Atlanta school central offices costly

More than 1,000 public school administrators in metro Atlanta earn more than $100,000 a year, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution review of school salary data shows.

The review shows that Atlanta Public Schools, the smallest school district in the metro area, has the highest administrative costs. Cobb County, while having the second-largest student population in the state, has one of the smallest central-office staffs and some of the lowest costs. DeKalb schools have more people making $100,000-plus a year than any district.

The AJC analysis comes as metro school districts are laying off more than 1,500 teachers, increasing class sizes and cutting budgets by tens of millions of dollars. While districts say they are also cutting “central office staff,” most of those cuts are lower-salaried jobs, not high-paid administrators.

“Every dollar that you could pull out of the central office and focus it on the school will get you a better result,” said Cobb County parent John Morabito, who is upset about the 579 teaching positions and 56 paraprofessionals that Cobb County plans to cut.

Stuart Bennett, executive director of the Georgia Association of Educational Leaders, says central office pay is not out of line.

“I don’t think they’ve just pulled these salaries out of thin air,” he said. “A lot of districts have done salary studies with private industry. It looks like a lot of people are making those salaries, but we have a couple of districts whose budgets are around a billion dollars.”

On average in Georgia, the central office accounts for 5 percent of a district’s operating budget. In metro Atlanta, that average increases to 6 percent. But Atlanta Public Schools spends nearly 10 percent of its budget on administration.

The difference is even more pronounced by another measure: spending on central office per student. The metro average is $550 per student. Atlanta spends $1,392 per student.

APS spokesman Keith Bromery said accounting practices explain why the APS administrative costs appear higher.

“The differences in central office costs between APS and other local school districts reflect APS’ financial management practices that allocate costs where they are managed rather than where they occur,” he said in an e-mail to the AJC.

Parents are concerned about plans to increase class sizes.

“We’re steadily reducing services to our children,” said Winston Taylor, the father of three children at Atlanta schools. “When you increase classroom size you’re getting away from what you told us the best practices were. When you look at some pay scales at the top of the line, that’s several teachers’ pay. We need to do whatever we can do to maintain small classroom sizes.”

Atlanta also plans to cut 124 teaching positions and 11 central office staffers, Bromery said. Most of the cuts will be through attrition. The district did not say which central office positions were cut but said the savings would be about $700,000.

Beverly Hall, Atlanta’s superintendent, earned $344,331 last year — second-highest in the metro area. Gwinnett Superintendent Alvin Wilbanks was expected to earn $382,219 this year, making him the top-paid school official. Wilbanks’ district is the largest in the state with 158,329 children, more than three times the number of students in Atlanta’s schools.

What is a central office?

While most school districts say they are making cuts to central office staff, it is difficult to pin down those reductions. Each district defines central office staff differently: Some consider all nonteaching personnel to be “central office,” including bus drivers, school police officers and landscapers.

Many parents consider deputy superintendents, assistant superintendents and other high-level staffers who oversee curriculum, human resources, finance, technology, transportation and more, as the typical central office staff.

DeKalb says its has 982 central office workers, but that includes mechanics, maintenance workers and school police officers.

The district is cutting 150 “central office” jobs for a savings of about $11.5 million. Those cuts include one associate superintendent, an area assistant superintendent, two secretaries to area assistant superintendents and scores of maintenance workers, custodians, painters, school police and secretaries, among others.

Gloria Talley, deputy superintendent for teaching and learning with DeKalb schools, explained the many functions the central office performs.

“Let me tell you what we do,” Talley said. “We recruit and hire teachers. We write their checks. We train teachers in current practices and current strategies. We monitor teachers. We monitor principals. We assist principals in how they work with teachers. We have textbooks to purchase. We write curriculum. We have technology to oversee and to help implement.

“There’s a testing component that we need to oversee. There’s planning that we assist our schools with, and data analysis to help schools make decisions. That list doesn’t even include student security and safety.”

She continued: “I don’t want to get into the debate about how many bodies you need to run a central office because people sit on different sides of the fence. I believe that schools need support and that’s what we’re here for.”

‘This giant bureaucracy’

Parent Molly Bardsley of Tucker has three children, including a sixth-grader and a seventh-grader who no longer attend school in DeKalb. Bardsley says the county’s schools are drowning in bureaucracy.

She decided to send her daughters to Ivy Preparatory Academy, a charter school for girls in Norcross.

“There’s an enormous number of layers there in DeKalb and nobody really seems terribly empowered to do anything,” Bardsley said. “You have a problem, and the principal — even if they’d like to solve the problem — they have to keep kicking it up the chain.

“I wanted a school where the money and the energy was being focused on educating the children as opposed to this giant bureaucracy that DeKalb has grown.”

Bardsley says bureaucracy is not an issue at her daughters’s new school.

“At the charter school, the highest level of administration is right there at the school. The principal is empowered to make decisions. She does not have to go to an area assistant superintendent, the associate superintendent, the deputy superintendents, the deputy chief superintendents.”

Central office cuts

This is a brief sketch of plans to cut central offices in selected metro school districts:

Fulton County: Fulton County schools, with 440 central office jobs, will cut 53 vacant positions and 10 that are staffed. Fulton is also eliminating three higher-ranking, $100K positions, such as an assistant superintendent for instructional services, a chief leadership development officer and a director, spokeswoman Allison Toller said. All of the cuts will total about $3.7 million.

Gwinnett County: With 489 central office positions costing $35.5 million, Gwinnett says it will freeze hiring for central office positions, except critical need, saving $8.5 million.

Clayton County: With 494 jobs in the central office, Clayton plans to cut three cabinet-level posts, three directors, one assistant director and 10 coordinators, all of which are higher-ranking jobs. It also plans to cut about 35 lower-ranking central office jobs, such as administrative assistants, for a savings of $5.3 million, district spokesman Charles White said.

Cobb County: Cobb plans to cut 45 of its 360 central office positions. It did not list the jobs except to say that it has eliminated an associate superintendent position. It’s cutting another 23 slots, but they are positions such as custodians, bus drivers and mechanics, according to an e-mail from the system’s chief financial officer. The cuts are projected to save about $4.9 million.

With Cobb shedding hundreds of teaching jobs, parents are angry.

“The dialogue in Cobb is always about the board or the central office,” said John Morabito, whose son attends Walton High School. “It’s never about the kid. It’s never about teaching. Until we get back to the point where it’s about teaching, Cobb’s going to be a mess,” he said.

One issue that has angered Cobb parents is the school board’s decision to continue to allow about 1,547 employees, excluding teachers, to accrue unused vacation time and cash it out when they retire or leave the district. Cobb had a total liability of unused vacation of $7.4 million, as of June 30, 2009.

At a meeting May 4, board member Allison Bartlett proposed ending the perk, but her proposal was voted down 5-1.

Cobb parent Kimberly Euston, who works for a large accounting firm, is angry about what she says are disproportionate cuts.

“We are losing teachers who are good-quality teachers,” Euston said. “In business one thing executives have to give up is perks, like rolling over vacation time. The central office employees need to make bigger cuts.”

转自：http://www.ajc.com/news/governme ... central-533227.html