Ms. Introwitz Pareene: We are all frustrated at the number of teachers being cut this year, but you're following the wrong tack here. It's the revenue, not the spending, that's the problem.
This year's budget cuts are the third consecutive year of cuts for MPS, a three year tally of nearly $100 million dollars. The administrative fat (if there was any) was cut long ago.
Our current administrative overhead (as calculated by the Deloitte Touche accounting firm in their most recent audit of the district) is a mere 4% of our total operating budget. This is miniscule by any standard and would be unthinkable in any private business (10% is more average).
A mere 4% is amazing. In fact, it's so amazing I want to know how it was measured. I even find the number of 10% for private business to be astonishing.
Many years ago when I worked at Control Data, we calculated employee "burden" (the cost per employee in addition to their salary) as 147% of their salary. That paid for all the other things necessary, e.g. insurance, benefits, desks, office space, telephone, heat, light, etc. For entertainment sake, we once calculated the administrative cost at Control Data on just a head-count basis. It was 33%. That's right -- one third of the employees were administrative overhead. I don't know what the value was on a monetary basis, but since that included a couple hundred vice presidents, it's a safe bet that a few hundred secretaries included didn't drag the average down too much.
I suspect Deloitte Touche is calculating burden in the most "favorable" way -- counting everything the district spends money on against the teaching staff unless it can be directly and only attributed to administrative staff. That's sort of like figuring out how expensive the school real estate is and adding that to the teachers salary and benefits costs, and dividing by the number of teachers, versus just the salaries and benefits of the top administrators divided by the number of them, which would hardly provide an apples to apples fair comparison.
So I find that 4% number rather deceiving. Besides, 4% of a large operating budget is still a big number. How big is that operating budget, anyway? If one can cut nearly $100 million out of it over three years and still be essentially the same organization, it must be pretty big. In fact, it appears to be about $695,906,636 for 2002-2003. 4% is still about $28 million.
There are 4,603 teachers. But there are 3,394 support staff and 302 principals and "administration". Where do vice-principals fall in this accounting? Why is "administration" separate from support staff? Who falls into which category?
It looks to me like there are 4,603 people doing the work of education, and 3,696 people not doing education. That is 55% education staff and 45% overhead. I suspect when most people talk about cutting school administrative costs, they, as I, are talking about that 45%, as well as non-staff costs, like transportation or construction. Clearly, support staff is required to get the job done. But their costs need to be examined just as closely as the costs of teachers or the other non-personnel costs.
Don't tell me there is no fat left to cut, and imply that there was little "if there was any" before the three years of cuts. That's patently false and disingenuous. There is no organization in the world with a budget of nearly 70% of a billion dollars that does not have fat in a large variety of places.
The Minneapolis public schools are spending $10,226 per pupil comapred to $7,439 statewide, and yet Mr. Erickson claims the problem is revenue, not spending. We spend 37.5% more per pupil than the average district in Minnesota, and yet he says we need more revenue -- to spend yet more? Yes, I know that we have a lot of students that cost more to educate than many communities, and that real estate costs more in Minneapolis, and so forth. We also don't spend (can't spend) as much as some wealthier school districts on the extras, so for the sake of this argument, those facts are irrelevant.
I regularly defend the Minneapolis public schools to my suburban friends, acquaintances and co-workers. I think our schools do a pretty darn good job considering the challenges they have. But not for one minute do I think they can rest on their laurels and not try to improve. Nor do I think that improvement can exclude the administration.
I suggested that the Minneapolis park board members and the top executives and managers take 10% pay cuts in order to preserve low-level jobs and programs at the Minneapolis parks. I make that same suggestion to the school board, and to the library system, as well. If they can't step up to the plate and do that, then I view them as gutless and self-interested, and neither leaders or public servants. The management at the Guthrie did it, and it's a private organization. The management at the county organization on whose board I sit did it, too.
Incidentally, how much do school board directors get paid?
Chris Johnson Fulton
TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.)
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