Every Child Achieves Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I rise to speak in support of an amendment I have filed to the Every Child Achieves Act that will be brought up, I believe, later today. In the spirit of my friend the Senator from Texas I am glad he has joined me on this amendment. I know as we get into this terribly important education bill, I want to commend Senator Alexander, Senator Murray for their leadership in bringing it to the floor and trying to wrestle through the right balance of between Federal, State, and local partnerships in education. I look forward to being a part of that debate.

While we will spend hours on the floor of the Senate debating issues around accountability and assessment, terribly important issues, there is one issue I believe all of us in this body can agree upon, to make certain we ensure that all dollars that are spent on education are spent appropriately and in an efficient way and that most of those dollars end up in the classroom.

This was a conversation I started when I was Governor of Virginia. When I looked around at the Commonwealth of Virginia, where we spend close to $9 billion a year on public education, I realized that many of the same debates we are having in the Chamber we were having in Virginia at that time. But again, one area where there was complete agreement was to make sure those dollars spent on education were spent efficiently.

Too often school divisions, quite honestly, didn't know how to spend using best practices in terms of bus routes, energy usage, back-office staffing. How do you make sure you can take best practices around--I mentioned this was being done in Virginia, from around the State--and make sure those dollars were better spent, more efficiently, in the classroom.

Well, we looked around the country and we actually found a program in Texas--again, why I am so grateful my friend the Senator from Texas, Mr. Cornyn, has joined me on this amendment. We put in place a program to bring better accountability to our school divisions.

As I mentioned, too many school divisions don't have the ability to assess whether they are spending operational funds in the smartest way. My amendment helps school districts figure out how to be thoughtful about their operations budget, which again allows them to put more money back into their classrooms. I mentioned this was an initiative I started as Governor back in 2003 in Virginia.

I mentioned as well that Virginia was spending a combined $9 billion in local, State, and Federal support for public schools. I felt it was very important we make sure that as much of those resources were spent in classroom instruction and not in back-office administrative functions. So, in Virginia, we asked our Department of Planning and Budget to design a school efficiency review program. Our public school divisions actually volunteered--a local school superintendent actually volunteered to work with the State Department of Education. It took some level of trust, but they volunteered to undergo a review of their noninstructional functions, things like human resources, purchasing, facilities, transportation, and food service.

So we launched this program, and over a decade reviews have been conducted in 41 localities around the Commonwealth, in rural, suburban, and urban districts. Over the course of the history of this program, Virginia's program has identified $45 million in annual potential savings. In Virginia, each review cost an average of about $110,000 and produced an average annual savings of $1.1 million, a return in investment of nearly 9-to-1, a return that allowed these dollars to be more valuably spent on instruction.

These reviews recommend commonsense steps: software programs to improve bus transportation routes, enterprise-wide facilities management, best practices in purchasing and personnel, and smart, responsible steps to conserve limited resources and direct those savings into the classroom.

As I mentioned, we initially borrowed this concept from Texas. Since that time, additional States, including Oklahoma, Minnesota, New York, Kansas, and Arizona, have implemented similar programs.

This commonsense best practice should be available to school districts nationwide. That is why I am proud, along with Senator Cornyn, to offer an amendment that will allow States to use their title IX consolidated administrative funds to pay for fiscal support teams. This proposal will empower localities with the information they need to better allocate limited resources so they get a maximum impact in the classroom. I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support it. I believe this amendment will be brought up later by either Senator Murray or Senator Alexander, and I look forward to its consideration tomorrow.

I yield the floor.

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