Fewer school administrators to complain about

State legislators complain about how public school districts have too many administrators. But the number of administrators is shrinking in the state. As total districts shrank from 304 in 2001 to 296 last year, because of voluntary mergers and closures, the number of superintendents dropped from 278.5 to 269.7, at least 55 of whom double as principals. And the principal total is down 2.8 percent since 2000, such that the state had nearly 157 more school buildings than principals last year. When does too many become too few?
Posted by Rhonda Holman

4 Comments

  1. sotheysaid
    Posted October 2, 2006 at 4:32 am | Permalink

    Maybe it has to with how they classify them now? The number of employees are still going up and they say it is not with teachers.

  2. Erik
    Posted October 2, 2006 at 8:29 am | Permalink

    Unfortunately we all seem to forget the total joke that most school district administration is.

    Administration at the school building level is generally acceptable, but the school board is nothing but a bunch of yahoo’s that see class over everything else. And by class I mean money, race, standing.

    Its the same story over and over again. Why do you think schools in the poor areas look poor. And schools in the nice areas look nice. They were even built poorly to begin with.. Look at the Southeast school complex at Lincoln and Edgemoor to Harry an Edgemooor.. I’ve never seen such shoddy construction.

  3. Door King
    Posted October 2, 2006 at 10:43 am | Permalink

    Never

  4. Vaughn Tolle
    Posted October 2, 2006 at 4:11 pm | Permalink

    Sotheysaid has a point; I am told, but have no personal knowledge, that in USD 259 many duties previously assigned to and performed by that class of district employee normally referred to as “administrators” are being performed now by lower level classified staff. I am also told that there are many Federal and state reporting requirements that must be done by “administrators”, and there is nothing to be done locally to reduce these duties. Some of these reports are the result of NCLB, the favorite project of the current President; some are from earlier Federal unfunded mandates, or so I am informed.