 |
 |
Dr. David Hopson |
||||||||||||
May 7, 2007 As we progress through the annual spring rite of budget hearings, town meetings, and discussions of the relationship between the towns and their schools—made more difficult this year by a nearly non-existent increase in local aide—I often hear questions related to administrative overhead. Some question the number of administrators we have, the compensation of these administrators, or the roles administrators play in the district. These are all valid questions that have been raised by the school committee during budget deliberations over the years and the resulting decisions have been based on the best interests of students in the district. As very few people attend these meetings, I thought a recap of the facts might be in order. In today’s schools, the number of administrators needed is based less upon the number of students and more on the myriad requirements of the state and federal governments for appropriately responding to and meeting various mandates. Whether your district is a small rural district like Gateway, or a large system like Springfield, these basic requirements don’t change perceptibly—you need to meet the legal requirements for special education, English language learners, auditing, personnel management as well as deal with safety issues, student discipline, academics, athletics, writing grants and the many other daily activities that occur to meet the needs of students, staff, parents, and the community. The difference between large and small districts is the number of hats worn by an administrator. At Gateway, we don’t have a specialist for personnel management, Title I, or many of the other requirements that a large system has; rather each administrator takes on several of these roles and tries to balance the many, and often conflicting, demands. For this reason, any attempt to compare administrative ratios between districts is difficult at best. A better measurement is to see how requirements are being met and how efficiently administrators are fulfilling their job classifications and duties. I believe Gateway’s school committee is ahead of the curve in evaluating administrative performance and providing pay based upon that performance. The administrative evaluation process is lengthy, detailed, and tied directly to the performance of administrative duties and established goals. All administrative pay raises are now tied to this performance review, meaning that it’s possible for an administrator to not get a pay raise if his or her performance doesn’t meet the established standards. Tied to this yearly review is an administrator’s contract of employment: perform well and it’s possible to have your contract extended each year, perform poorly and your contract is not extended or renewed. There is no such thing as tenure for administrators and job security depends on a well-done job each and every year. All districts face many of the same dilemmas as many companies: the pool of talented and effective administrators is not growing to meet the need, we’re competing on a regional or even national level (not just on the local level), and the complexities and difficulties of the jobs are increasing. In fact, the pay differential between administrators and other employees often seems inadequate to warrant taking on the added responsibilities and uncertainties of a leadership role. Like many districts, Gateway’s administrators get paid either slightly less or slightly more than the top hourly rate that our teachers receive, but without the safety net of tenure and union membership. The district cost of the average raise received by administrators (based entirely on merit) is essentially equal to the percentage costs of the teachers’ association if they had taken advantage of merit pay. The school committee, when considering all of these factors in relation to administrative pay and retention has determined the following: it’s better to provide raises equal to the state/national average and keep experienced and high performing administrators in the district than pay them less and replace them routinely every 3 to 5 years (the average tenure of a superintendent in now less than three years) with administrators who don’t know the district and generally cost more than the outgoing administrator. Administrators should make more per hour than teachers due to the qualifications and experience needed for the job, the tenuous nature of the position, and the difficulties inherent in these jobs. The reality is that few individuals are committed to a particular district and willing to forgo compensation packages that are much higher. This leads to a great deal of shuffling across the state and country by administrators and even teachers. We need to retain proven administrators, given the dearth of qualified administrators and the number of schools that repost administrative positions 2 or more times before hiring. While nothing is perfect, the school committee has made great strides in stabilizing administrative staff (which research shows is a large contributing factor to student success), making administrative pay comparable to that of teachers, and directly tying compensation to performance. Additionally, the school committee has planned ahead to determine what administrators are required to meet district needs. We’ve all seen the negative impact of decreasing administrators in the district during the FY’04 crisis. The bottom line is that Gateway has the second lowest per pupil cost for regional school districts in the area and an average annual budget increase that is less than the majority of our towns. The problem isn’t with the district’s costs but with the inadequacy of state educational funding. Thus the answer isn’t to cut costs but rather to ensure that the state determines a way to more equitably support education. ### |
||||||||||||