Editorial: It's no surprise regional supts. fight cuts, but cuts still vital

Let us begin this editorial by asking for a show of hands of all those in the readership audience who know what the area regional school superintendents office does.

And please, this is not “Family Feud;” let's not guess. You either know or you don't.

If that question's a bit too obscure, let's try something a bit easier — a show of hands of anyone who can identify his or her regional superintendent by name,

And no fair doing a Google search.

Anyone?

Exactly.

And yet, throughout the state, the regional offices employ 2,500 people and spend $13 million in tax dollars.

Doug Johnson, regional superintendent in Kane County, says one of the reasons his office is so important is because of the local control implicit in its operation.

“We're voted locally,” Johnson says. “I walk down the same grocery aisles as all of our taxpayers.”

This probably comes as news to most of Johnson's constituents in Kane County. It no doubt is true that he shops for the most part in Kane County, but we doubt very many of the people he passes in those grocery aisles call him by name and we suspect the few who recognize him have no idea what he does or how useful his office is.

The regional school superintendents offices are under fire in Illinois. Gov. Pat Quinn has proposed eliminating the network of bureaucratic offices as a way to save money.

It should come as no surprise that regional school superintendents are banging the drums to try to block the proposal.

They successfully fought the idea in 2003 when former Gov. Rod Blagojevich brought it up, and if they're successful in stopping it again this time, they can be counted on to fight the idea yet again when it inevitably reasserts itself in four years or eight years or 20 years.

Yes, the regional school superintendents are arguing against their demise. Who wouldn't? But the idea still deserves serious exploration in a state that would be headed undeniably to bankruptcy if only it were legal for it to do so.

Here's the point regional superintendents must understand, and one we hope legislators are keeping in mind: Change is hard.

Any change bumps into vested interests that see it as a threat. Beyond that, “the way we've always done it” is a powerful force, partly because for years that way worked and there's great comfort and confidence in that.

But governments, like business, must drive efficiency these days. There is no alternative; they must. And necessity being the mother of invention, as Plato observed, efficiency frequently and chiefly is driven by cutting the cords, scary as that may feel.