Budget cuts are coming to the Lake Washington School District (LWSD). The story that is not being told is how much waste is built into the system as a byproduct of unruly classrooms and student discipline issues.

In 2007, LWSD spent $8,157 to educate a child for one year. Of that, $5,992 was spent directly on teaching. The state showed 23,722 students enrolled as of October 2007.

If the district is losing 30 percent of productive teaching time due to classroom management/discipline issues (which tends to be the average response from teachers and administrators) this amounts to a $1,797.60 per student impact per year. Or, stated differently, it’s $42,642,667.20 across the whole district.

Even if the time drain is only 25 percent, it still means a $35,535,556.00 negative cost impact. Twenty-five percent also equates to losing 45 days of productive teaching time out of the standard 180-day calendar year.

And, the non-financial impacts of this issue are even more staggering. There is a 25-30 percent dropout rate across the state. Students stand a one-in-four chance of becoming the victims of some form of school-based violence before they reach high school in spite of the huge number of dollars spent on ineffective anti-bullying programs. It’s consistently within the top-three reasons for why teachers leave the profession, regardless of the pay situation.

District superintendent Chip Kimball has stated the issue of classroom discipline is one of the biggest problems he has to contend with.

If we can regain a substantial portion of the $35 million-plus we are losing every year by not dealing with this issue, perhaps “finding” $7.7 million won’t be so traumatic.

There is more to the story than budgets — a focus on classroom discipline could return more value to the classrooms than the amount that is being considered for cuts.

The district needs to get their head out of the sand and look at alternatives to the knee jerk “bigger classes, cut services” approach.

Jay Fiske , Woodinville