LAUSD: Enrollment Declining 6%, Administration Rising 20%

September 29, 2008 by dave

I thought that the LA Daily News did a pretty good job with this article about a 20% rise in administrative positions from 2001 to 2007 while enrollment had declined.

But a Daily News review of salaries and staffing shows LAUSD's bureaucracy ballooned by nearly 20 percent from 2001 to 2007. Over the same period, 500 teaching positions were cut and enrollment dropped by 6 percent.

The district has approximately 4,000 administrators, managers and other nonschool-based employees - not including clerks and office workers - whose average annual salary is about $95,000. About 2,400 administrators are among the 3,478 LAUSD employees who earn more than $100,000 annually.

Meanwhile, the average salary for an LAUSD teacher is $63,000. And the average household income in Los Angeles County is less than $73,000.

I don't think that slashing the District Office is always the answer to a school district's fiscal woes. There is a point where you can have too few administrators and things start to fall through the cracks. As in most things, to be successful, you need to achieve a balance. The key is that you have the right positions with the right people in those positions. It is about quality rather than quantity.

With that in mind, when enrollment is declining 6% and you're cutting 500 teaching jobs, it doesn't seem like that's the right time to start adding hundreds of administrators with average salaries of $95,000. Particularly in a bureaucracy the size of LAUSD, which had no shortage of administrators at the start. Even their own administration admits there is a problem:

And 3,200 more administrators and support staff are scattered throughout the city, as top officials acknowledge that the number of highly paid managers has swollen beyond what is needed to run the nation's second-largest school district.

"There are assistants to assistants," says Senior Deputy Superintendent Ramon Cortines, who was hired in May to oversee the district's day-to-day operations.

...

The deputy superintendent said he has discovered instances in which incompetent top managers at Beaudry were moved into paper-pushing jobs at the same salary, while others were hired to do their jobs - effectively doubling the district's costs.

And here's the sure sign that many administrators in LAUSD are out of touch with reality:

Cortines said he also discovered that many employees downtown with extensive educational expertise believed they were required to stay in their offices rather than spend part of their time training teachers in schools. Included are about two dozen math, literacy and science experts, making $85,000 to $109,000. They have been ordered into schools, along with other instructional employees who have offices downtown.

But Cortines said he is disappointed that the district's headquarters has become such an entrenched fortress.

"Someone said to me, 'You don't know how many years I worked to get downtown.' And I said, Let me tell you, that's not where the work is.

"The work is in the schools and in the classroom."

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