As late as 1930, about 65% of America’s children were educated in one-room schoolhouses, often with a single teacher entrusted with all instruction.
Since that time, most of our public schools have evolved into administrative behemoths with bloated, self-serving bureaucracies.
Take, for example, the Socorro Independent School District, which has 8,120 employees serving 45,997 student attendees, which works out to 5.7 students per employee.
We filed an open records request with SISD and obtained a complete list of employees, their titles, and their salaries, organized by total pay in descending order.
The District employs 110 administrators who are paid over $100,000 per year, with Superintendent Nathan Carman paid $348,400 (more than twice as much as the Governor of Texas).
Among the top 300 wage earners, we identified only two classroom teachers.
Reviewing the list if employees, we found a “Chief of Innovation” ($151,126), 108 assistant principals (earning up to $102,335), and 133 counselors (earning up to $93,158).
Is it hardly our place to determine which employees are unnecessary or overpaid, but there sure seem to to be a lot of middle-level administrators and counselors!
In any case, given the $74 million hole in the budget through FY 2024-2025, the $26.2 million hole in the 2017 Bond budget, and the more than $133,000,000 in unauthorized contract extensions, it is obvious that SISD will have to go through some painful restructuring if it is to avert Chapter 9 bankruptcy.
PHOTO CREDIT: Schoolhouse
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