Schools and budgets

While our School Board is looking for ways to reduce the budget, here is some useful information. Texans for Fiscal Responsibility has done research in the area of school spending. Here are some interesting results.
Texas spends an average of $11,000 per child per year for education which is double the 1999 average. The average class size is 23 students. Therefore, each classroom represents $255,000 of the budget. Since the average teacher makes $47,300 per year, that leaves more than $207,000 per classroom to spend.
Since 1999 average enrollment has grown 15% while teaching positions increased 19%. That is understandable and reasonable. However, there was an increase of 22% in non-teaching positions. In fact, there are 321,092 teachers and 313,850 non-teachers on the payrolls in Texas.
Do we really need an almost 1:1 ratio of teacher to non-teacher? A non-teacher could be a janitor or an Assistant Deputy Director to the Superintendent. Maybe they need to do what corporate America does and look to cut non-essential staff first. How many Assistant Superintendents does one school district need? How about putting all those administrators back in the classroom at teacher’s salaries for a year? Or maybe requiring all administrators, including Dr. Braswell, to fill substitute teacher needs for a minimum of two weeks per year at substitute pay.
Of course, they will always make the easier decision to change bus schedules, reduce activities, change curriculum, reduce books, turn off lights, etc. All of which directly affects the students who can’t vote.