Cut school administration, not our teachers

By JIM OLDHAM

Published on January 16, 2009

As a parent, I am very concerned about the impact of cuts to the school budgets and the effect they will have on my children's lives and education.

I know I'm not alone.

I hope that I am also not alone in realizing that parents, teachers and other advocates for the schools need to take part, even take the lead, in identifying where to cut our school budgets. The cuts are happening; we need reduce the damage.

With this in mind, I want to share information and ask questions about the cost of administering our schools. In the past, questions of this sort have not been welcome. A few years ago, when the Parent Coalition came together in response to budget cuts, one of the ground rules for the group's list-serve prohibited calls to cut administrators.

When some parents occasionally broke this rule to question the cost of administration, two School Committee members (one since moved on to other office, the other soon retiring) took the lead in discouraging such discussions.

Similarly, one of the least attractive aspects of the outsourcing of the cafeteria jobs last year was the sight of well-paid administrators arguing that the choice was between reducing benefits to lunch ladies or cutting classroom teachers, and the inability of School Committee members to see obvious alternative areas for cutting.

Hopefully, with recent calls from within the committee for greater transparency and parental involvement, the response will be different now.

Salaries for administrators (both central office and school administration) represent about 11 percent of the total payroll expense in the school budget. On the face of it, that doesn't seem like a lot. It begins to seem more, however, when you realize that salaries for regular education (classroom teachers) represent just 42 percent of the total payroll. Other payroll areas include special education, ELL, student services, support services, facilities, information systems and transportation. So we are paying only four times as much for all our classroom teachers as we are for all our administrators. Either we have quite a few administrators or they are quite well paid - or both. Keep in mind that this administration figure excludes all those other areas listed above.

If the size of the administration as a percent of payroll doesn't impress you, perhaps historical trends will.

Back in 2000, regular education (including both salaries and other expenses) represented 37 percent of the combined elementary and regional budgets. Today it represents just 25 percent of the combined budgets for FY2009. This shrinkage, we are frequently told, is due to rising health care costs and federally mandated expenses for special education. That's largely true, but what has been happening to administrative costs in the meantime?

Budget figures show that spending on central administration is up 40 percent in FY2009 over FY2000 levels. Elementary school administration has grown over 12 percent while administration for the two regional schools increased more than 50 percent!

The total dollar value of these increases was almost $900,000, enough to fund 15 to 18 teaching positions. In contrast, spending for regular education has hardly increased at all. In spite of inflation and rising salaries, the 2009 regular education budget is up just 5 percent over 2000 with teacher numbers flat or dropping.

It seems, paradoxically, that it's often easier to cut the most important positions because they are the most visible. When teachers are cut it "only" makes classes bigger or elective choices fewer.

But with administrators, since it's harder to see what they do, it's harder to justify cutting them and easier to accept that their numbers (or salaries) can't be decreased. We can no longer afford this attitude. It is wrong-headed to allow administration to grow while teachers and others working directly with the children are cut.

Jim Oldham, a Town Meeting member from Precinct 5, does environmental justice work in Massachusetts and Ecuador.