My Conversation with Momus

By Charlie Houston

“Houston’s at it again with the mythology stuff,” you might declare, and ask, “What in heck is Momus?” [A note on readability: My words are in italics.]

Momus is a demigod from Greek mythology. Momus was the minor god or spirit of mockery, blame, ridicule, scorn, complaint and harsh criticism. Zeus finally had enough of Momus’ rants and evicted him from Mount Olympus and after several millennia Momus landed at our place in here in Loudoun County. He asked me who deserved blame, scorn, ridicule, complaint and harsh criticism and so on. “The School System,” I said. He nodded assent, spent several minutes in a trance. Then Momus awoke and spoke.

“I will start at the beginning. The School System—LCPS—has an annual budget of $2,100,000,000. It’s by far the largest component of the overall Loudoun County budget. I’ll do some comparisons. Let’s start with a key fact: In its new budget Loudoun plans on spending $25,000 per student; Fairfax spends $20,000, Fauguier $17,000.” 

I gagged. The god continued. 

“That is a huge difference but before I explode with criticism, let me set the stage. No two systems will be identical. Some will have many more students. Some will have more disadvantaged kids. Other systems will be in wealthy areas, like Loudoun. There seem to be several key considerations—improvement of the students and system efficiency. 

“Here are some ways to evaluate effectiveness: Graduation rates—Loudoun and Fairfax are about the same. Percentage of disadvantaged students—Fairfax schools—36.2%, Loudoun—20%. Standard of Learning scores—Loudoun scores are significantly higher.”

So, Loudoun’s school system is excellent. But is it efficient? I asked.

“Hades, no!” (Momus exploded and grinned wickedly.) “I’ll go back a decade or so. Your School Board would present proposed a new budget to the Board of Supervisors. Negotiations would ensue and the schools would get a bit less than their request. And that would be plenty. Now, though, the Supervisors have a different political bent and fully fund every penny of the School Board’s request without question—and brag about it! ‘We’ve fully funded the schools!’ some Supervisors crow. Yeah, with your money.

“Back to today, Chuck. The schools want to increase spending by 5.3% while enrollment is dropping and inflation is only 2.4%. There’s another measure, maybe dealing with unionized teachers, who would get 4.0% – 5% Cost of Living increases when inflation could soon be as low as 2%. On top of that they want something called “Step increases” of another 2.5%. It gets worse.”

I believed him.

“I heard something from a while back. One year the School System did not spend all the money the Supervisors had funded; a lot remained unspent and that would never do. So, emails, messages and instructions flew out of the fancy School System building to principals: ‘You’ve gotta buy Promethean boards (interactive white boards that often failed to work, for $10,000 each.) It’s imperative that we spend all our money!’’

“Here’s something recent that will make you gag. In Loudoun only 64% of the budget goes to instruction … compared to 85% in Fairfax’s budget. Where does the rest of Loudoun’s money go?”

I had an answer: Bloat. Bureaucracy. Administrative overhead. Organizational Theory tells us that bureaucrats’ prime goal is growth and the School System follows that dictum with energetic enthusiasm.

“You’re right. If I remember correctly, the goddess Athena educated me on a related problem with bureaucracies, especially their leadership. That’s in play here. In the case of the schools, the Superintendent would have several constituencies: Administrators. Staff. Teachers. Supervisors. Unions. Employees. Foremost, though, would be other superintendents. Superintendents’ psychology causes them to try to seem superior to their peers.”

I get it. By spending $200 million or more for a new high school, the Superintendent gets to lord it over his peers. Disgusting!

“I don’t think you know Aaron Spence, the Superintendent … even though your tax dollars pay him almost $500,000 a year. Oops! I forgot. It’s DOCTOR Aaron Spence, PhD.”

I don’t know him but I dislike honorifics. If you read his glib explanations of why the schools need more money, his PhD is probably in the art of casuistry.

“You’re probably right. Here’s another driver of his spending. It’s the idea that salaries need to be increased to keep up with salaries offered not just by Fairfax, but by Arlington and Alexandria. That becomes an upward death spiral. Those have always been tax-and-spend places and if Loudoun decides to spend more, those systems will just increase what they spend.

“It’s fair to say that every bad move by the School System is blessed by Spence, so how about these chestnuts: He wants another $7.5 million to hire 43 more deans and assistant principals. That’s $174,000 each. No wonder you’re angry.”

That’s an understatement. Here’s one for you, Momus. The new budget adds 98 new “school based” personnel while enrollment drops. Note that delicate phrase, “school based,” implying instruction. How many of those 98 will actually teach students? The cute “school based” term is casuistry at its best, probably used to disguise bureaucratic bloat, and I see it in every explanation Spenceusesto justify the money he wants. 

“You’re right. Loudoun does have good schools, but it overpays for them. Here’s an analogy. You want a Mercedes and are willing to pay a Rolls Royce price for it.”   

That would be stupid!

“And that’s what they think voters are.”

Charlie Houston and his wife live on a small horse farm just south of Waterford. Formerly a developer of large corporate office buildings, he’s now a struggling novelist. He says you should go on Amazon and buy his book “Bad Horsey.”