Apples? Oranges? Can't have it both ways

The front page headline in the October 19 Arizona Daily Star touted a plan by new TUSD Superintendent Elizabeth Celania-Fagen to send a number of senior district staff members to the Disney Institute for professional development aimed at encouraging creativity, staff loyalty and strong customer service.

Let's just look at the customer service aspect for a moment. A host of us in the private educational sector have often wished that government funded schools had a higher regard for customer service, the kind that our livelihood depends on. When our customers aren't happy, they leave. It's not easy to "leave" the other way around, however. In fact, improving the customer service aspect of government-funded education by studying private enterprise market principles is an "apples and oranges" thing. In order to make sense of it, you would have to reconstruct the playing field to have all apples or all oranges.

All apples

Disney apples: A yellow taxpayer-funded bus would provide portal-to-portal service for children to attend Disneyland 180 times per year for an average of $8,000 - $9,000 of taxpayer-provided expense money per child. (The child and the parent would see this service as "free," of course). Some children would also receive breakfast and lunch money when they arrrive at the gate, but the prices the rest of the children pay for food is well below average commercial prices.

Magic Mountain apples: The bus would not stop at Magic Mountain. Parents could choose to take their children to Magic Mountain at their own expense for $3,000 to $6,000 per year. They would have to provide their own lunches, or purchase lunches at typical retail restaurant rates.

Question: In the comparison here, do the Disney folks really have to worry a lot about pleasing the customer? What customer is unwitting enough not to see the difference?

All oranges

Government oranges: Yellow taxpayer-funded buses provide portal-to-portal transport for children attending schools whcih recieve $8,000 to $9,000 per year in various allottments of government funds. Parents are largely unaware of this pricce tag and think of the schools as "free." Some children also receive free or reduced price breakdast and lunch, as well as a host of other services.

Private oranges: Parents arrange their own tranpostation and pay $3,000 to $6,000 out of pocket for their children to attend these schools. They also pack them a lunch or pay full restaurant price where lunch service is available.

Question: Is increased customer service going to improve on the financial deal parents get at the government schools? Are the private schools possibly already giving that quality of customer service (to help offset the obvious financial disadvantage under which they operate)?

If teaching their staff members to treat their public school clients as "customers" is important enough to pay the Disney Institute for training, would TUSD be willing to truly level the playing field so we could compare apples to apples here on customer service? If not, then don't spend the training dollars for a paradigm you can't live with consistently.