I agree, this is a ‘jobless’ recovery. Hopefully things will turn around from an employment perspective soon.

Didn’t mean to ‘hijack’ this blog but I do want to say that the Simon scholarships have provided tremendous opportunities for deserving students in DeKalb. Not to take a shot at Emory but I do find it strange that they offer the MLK scholarships for deserving students in APS yet don’t have an equivalent offering for deserving students in DeKalb. This is especially interesting since Emory is in DeKalb. I will acknowledge Emory gets a LOT of money from Coca Cola and the Woodruff Foundation, which are based in Atlanta.

A very legitimate question was raised with respect to the ‘Corporate Wellness Position’. I know the person approved for this position and aware of her qualifications. We can sit back a ‘rationalize’ the need for that position (and salary) given the current economic climate. A Board member raised similar questions, albeit after the vote to approve.

In fairness to all superintendents now, no one can promise there will not be furloughs. Yes, DeKab chose to reduce payments to employees retirements in lieu of furloughing employees. This placed their reserves in a tenuous position going forward. Some districts like Gwinnett had healthy reserves yet chose the furlough route. Each district made a ‘business’ decision based on their forecasts of future income.

Add to that, the State of Georgia recommended that several school districts (maybe all) request class size waivers. This was done because they are forecasting lower property tax income thus wanted district to have the flexibility to increase class sizes in place. This waiver would only last for two years. I also ‘heard’ their is a consideration of a special session this fall as a result of the decline in tax revenues.

I am still surprised that many education employees have not acknowledged that we don’t have the money to provide increases. Salaries and benefits make up 87-93% of school budgets. If you have less money, you either eliminate increases or reduce staffing levels. You saw the numbers above regarding monies spent on general administration. Even cutting that in half will not cover the reduction of income.

Bernake recently said we are coming out of the recession. Looking at the currently unemployment numbers, I have a hard time believing that.

Something jumps out at me with the $9,599,681 number you found in the DeKalb Total Salaries and Benefits column.

Let’s round that to an even ten million. Then take a very conservative estimate that each administrator costs 50 thousand a year. Multiply 50,000 time 200 administrators and you are right at the $10 million figure you cited.

Something tells me, especially under Crawford Lewis, that there are way more than 200 administrators in all of DeKalb County Schools!

I hope someone will repost with the information, because even knowing DeKalb, I found the one hundred million dollar figure to be surprising.

I saw it on this blog, if I’m not mistaken. Admittedly not the best source of information LOL. So there’s no misunderstanding when I say “on this blog” I’m referring to a poster, not the moderator.

Still, if I’m not mistaken on this, the poster Cere confirmed the data, and this poster is the once who runs, or is involved with the DeKalb School Watch blog.

I still have to ask, should Crawford Lewis be creating even a single new administrative position at a time he’s raiding teacher retirement to spare furloughs, and yet still can’t promise furloughs won’t be forthcoming?

What kind of message does that send to teachers?

Not to be an apologist for DCSS, but where are you getting your data? I went to the following link on the State DOE website:

http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/ReportingFW.aspx?PageReq=211&PID=61&PTID=67&CTID=216&StateId=ALL&T=0&RID=102

After selecting the district, I selected ‘Personnel and Fiscal’ from the top tab then ‘Revenue and Expenditures from the 2nd row of tabs. I then looked at the 3rd set of data, Salaries and Benefits as Percentages of Revenues and Expenditures. Looking at the Total Salaries and Benefits column, I saw the following values:

Fulton – $6,252,613
DeKalb – $9,599,681

I see a difference of just over $3.3 million. When you factor in that DeKalb had roughly 13,000 more students than Fulton and also look at the per FTE expenditure (Fulton – $9,746.13 vs. DeKalb – $9,898.29), it is hard to see where DeKalb is spending 100 million more in administrative positions.

Which brings me to a point I have raised here many times: HOW CAN WE CONTINUE TO BLAME TEACHERS AND SCHOOLS FOR STUDENTS’ LACK OF ACHIEVEMENT??

Obviously, these students sit in the same classes in the same schools in which many if not most students are not achieving at all. Even what may be considered the worst of schools has its achievers.

The academic achievement of the top 8-10% of students in public schools compares very favorably to students in private schools. So why all emphasis on lousy teachers and/or inadequate facilities?

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Maureen you think it might be time to once again ask Lewis for some accountability for having one hundred million dollars more in administrative positions than Fulton County does?

Are these administrative positions, in light of cuts made to teacher benefits, truly in “the best interests of students”?