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'Mandate waiver' provision circumvents burdensome state code Schools cut swath through rule thicket Saturday, September 01, 2001 By Jane Elizabeth, Post-Gazette Education Writer
For years, local school officials generally have looked at the Pennsylvania School Code as a book of irritations.
Don't put too many students in the special ed class. Don't let math teachers substitute in the English class. Get competitive bids on those No. 2 pencils. Nag, nag, nag.
Now some school officials are happily taking advantage of a formerly little-known provision that allows schools to sidestep those regulations.
The "mandate waiver" provision has been touted by the Ridge administration as a way to save money and improve efficiency, and there's no question that in some cases, it has done just that.
Upper St. Clair school officials, for instance, saved $30,000 by letting their maintenance firm buy its own cleaning supplies, rather than having the district go through the state-mandated bidding process.
Keystone Oaks School District was allowed to keep its successful night school program even though it didn't meet some minor state regulations.
And Altoona Area School District officials saved time and money by negotiating prices with companies they already do business with, rather than taking proposals from several other companies.
"This gives us relief on things that significantly restrict our operations," said David Piper, assistant to the superintendent for business in Altoona Area School District.
But the waiver provision has served another purpose, too.
For school officials who complain about the state meddling in local school affairs -- and there are many -- the waivers have been embraced not so much for economic reasons, but as a reprieve from what they see as annoying and unnecessary requirements.
Waivers allowed Philadelphia schools, for instance, to hire a superintendent -- or CEO, as they call him -- who didn't have a superintendent's license. Harrisburg City School District, along with six others, received permission from the state to allow improperly certified substitute teachers to work twice as many days as they normally would have been allowed.
Pittsburgh, Brownsville Area and Ambridge Area school districts got waivers that allowed them to skirt the state law on public hearings.
While some have criticized the waiver provision, the number of applications for waivers -- scarce last fall when the first ones were granted --is growing steadily.
In the past year, school districts have submitted 127 requests for waivers, 19 of which have emerged in just the past few weeks.
One of the ironies of the surge is that the waiver provision was designed partly to allow struggling "empowerment districts" to get around restrictive rules, and yet it has not been used by any of the five empowerment districts in Western Pennsylvania -- Wilkinsburg, Sto-Rox, Clairton, Duquesne and Aliquippa.
Empowerment districts are those whose academic performance is so poor that they must improve or face takeover by the state.
Jean Dexheimer, president of the Wilkinsburg School Board, speculated that her district may not have sought waivers partly because of the research and paperwork involved.
"It would take some time," she said, "and a smaller district, especially an empowerment district, might not have the staff. We don't have a quarter of a person to spare."
In Altoona, most of the waiver duties fall to one staff member -- Piper, who is more knowledgeable about such procedures because he's an active member of the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials.
Altoona leads the pack on waiver applications; it was the first ever to apply for a waiver and has asked for at least a dozen more.
"Altoona is a very progressive school district," Piper said. "We're always looking for ways to do things better."
But Sto-Rox Superintendent John Hisiro and others complained that the list of exemptions in the mandate waiver law make it less useful to many school districts than it could be.
Schools can't get waivers on health, safety and civil rights regulations; collective bargaining or prevailing wage laws; federal regulations; and some special education and teacher certification rules.
Quakertown Community School District in Bucks County is in the middle of a massive building program. "The big things, like prevailing wage and construction costs, are off limits," noted Superintendent James Scanlon. If the district could waive the wage law, "we could save 30 percent," he said.
While Keystone Oaks has used the waiver provision to keep its "Project Succeed" alternative program intact, Superintendent Carl DeJulio is among those who'd like to see the law revised to give even more local control to districts.
"I do believe this is a positive step," said DeJulio. "We applaud the legislators, but they haven't gone far enough.
"We shouldn't have to go through a bureaucratic maze to get the things we need."
Tomorrow: Disabusing some notions about Pennsylvania's charter schools.
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