Why did we let schools get so fat?

School systems - as with governments - have for many years sucked more and more taxes and converted them to more (and evermore cushy) jobs, thanks to greedy unions and to accommodating administrators and to a slumbering public. The process is epitomized in the $200,000+ a year compensation of the once-retired but now re-employed NCS superintendent.

That compensation is stratospheric - more than twice that of the mayor of Newark - and symbolic of the waste of public money which is at the root of public anger toward school administrators.

The "more taxes for the kids" song doesn't play anymore. The reason is that the public is no longer slumbering and leaving their voting responsibilities up to parents of students. The public has recognized that the money isn't for the kids; it's for the accumulated and ever-growing fat content of Newark City Schools. The public has at last demanded a reckoning.

The public wants a much better education for the kids at a much lower cost. The public wants reduction in frills and the people being paid to provide those frills. The public wants reasonable salaries paid to competent and necessary educators. The public also wants to see teachers turned loose from the micro-management of bureaucrats - federal, state, and local - so that they might again teach as individuals serving individual kids.

The public does not want to pay for baby-sitting services, all-day kindergarten, for example. The public does not want to pay for extra-curricular and/or social events and the tax-paid personnel to provide them nor does it need sports programs designed to make every kid a pro player. The public does not want to pay for any activity that could be and should be supported privately, if they are indeed worth supporting at all.

The answer to more taxes is "no." School costs have reached the stratosphere and the public expects - is demanding - that those costs come back to earth.

And if that implies, as the lead paragraph on the Advocate's recent report about cutting back (What would 'state-minimum' school look like?) says: "It's a high school that offers just two years of foreign language; a middle school with larger class sizes; an elementary school without separate art or music teachers," well then, gee whiz, why did we ever start having that stuff to begin with?

Just cut the fat and stop whining. Start with the $200,000 superintendent.