Cutting the cost of public school administration, one of the goals of school consolidation advocates, is not as simple as it seems — not when you have to deal with Delaware state law.
In 2008, State Auditor R. Thomas Wagner took a hypothetical look at the costs of administrative staffing if public schools were consolidated into four districts statewide — Northern, Central and Southern, plus a statewide vocational-technical district — and claimed potential annual savings in excess of $45 million.
He tallied the number of administrative and support staff in each of the districts he proposed grouping in his consolidated model, then found the administrative staffing levels for districts with comparable student populations in nearby states. For example, using 2008 payroll figures, he created a “Northern District” that would consist of the current Brandywine, Red Clay, Christina and Colonial districts and determined that they had a total of 455 administrators and support staff other than principals and assistant principals. Districts of similar size in nearby states, he said, had an average of 92 administrators and support staff. The result, in Wagner’s calculation, was an elimination of nearly 80 percent of all administrative and support jobs, and a savings of close to $23 million in salaries and benefits.
However, under Delaware law, state funding and the number of personnel authorized for a school district is based on a unit system, in which a certain number of students (16.2 for kindergarten through third grade, 20 for grades four through 12, lower numbers for special education) is counted as a unit, and the number of units determines how many teachers and administrators a district is allocated.
With the unit system, in a consolidation of districts, the total number of units would be very close to the total units authorized for each of its components, so the number of administrators would barely change. Merging four districts into one would eliminate three superintendent positions, but those three superintendents would likely be reclassified as assistant superintendents or directors.
Later in 2008, as part of the Vision 2015 school reform initiative, the Leadership for Education and Achievement in Delaware (LEAD) Committee issued a 43-page report that recommended, among other things, that Delaware move away from the unit system toward one that allocates funds on a direct per student basis and that is also weighted toward individual students’ needs.
While the LEAD Committee report did not directly address administrative staffing levels, it repeatedly noted that the current finance system restricts the ability of school districts to be innovative in their use of financial resources. “Few states have education funding systems as prescriptive or inflexible as Delaware’s,” the report stated. “Because the current Delaware finance model is prescriptive, inflexible and far removed from the students, it presents a formidable barrier to innovation in education toward increased quality and efficiency.”
In the 30 months since the report was issued, “a few of the minor recommendations have been pursued, but I am not aware of any significant items that have been implemented,” said Marvin N. “Skip” Schoenhals, chairman of the LEAD Committee.
