As I blog the story of the transgender girl in Palatine, I confront issues that don’t often hit the educational radar. Many parents and educational constituents see districts almost exclusively as providers of education. Yet school districts are economic entities. They create budgets. They issue bonds. They prepare annual financial reports. They may have lawyers on retainer. They are sometimes forced to hire lawyers. When districts must address economic issues such as the need to redo a locker room, they begin juggling numbers. As in the corporate world, all expenses carry opportunity costs. Money spent on Crisis A cannot be spent on Crisis B. There’s only so much money and deficit spending has long-term consequences.

In concrete terms, I worked in a district that often ran in the red. We also ran out of paper. Every year we ran out of paper. Teachers were used to buying their own paper, even their own ink cartridges if they were lucky enough to actually have a printer. Until a few years ago, we were running with borrowed overhead projectors in many cases, buying our own bulbs. We finally received smart board technology a few years ago, but I still bought all my own construction paper and art supplies for the year, those students did not buy.

Eduhonesty: Too often, government bureaucrats seem oblivious to the financial ramifications of their demands on districts. Those demands are not irrelevant, however. Lack of money affects districts in quirky ways. Lack of money may also affect instruction. I can assert from experience that homework printed on regular, white paper makes its way into the inbox noticeably more often than problems students write down for themselves. That printed homework is also much easier to read and grade. That’s why I kept buying paper.

But not every teacher is paying Staples to provide paper for their schools. Those teachers who aren’t? I’m sure they are getting less homework back. I am also sure that their students are sacrificing instructional time to the need to write down questions. A minute here, a minute there, and pretty soon we are talking real instructional time.

My guess is District 211 has plenty of paper. The area’s not poor. But money spent on lawyers has necessarily been taken away from other possible uses, many of them likely more educationally productive in character. Time taken to talk to the lawyers, study the budget, plan solutions and reallocate resources has also been taken from other uses, also likely more educationally productive in character.