coreedu

# coreedu: using the core-task principles for running schools as an example (6/6)

in @/coregov i've talked about how governments could fund schools. i'm picking school as an example, the ideas here could apply to other organizations too. how would such a publicly funded school operate?

i say anybody can start a school assuming they can prove the government that they are ready to hire enough teachers and have enough potential students to make it worth the overhead. or maybe a community is already running a private school but wants to convert to a publicly funded school. they can just fill an application form, the government runs some background checks, and if it checks out they will receive the funding.

how much they get? i think there should be a static formula for it. e.g. (number_of_kids * $1,000) / month. so if the school has, say, 100 kids, then they will receive $110,000 per month. if they can run it with, say, 10 employees, they can pay each $5,000 monthly and still have $50,000 over for supplies and maintenance. the exact the numbers don't really matter, it's just an example.

i'm also assuming that the town or government provided a building for this purpose so the school doesn't have to pay rent. otherwise they would need to pay less to the teachers or have less teachers to make up the difference with the rent. the nice thing about this is that the central government doesn't need to deal with local problems.

local problems can be still addressed, it just needs different channel. e.g. ensuring adequate building for a school is the responsibility of the town's administration, not the central government's. for some towns renting a building might be simpler than expropriating an existing one. there's no need for the government to prescribe how this should be secured.

can a town have multiple schools? sure! in fact from administration's point of view they might even be housed in the same building. this might make sense in some extreme cases.

maybe the town wants to want to have very successful sport athletes. they might operate a school that focuses on sport while also operating a traditional school. they are so different that having a completely different administration makes sense so let them be. for the government it shouldn't really matter, it's the same cost per kid.

if anything, the town can stop creating a sport school by not giving a building for free.

a publicly funded school must accept all kids for free and there cannot be a paid tier. but people can also start private, for profit schools. the government shouldn't care. it's actually better for it since it's less expenditure.

how is it ensured that the public money is not mismanaged by the school's administration? first, the use of public money must be written down into a logbook. each expenditure must have a justification. this logbook can be then audited by appropriate personnel.

and there's some safety in numbers. in order to qualify for public funding, the government might require at least 10 employees in a given school. per @/corerepr the employees would vote 3 representatives among themselves to oversee the school administration. then these representatives must approve every decision and expenditure. this is really just clicking the approve button so if everything is clear this not much of an overhead. but it still gives a lot of power to the employees to stop corruption from within.

i think of representatives as the consciousness of the organization. if all things are well oiled, they just rubberstamp the benelovent administration's actions. hopefully vetoing something would happen rarely.

furthermore parents also have an indirect choice. if they don't like the school, it should be possible for them to take their kid to a different one. and then the school's funding drops. hopefully this would be enough incentive for the organization to stay healthy and provide value to the parents.

and this concludes my foray into philosophy of organizations. i think these principles could be used to organize humans in a relatively low-conflict manner. i have to admit, i haven't thought through all the implications of such a system. but at least i now have some weird topics to talk with people about. :)

comment #1 on 2022-10-08

1. How do you prevent monopolies/anti-competitive behavior?

2. What happens in rural communities that have, say, 3 kids? How do you ensure they are schooled appropriately?

comment #1 response from iio.ie

re preventing monopolies: i'd like to keep the barrier for starting a new school low. my hope is that then competitors can easily pop up. i expect more specialized schools would appear this way: schools with focus on arts, sports, stem, etc. then perhaps less talent goes wasted if kids are with other like-minded kids and teachers.

re preventing anti-competitive behavior: i wouldn't build any protections against this specifically. people can raise such issues to the judicial system and they will, hopefully, sort it out.

re rural communities: no specific provisions for them. the kids can either commute to the nearest school or join a school that can teach remotely. if the kids need additional support (e.g. commuting assistance), they can request help from their local municipality. explicitly not supporting every snowflake situation helps keeping the system low complexity.