Posted on 11/25/2005 9:05:41 AM PST by NormsRevenge
Enrollment drops, teachers leave, but administrators stay.
That's the story at most of the 25 school districts with declining enrollment in the Sacramento region, according to a Bee analysis of state education data.
Just eight of those districts reported to the state that they had cut administrators between the school years 1999-2000 and 2004-2005, even though the districts lost about 5,000 students during that period.
Five of the 25 districts added administrators.
And although most of those districts aren't cutting administrator positions, they are employing fewer teachers. Twenty-two of the 25 districts have fewer teachers today than they did five years ago, state data show.
Some districts can justify those numbers because their enrollment dropped incrementally, said James W. Guthrie, a professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., who taught at the University of California, Berkeley, for almost three decades. But the five districts that added administrators and another five in which administration ranks remained the same while enrollment dropped by more than 10 percent have some explaining to do, he said.
"If you didn't cut, why? If you added, why?" Guthrie asked. "The burden of proof ought to be on why they haven't reduced their administrative staff."
Administrators defend the numbers by pointing to new federal and state initiatives that they say create more work. They also cite the difficulty of cutting supervisory staff in small districts.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Skools ping :-).
It's no different anywhere else. Show me one massive layoff in which upper management takes a direct hit. Nope; it's always the worker bee who gets the fatal blow, never the queen.
Administration staff has been beefed up during declining enrollment to maximize state and federal funds. The larger school districts have staff dedicated exclusively to researching and applying for grants. At-risk kids, non-english-speaking kids, kids with learning disabilities, low-income, single-parent, minorities, large families, children at risk due to absent or incarcerated parents --- you can find a bucket of money for any of these if you know where to look.
These "administrators" administer funds, not children
I have heard of Schoold Districts which have the administrative staffers pay pegged to the teacher's scale and therefore can't increase teachers wages because the corresponding administrators' wage increase, of their much higher salaries, "breaks the bank".
i teach at a large urban high school
at our school we have 34 out of classroom certified personnel
1- principal
5- assistant principals
10- counselors
3-deans
2 police officers
4-resource speciialists
4- people i have no idea what they do
5- curriculum specialists
student population is 3500
I may be missing a few people
We spend 10k per kid and the test scores don't even make the charts
Let me give you the real reason:
Administrators = Management
Teachers = Production Workers
Not only administrators, but also "support staff" (such as counselors, psychologists, etc) seem to be above lay-offs.
Our school grew by 250 students (14%) over a 4 year period... we added ONE teaching position... along with 3 counseling positions, one assistant dean, and one computer guru.
bump
The Administrators decide who gets the ax. Is it any wonder that they decide someone else takes the hit?
The NEA - phony jobs for losers.
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