Giving Compass' Take:

• Jonathan Butcher argues that school districts school look to clean up their budgets in order to increase teacher pay, rather than asking for more money from states. 

• How can districts best identify what spending to cut? Will the cuts be sufficient to raise teacher pay? 

• Find out how leadership support for administrators makes a difference for students. 

Data from around the country demonstrate that districts and schools have hired far more administrative, non-teaching employees over the past 30 years than teachers.

The number of non-instructional administrators and staff has increased by nearly 50 percent since 1992, while the number of students has only increased by 17 percent and the number of teachers by 32 percent.

Some of these administrators make significantly more than teachers. In Jefferson County, Kentucky (JCPS), the state’s largest district, a 2014 audit found 150 central office positions with salaries of $100,000 or more per year.

For comparison, Charlotte, North Carolina, a district similar in size to JCPS, has just 53 administrators with salaries greater than $100,000.

The average teacher salary in JCPS is $63,000.

In addition to Charlotte, Kentucky’s auditors compared JCPS to four other districts with similar enrollment, student demographics, and revenue and spending levels.

If JCPS reduced its administrative spending ($119 million annually) to the average of these 5 districts ($108 million), JCPS would be able to use the $11 million difference to increase all of the salaries for the district’s 6,000 teachers by $1,800 or provide targeted bonuses to higher performing teachers.

Of all school district administrators, superintendents make eye-popping salaries in some cases. In Kentucky, the superintendent of Fayette County schools makes more than $266,000, four-and-a-half times the salary of the average district teacher. In Scott, Newport, and four other counties, the superintendents make almost four times the average teacher in those districts.

More school closures due to administrator and teacher strikes may be on the horizon for the 2018–2019 school year. Parents, taxpayers, and lawmakers affected by the strikes should consider the poor school district budgeting practices of other states as school personnel demand more money from the state general fund.

In every region of the U.S., there are districts with excess administrative spending, vacant buildings supported by taxpayer resources, fraud, and theft—all of which reduce the amount of spending available for teacher salaries and student learning. State lawmakers should require school districts to clean up the books before policymakers look for ways to spend more from the budget on K–12 district schools.

Read the full article about teacher pay by Jonathan Butcher at The Heritage Foundation.