiro said if her bill only said the centers would be audited, there probably would not be more than three people in the audience.
"There's not a regional service center that gets more than 5 percent of its revenue from core funding," said Shapiro.
The executive director of the Austin service center said most centers have to recover some of the operating costs that core services monies are providing.
The bill was left pending.