OK, so maybe it’s not the clearest data on Planet Earth, but it’s what arrived in my mailbox today. Basically, it says the union is asking for a 95:5 teacher: administrator ratio.
That would mean 30,057 teachers and 1024.18 administrators in the union’s ideal world.
The latest district proposal is 30,057 teachers: 1582 administrators (rounding so we don’t have to chop anything off any administrator much as we’d like to…). This means 558 extra administrators (often at over $100,000 each, so that would mean around $55 million + benefits worth of administrators)
The bureaucracy swelled 20% in the past few years (see here for the Daily News article).
After all, they need the bodies to fill the space in that vast office tower (the Beaudry Building) they purchased for $74.5 million plus $79.5 million in ‘austere’ renovation costs with the LA Times’ approval. The Daily News again:
But even today, according to a top LAUSD official, the building seems too ostentatious in light of budget cuts and other financial issues the country’s second-largest public school district is grappling with.
“This is not a good central office,” concedes Senior Deputy Superintendent Ramon Cortines. “It’s not inviting to parents and the community. Parking is atrocious; getting here is atrocious.”
LAUSD executives declined a Daily News request to videotape and photograph a tour inside the public building, saying it would be too much of a distraction for workers, according to Stephanie Brady, a district representative.
But Superintendent David Brewer III maintained that Beaudry should not be viewed as a typical corporate building, saying it lacks the granite, fine wood and other trappings of some of downtown’s more grandiose skyscrapers.
“It’s pretty austere,” Brewer said, adding that his own offices are adequate.
This is why the “austere” $154 million building was purchased, according to former superintendent Brewer:
“It will be a symbol of success versus a symbol of bureaucracy. We’ll consolidate all in one and save a fortune, and that’s the ultimate in decentralization.”
Last I heard, the district still pays $4 million/year to lease the office space just for Local District 3’s bureaucracy on Robertson Blvd. And there are 7 other Local District Offices with leased office space.
So much for ULTIMATE DECENTRALIZATION!
Here’s a choice excerpt from the Daily News’ article on the expansion of the bureaucracy:
On the edge of downtown Los Angeles, overlooking the 110 Freeway, stands a 29-story office building that boasts many of the trappings of a modern corporate headquarters: a cafeteria with flat-screen TVs, a state-of-the-art media production center, an on-site dry-cleaning service.
The tower is the headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District - home to more than 3,400 employees. They are the core of a massive bureaucracy that has surged in recent years even as the number of students and teachers has dropped.
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.
Managing almost 900 schools and more than 650,000 students is a huge task. 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.
Beaudry Building, LAUSD
HMMM, NOW YOU TELL ME, WHERE DO YOU THINK THE CUTS SHOULD BE MADE??????
on Apr 2nd, 2009 at 10:40 am
There is no organization in the world that doesn’t have managers and supervisors. Unless teachers are going to be involved in helping their bad colleagues out the door, administrators are necessary. Granted, they need to be good administrators.
As for comparing teacher salaries, don’t forget to factor in that most other people work the whole year and don’t get $13,000 and then some of health benefits — not to mention pensions.
Let’s just present a fair picture.
on Apr 2nd, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Thanks for writing.
I agree that organizations need to have managers. What’s at issue here is how much of the budget cuts should be on the backs of teachers and how much on the backs of the paper-pushers downtown and in the minidistricts. Here’s Cortines: “There are assistants to assistants,” says Senior Deputy Superintendent Ramon Cortines… Why aren’t they being shown the door? Why are the cuts mostly in the classrooms?
I also agree that teachers need to take responsibility for teaching (see the latest blogpost on tattleteaching: http://www.tattleteaching.com/2009/04/02/powerless/).
We would love to see our colleagues who don’t do their jobs shown the door, but we currently don’t have the power to facilitate this.
Finally, as for teacher salaries, we chose to forgo pay increases for years in order to maintain health benefits. We also chose to have our salaries annualized so that we get paid year-round. Finally, many of us work many hours beyond the contracted time. We work through our lunches and recesses as well as after school.
I wonder if you are an administrator. I know I don’t have time during my workday to read blogs and post comments. I do that way after hours.
on Dec 19th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Which administrators don’t get benefits? LA Times & Daily News reported as recently as last week that private corps. have funded 13 administrative consultant positions averaging $165,000 each. LAUSD is providing them full benefits packages. They are not even employees of the district, but independent contractors! Meanwhile, UTLA, so preoccupied with maintaining their own bloated bureaucracy is making backdoor deals with Cortines at members’ expense. (Think: LAUSD/UTLA pilot schools project). The “proposed” paycut will slip quietly into our checks while blowhard Duffy does his dirty work free of dissension by the semi-literate workforce of LAUSD’s teaching profession.
Harty-har-har!