While reading Stan Mack’s page on the Robbinsdale School District’s web page, I came across an interesting fact. The web site says the following;
“He (Mack) is responsible for the education of 12,500 Kindergarten through 12th grade students and a large population of preschool and adult learners. Under his direction, the school district employs approximately 2,000 employees and manages an annual budget in excess of $130 million.”
Now I’m no math genius but does that mean we have six students per employee? OK now, before someone comments that not all these employees are teachers, we already know that. But let’s say for conversation’s sake that half of the employees are teachers. That still gives us a 12 to 1 ratio.
How can it be then that we have class sizes of 35 as the district and referendum advocates claimed? Do we have too many bus drivers? Do we have too many in the kitchen staff? Do we have too may administrators and guidance counselors? Perhaps these questions can be answered before the district come back to us for more money yet again.
June 15, 2009 at 11:10 pm |
First, I think you meant 6 students per employee. You must admit the typo is somewhat humorous given the sentence it is in…
Though the large number of employees has puzzled me before, I think you will find the answer you seek in the Special Ed, ELL and At Risk student areas of the district. They require a lot of people with a lot of patience and understanding.
A better accounting from RAS would help folks understand the reality. We citizens delegated the schools to main stream kids and at times serve as their pseudo-parents. This choice drives a lot of cost. (ie many of them require 1+ adults per student) Is the alternative to give up on them and pay for their prison/long term care later?
By the way, I am certain there are some employees that are under utilized in low enrollment classes, niche programs, etc. However I don’t think it will be the large number you may imagine. And these can only go away if we get rid of the P4 programs. Any specific program cuts you would propose yet?
July 3, 2009 at 9:21 pm |
So I did some digging into this one and posted a response to this over here:
http://www.portalxp.org/news.aspx?id=623
As g2a say, the math is much more complex than we are thinking about.
DJ