Good Pay for Good People
At least 26 public school officials in Ozaukee and Washington counties were paid salaries of more than $100,000 in the 2006-‘07 school year, newly gathered data show.
Honestly, it doesn’t bother me. Compensation for school administrators should always be evaluated and monitored, but good administrators are worth a good compensation package. For example, the West Bend School District has over a thousand employees, a bunch of buildings, and nearly 7,000 students. Does the superintendent - who is essentially the CEO - of such an organization deserve a six-figure salary? Yes.
What bothers me more than the individual compensation of the superintendent is the superfluous staff that is also earning a hefty wage. Back to our West Bend example, under the superintendent (district administrator) are an assistant district administrator and director of instruction/program supervisor - each of whom earn well over $100,000. It seems to me that with all of the money that the district is spending on a superintendent, it wouldn’t be too far out of line to have her fulfill the role of a director of instruction. Or perhaps the assistant superintendent could help out with supervising the programs? There are also several well-paid principals. Could they be empowered with some of the tasks currently being done by some of these highly paid administrators?
I have no problem paying well for good administrators, but let’s just make sure that the taxpayers are getting their money’s worth and that the administrators aren’t over-delegating.
Fair enough.
Now how about a comparison with similarly sized public and private org charts and compensation levels.
Prisons come to mind for public sector and some sort of extended health care for private sector.
Or flip the sector/industry if you like.
over-delegating
Very polite!
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 25, 2007 at 1055 hrs
I agree with you, pjr. I think this kind of stuff goes on all over the place. Prisons. Colleges. Police departments. Etc. It’s all worth looking into. I’d rather pay one highly-skilled administrator $200k then pay three $100k administrators to do the same work.
As for private businesses, that’s a matter for their customers, investors and other stakeholders. In the case of the public sector, we are all stakeholders.
Posted by Owen on November 25, 2007 at 1159 hrs
Both public and private sector compete in the same labor market.
If you are going to attract that highly-skilled administrator you have to provide a career path and an end game that offers equivalent compensation.
This is why I think a comparison from both sectors would be beneficial.
On a completely different note;
I would argue that the general public is a stakeholder in private business. The current government intervention and accommodation in the mortgage/real estate market mess is a good example.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 25, 2007 at 1220 hrs
You think this is bad. Racine Unified has three large-sized high schools. Each has its own directing principal, three assistant principals and well-compensated support staff. In addition to that, each high school has three color-coded sub-schools, each with its very own principal and matching set of assistant principals, counselors and support staff. Each one of those principals and assisant principals pulls down six figures. There’s an addition $1.2 million in administrative salaries per school minimum, $3.6 million for all three. That doesn’t count what the counselors make or the support staff and does not include the Rolle Royce benefits.
By comparison, Kenosha Unified has two high schools, both of which are larger in terms of enrollment than Racine and each is administered by a principal, two assistant principals a dean of students and one set of office support staff.
Posted by pdigaudio on November 25, 2007 at 1348 hrs
Compare the number of administrators that we have now to the numbers that we had in 1970 and ask why.
Almost all disticts have a curriculum coordinator, over 400 in total. They could easily get rid of those by just copying the curriculums of the most succesful districts in the state. Save $150,000 per year.
Again I say, why should the average public emloyee have betetr salaries, benefits, pensions and vacations than the average taxpayer.
Hammer that home again and again and watch the fur fly at public meetings.Sign up for our weekly conservative email newsletter by going to widigest.com
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Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 25, 2007 at 2108 hrs
Dohnal a couple of questions;
1) $150K divided by 400 is $375, hardly a princely sum and I am guessing considerably less than the average taxpayer earns.
2) If we fire all the curriculum coordinators who will devise the ones judged the most successful in the state.
It also seems that this would take away local control of what is taught in the local schools.
Kind of a collectivist approach?
pdiggy;
Racine, according to the district’s web page has, “three large high schools, one magnet high school, and one charter high school.”
Kenosha, according to the district’s web page has, “4 high schools, 2 high school charter schools, 1 high school Technology Academy,”
What gives?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 25, 2007 at 2340 hrs
One of the things I have noticed over the years is we all understand our own jobs, but we rarely understand someone else’s. I compare it to “taking care of the baby.” If you ask the mother of a newborn what she did all day, about all she can say is she was “taking care of the baby.” Doesn’t sound like much, even if you add some detail. Unless you have done it, you don’t know how all-encompassing it is.
Owen or others, why don’t you ask if you can shadow one or more of these people for a day? Then you might have a better idea of what is involved in taking care of that person’s particular baby.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 26, 2007 at 0539 hrs
P.S. This might be a bad suggestion. Obviously, we can’t have dozens of people making this request and shadowing for a day is a big deal and might not be possible, but if one or two people asked to meet with their local administrator to talk about this and report back, there might be interesting results. You might still disagree whether the job is needed or could be done more efficiently, but it is better to be armed with information before making assumptions. There is at least one school administrator who reads this site, maybe she could comment on what these people do and why these jobs couldn’t or shouldn’t be combined?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 26, 2007 at 0552 hrs
I agree that not all of us know the full extent of everyone else’s job. But for me, I look to the past as a guide. The staff to student ratio has been climbing for decades without any improvement in educational performance. That tells me that the added jobs aren’t necessarily needed. At the very least, it’s worth a solid evaluation by the school board. What do these folks do with their days?
Posted by Owen on November 26, 2007 at 0703 hrs
The 150,000 is per district. they ususally get paid 125,000 plus bennies then have scecretries etc. Cost is more than 150,000.
They have plenty of adminstrators that can take the best plans, update them every year and work togehter. Yes, education is a colectivist job as the constitution says it belongs to the state as it’s resposnbilbily. Lots of these things are endlessy duplicated throughout the disticts.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 26, 2007 at 0920 hrs
I can guarantee that most CEOs of $60 million companies earn considerably more than Pat Herdrich. And, these CEOs are unlikely to also handle another job in their company (e.g. CFO). Given her intelligence and work ethic, if this were the private sector, we’d slap on her a pair of golden handcuffs. Unfortunately, the public sector likes flat compensation schedules - the notion of additional compensation for performance is an anathema. That is the problem.
Posted by Charlie Hillman on November 26, 2007 at 1104 hrs
Charlie,
I am not sure anyone is pointing the finger at one or two salaries for the top people. I have heard many good things about Dr. Herdrich and believe she is compensated fairly. What it comes down to is the number of positions and the questionable salaries/benefits/costs that are driving up the strains on the education budgets. What needs to be questioned is the astonishing number of Director of Curriculum or Asst. Superintendents and their support staffs along with some of the other positions. If Dr,. Herdrich is also acting as the CFO, then why a highly paid Director of Business?
As an example just in West Bend, one of the reasons we hired Dr. Herdrich was her strength in curriculum. Why then do we need another highly paid Asst. Superintendent of Curriculum? The over delegation is something that cannot be sustained if we want to keep education affordable and keep up the quality we all want in our schools.
Posted by Rich2 on November 26, 2007 at 1130 hrs
Looking at Washington County schedule for 2007, their top position (Administrative Coordinator) maxes at $106,226: the next position (County Attorney) is $101,218; then there are three positions at $97,281 (Samaritan Administrator, Director of Social Services, & CCSA Program Director). The Information Services Director (and I think he was hired when the county got it’s first computer) is $88,634 - it looks like the WB School District has an “Administrator of Technology & Facility Services” at $101,517.
Don’t have a schedule for City of West Bend, but if I remember right, they were slightly lower than the county for comparable positions (i.e., City Administrator).
Owen raises a provacative question - it is one thing to look at what the top salary in an organization might be, but then again one needs to look at how much “help” those people need to get their jobs done, and judge accordingly.
As an aside, administrators (in most sectors, inlcuding corporate) used to be judged by how many people they “managed”. My brother and sister-in-law were both employed as engineers at an electric utility down south - at some point in time, the company had to cut costs - one of the first things was to scale down the larger departments, because those were the ones that could afford to cut staff, because those managers had built up their departments because their pay range were higher because they were “responsible” for more employees. My sister-in-law got laid off first (she was a nuclear engineer) but got hired back as a consultant. Two years later on, my brother got laid off (he was a maintenance/electrical engineer) - he did all right though - they had a pretty good continuing education plan and by the time he was laid off, he had gotten a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 26, 2007 at 1255 hrs
Rich - Dr. Herdrich is not acting as CFO. I was making the point that in industry even if Jack Welch had expertise in R&D;, he would not eliminate the VP of R&D;position and do that part time. Also, the list in the paper overstated our administrative positions as it included Shapley who left mid year. We have just one curriculum head and she happens also to be assistant superintendent. We need a second in command that can assume the reins if something would happen. It’s not that I think there is no money wasted in public education. I’m just not sure that administration is the best place to look.
Posted by Charlie Hillman on November 26, 2007 at 1257 hrs
Is Charlie the only one that gets it?
From post #3;
Both public and private sector compete in the same labor market.
If you are going to attract that highly-skilled administrator you have to provide a career path and an end game that offers equivalent compensation.
This is why I think a comparison from both sectors would be beneficial.
Been to a Doctor’s office lately? Especially anything that has clinic in its name. Seems like there is a lot more staff than there used to be.
How about banks? How many vice presidents do they need?
If you are going to attract top notch people into education you have to make it attractive from the entry level on up or they won’t even get on the path when they start making career building decisions.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 26, 2007 at 1351 hrs
Dohnal, before schilling for his site, said,
Almost all disticts have a curriculum coordinator, over 400 in total.
There should only be 72 curriculum coordinators to go with 72 superintendents. That would save boatloads of cash.
Problem is our 1840s mindset won’t allow it.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 26, 2007 at 2002 hrs
I have no problem paying well for good administrators,
Hell why actually pay for it? Why not put the cost on the GOP credit card?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 26, 2007 at 2003 hrs
Where on earth did someone get 72 superintendents? There are 465 districts in the state.
They are different than the counties, for those that have limited knowledge of government.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 26, 2007 at 2037 hrs
I have asked Tosa schools, on numerous occasions, how many admisnatrators they have now compared to 1970 when they had twice as many kids. They refuse to give us an answer. It is too simplistic for them.
Ask the teachers and they will tell you that adminstrations have ballooned while the census has gone down.
Every extra adminstrator has a support staff with bennies. They make work for each other. This has been the big problem. At the same time they cannot seem to find out how to teach many kids to read.
Compare the number of administrators, per thousand kids in private schools, to the number in public shcools. It is a joke.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 26, 2007 at 2042 hrs
I’m not bothered at all that they have good salaries… but the condition for their good salaries is to make their work good… i’m making mine very good and i don’t even approach of that salary.
Posted by servicii imobiliare complete on March 24, 2008 at 0541 hrs
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