Mandated Administrative Bloat Will Destroy Small Public Schools
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18 responses to “Mandated Administrative Bloat Will Destroy Small Public Schools”
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Great job, Jim. This is exactly the kind of analysis that VDOE should be doing — and has failed utterly to do.
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The VDOE knows about the difference in cost. They superintendents annual report requires this each year. But they do nothing with the data. It just sits there. They hire equity specialists? Seems to me some kind of analysis should be done? Nada.
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Exactly.
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Loudoun once ran a tight ship that minded P’s and Q’s about top heavy administration. Here is the former adminstration office for LCPS and the new one. When the new building went up you found more non teaching staff than ever before. Citizens would be wise to never let the school system build a temple for itself.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9440e36ab153f139da5d64f29b9f1c25d534cc3a29318aad23a920f1cdf027df.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a5d4e6d25505c7ac7775d223857dc3441535d483081fad6bbf64ea04f486bb97.jpg-
A picture says a thousand words…
And contrasting pictures say three thousand words…-
Bureaucracies ONLY grow.
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I’ll bet there is an interesting story behind Wise County having a lighthouse on their County seal. After all, they’re something like 450 miles from the nearest actual lighthouse.
Update: Oops, that’s the seal of Wise County Public Schools. Still…
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Exactly what I thought… A lighthouse?
But as a symbol of knowledge, OK, but still…maybe a symbol somehow attached more to the County? -
Something I believe I on which commented on the first article the Captain wrote about Wise Co. schools. Do they even have a lake in the county?
Wreckers?
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I would like to note that several of the other small community-based schools in the Loudoun non-charter population are able to share and therefore split the costs of many of the non-teaching staff. Charter schools can not share those resources and therefore must absorb the cost for all on the one school – spreading the cost over far fewer students resulting in a much higher $/student figure comparatively. Just another way they were screwed and tax payers were harmed by forcing charter status on these two schools.
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Thank you.
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A devastating comment!
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I second Jim Bacon: This is a great job of analysis. I have long felt that the schools were top heavy with administrative staff; I just never knew the extent of it. The position that I find the most ridiculous is P.E. specialist. Just let the kids go outside and play! Why is there a need for a physical ed specialist?
Here comes the old fart complaining. I look at these staffing ratios and think about almost a lifetime ago to my first grade at Virgilina Elementary. There were more than 40 of us in Mrs. Jones’ class. We were the first wave of the Baby Boom The school consisted of grades 1-7. There were seven teachers, one principal, one administrative staff, and some kitchen and custodial staff. There were no teachers’ aides or assistant teachers. Nevertheless, many of us went on to college and good careers. Of those who did not go to college, many were successful in business, farming, and other pursuits and led good lives.
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Some of us even did a year out of school, without even the benefit of distance learning, when it was decided by the State that closing was better than desegregating, AND we still “went on to college and good careers”.
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Dick, one that I find interesting is the teacher assistant.
There is a job announcement from Albemarle County Schools for an elementary school teacher assistant. Applications are accepted beginning today.
They are seeking high school graduates to do the grunt work of teaching.
See: https://albemarleva.tedk12.com/hire/ViewJob.aspx?JobID=6996
Look at the
– GENERAL DEFINITION OF WORK;
– ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS;
– KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES; and
– PHYSICAL CONDITIONS AND NATURE OF WORK CONTACTSThey seek all of that for $15.10 an hour full time plus benefits. I wonder what the turnover rate is.
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Captain in Loudoun one year I had a special ed aide for a kid in wheel chair, I had a hearing impaired aide for another kid, and ESL teacher for another group of students. The rest of the class were classic “sweathogs”. I mean that in a loving way too. Love those guys. Anyways I had to run the 3 adults out of the room. I had no time to manage 30 kids and the 3 adults. It was a great year. Very special class.
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I remember talking with teachers at my kids’ elementary school about the staff size at Fairfax County Public Schools. I mentioned that FCPS reports indicated that, at the time, there were more than 200 curriculum specialists on staff. Needless to say, that got several angry reactions with teachers saying they’d rather have higher pay and few more specialist teachers (math or reading) in the schools than all this “curriculum” help.
A few years ago, I was on a walk and ran into my son’s 5th grade teacher, who is a neighbor. This was in a time where FCPS had 200 plus vacancies in fulltime teaching positions. The administration offered staff the option of teaching, with payment at the (higher) staff salary and a guaranteed right to return to the employee’s staff position at the end of the school year. Not a single staff person took the offer. But it’s kids first. Right.
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We should certainly demand accountability from our school systems, but we must do our due diligence as well. Hillsboro Charter Academy has only three administrative staff members who cover all school-based administrative roles including the health clinic (the HCS title stands for Health Clinic Specialist). Some of the staff members you listed are actually district employees who serve multiple schools and are available to evaluate students with special needs and participate in the mandatory special education identification process. Many others are part-time employees with a wide range of hours – all based on the needs of the students and the program. The leadership team is composed of members of the staff, including teachers, who in addition to their primary roles serve in a leadership capacity, necessary for the running of a school quite different from the rest of the district.
The school serves grades K-5 (not pre-k), with class sizes of 24.
Also, you may want to know that Hillsboro Charter Academy has never spent $19,930 per pupil per year. The primary funding mechanism (non-fundraising) uses the following formula:
(District Average Cost Per Pupil – Indirect Cost Fee) X Annual Enrollment
The school is actually run on less tax-payer funding per year than the district-run small schools in the same county. But beyond this, it’s important when comparing regionally different locations to include consideration of the cost of living and resulting base teacher salary.
Regarding SOL scores, there are often wide swings for smaller populations and any families who opt out (Loudoun has many who do), count against the school-wide pass rates. But even so, Hillsboro has enjoyed many successes with SOL scores, including a 100% pass rate in science their first year open and just last year their reading pass rate exceeded nearly all other elementary schools in the large district.
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