Is Pinellas no longer the most top heavy district?

No, its financial officer, Doug Forth, told school board members at yesterday’s work shop.

The district cut nearly $1 million from general administration this year and shifted another $1.8 million into other categories, Forth said. (More on the shifts in a minute.) In terms of most money spent on administration, that should take Pinellas out of the embarrassing top spot among 13 comparable districts and drop it somewhere in the middle tier, he said.

Pinellas earned big, unflattering headlines earlier this year for its top-heavy ways. After a St. Petersburg Times story, the board ordered a closer look, which prompted Forth and others to see what other districts were doing.

Turns out, Pinellas was categorizing some expenses under general administration that many other districts were not, he said. So Pinellas adjusted accordingly.

For example, the mailroom in the administration building – a nearly half million dollar expense – was shifted from general administration to internal services.

The salary of chief business officer Lansing Johansson was also shifted. Forth said Johansson and his staff spend only part of their time working on general administration, so their expenses were proportionally divvied up among different categories. That left general administration about $160,000 lighter.

Forth said this is accepted practice and in line with other districts do.

We’ll be checking on that as soon as we can.

After the cuts and shifts, the general administration budget was reduced from $5.5 million to about $3.7 million, Forth said. (The district will know for sure after the books are closed in three weeks.) In terms of total budget, that should drop general administration from 0.76 percent to between 0.44 to 0.5 percent, he said.

- Ron Matus, state education reporter

Comments

[Kat]

Boy, wouldn't it be grand if there were more fiscal conservatives in the system? At a time when we are about to reach 10% unemployment and 41 million Americans are without "benefits" (insurance, retirement, paid leave...) we find ourselves in a titilating debate about accounting codes for expenses. A good point was made by 'keep it simple'. The new coding of expenses was done to match the systems used by the other districts that PCSs was compared. This was for comparison purposes and a response to the inaccurate headline...apples to apples. OK, done. A new debate is are we top heavy regardless of comparisons to other districts.

[educkds]

termie - And how do you expect teachers to do what you suggest? Many of us contact the media and voice our concerns to PCSB, PCTA, and the school board with no results. The same old crap goes out in the papers. I am not a newspaper reporter who has the resources and freedom to investigate these issues. If I did, I would. There is no excuse for a headline of favorable marks for a superintendant with a 52% unless there is a hidden agenda. Termie, you don't work in the system. So don't tell us to get off our lazy **ses when you don't know the conditions in which we work. The lack of fair coverage of issues that really affect the students and teachers in classrooms, such as the administrative bloat, the questionable relationship between PCSB and the PCTA, and the low morale of teachers in this county have been addressed by me and others for years to the media with no action, whatsoever. Why don't you get off your lazy **s, get a job as a teacher, and see what it's like in this county before you stick up for the lousy job reporters at the Times do in regards to fair and balanced educational coverage of local issues in PCSB. You're just an armchair critic until that point with me. Get a life!

[terminator]

educkds:
don't blame Ron. I don't know him and can't comment on any motives he may have but what you advocate is the TEACHERS, PARENTS and TAXPAYERS JOB!

Newspapers report on what the so-called district leaders tell them by way of press releases and statements.
Hopefully, some go the extra mile by engaging in a little investigative reporting.

The community needs to be VIGILANT in uncovering the truth. Then they need to take it to the media, board members and taxpaying public.

Termie's given you guys a lot of ways to accomplish this. Start by being more aggressive in your approach.

It's time the citizenry and teachers got off their lazy and apathetic *sses and started getting involved. It's easy to get hosed when you don't know or care what's going on. That's what these guys bank on.

You may wish to see how much money the Pinellas district pays the Times for advertising.

We uncovered a scam with one South Florida newspaper that was collecting hundreds of thousands in advertising from the school district in return for favorable coverage.

Hopefully, no such conflict of interest exists with the Times who I feel does the best political/education reporting in the state.

Keep on trucking Jeffrey, Ron and Gradebook staff, you guys are the BEST!

[educkds]

Ron Matus, the new spindoctor for PCS- Thank you for enlightening the reading taxpayers with more justifications to cover up PCS administrative bloat.When are you going to get to the bottom of the sheer numbers of trainers and Pinellas upper level administators as compared to classroom teachers? Oh that's right - you're in bed with PCSB. Can't question those with whom you sleep.

[Shoe budget]

I have a budgeting problem here in my home. I spend too much money on shoes. I don't need any new shoes. I have a pair in every color. Several in each color in fact.

But now instead of stopping buying shoes I don't really need I will justify my new purchases using PCSB philosophy:

Everybody wears shoes.
Shoes serve a purpose: they protect your feet.
I don't have this particular pair of shoes.

My shoe money will now be broken down as follows:

Household leather goods

Rubber insulation

Decorative hardware(buckles, zippers, etc)

Household ladders/extensions/stools(aka- high heeled shoes)

Disaster preparedness supplies (boots and flip flops)

Well, you get the idea. Thanks to the public school system I can now explain away my frivilous spending of our family funds.

Certainly I can look my husband in the eye and "explain" how I no longer spend frivilously on shoes I do not need. Based on PCSB philosophy I can lay down right beside him and sleep soundly knowing I no longer spend too much money on shoes.

NOT!

[Boardwatcher]

Maxwell,
The State website has an excellent document that lays out the number of administrators, superintendents etc. by district. It's very, very enlightening. I can't remember the name offhand, and I don't have it with me. Troll around the DoE and you can find tons of interesting stuff.

[Susie]

proudly left behind:

you are so right

[proudly leftbehind]

Drop isn't the issue. It's the double dipping by the highly paid state employees, both in and out of education, that make it expensive. Drop actually saves the state money, in that once you enter Drop they stop increasing your retirement benefits, though since your benefits are based on your pay all they have to do is not increase your pay and your benefits don't increase. But, wait a minute, aren't they doing that now? No, they're actually lowering our pay. Oh but we're just a bunch of whiny teachers who get Summers off and don't have to work 8 hours and sit around drinking coffee while the kids run amok all a day and that dastardly Union protects the incompetent so we should shut up-run on sentence. (snark)

[adsfasdfad]

Our next votes need to be against incumbents. That is the only message these peoplewill understand. Someone needs to get a citizens petition on the contstitution to outlaw the drop as well as these crazy salaries, bonuses and benefits all of the Government Administrators get. These theives need to be put in jail, let a lone kicked out of office.

[never-ending story]

Sounds like the result of the "Pea Game" reading the "Emperor's New Clothes."

[M]

As Juliet says.."that which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet;" or in this case "just because you change its name, it still stinks."

[HS Teach]

As someone else said - you can't have it both ways. Here's a different take on that: PCS "cut" admin costs by moving some cost items out of admin into other categories. So, the question begs......WHAT CUTS IS PCS REALLY MAKING TO ADMIN? These "movements" don't count. That money is still being paid out. Schools were closed. Kids and teachers were shuffled. Teachers are facing a $290 pay cut PLUS furlough days. I want to know what REAL admin cuts were made and how much money those cuts saved the district!

[Maxwell]

Ron, how long have you been a reporter?
Did you or anyone (like any of the women on the board) ask Janssen how many people work under her? Did anyone look at the organizational chart and say "cut this position, you don't need this one, re-assign these top adminstrators"??????

[twdj]

Teachers are being asked to furlough days and now take a $290 paycut due to reduced referrendum funds. No other positions are seeing this paycut. We are also seeing an increase in our health care costs.

All this and the district still creates new positions in the admin building, gives hefty raises to those administrators who move from one school to another and continue to employ administrative level double dippers in DROP.

[JIM]

You all have seen the old game where you hide the pea under a shell and then move the shells, You then need to guess which shell has the pea.

The sounds like the school board budget system.

[Mo]

Oh for pity's sake. How about this for a meaningful comparison: the number of school-based employees out of total number of employees. As far as I'm concerned any school board employee who doesn't spend the day in a building containing STUDENTS is administrative. Nothing wrong with having administration but if we looked at the numbers that way Pinellas would still be #1.

[terminator]

talk about "bait and switch"

time for the torches and pitchforks teachers!

[Brilliant]

What a great idea!

My wife said I was spending too much on beer, now I can just hide that expense in the grocery budget and not really cut it.

[Lee]

Why do they have a half million dollar expense in a mailroom? Send stuff home with the kids and come into the 21st Century and use the internet! Nothing should be going out by snail mail anymore!

[Keep it simple.]

The comments below are a little disingenuous imho. I have some managerial experience here and there so what I think can be considered biased if you want. But you want to have it both ways. When the original articles came out everyone was complaining about the bloat of Pinellas compared to the other school districts. PCSB said at that time that it was an unfair comparison and would look to clean up the issues so you can compare apples to apples.

Now that they have done that you are complaining about the shell game. Sure there are still issues about bloat but that's not what PCSB was presenting to the board at this time. Now that those issues are somewhat cleaned up you can ask the school board to look at the administrative structure and ask them do something about it. Keep it constructive and logical if you can.

[David Kennedy]

Pat, you're right, they simply renamed things to make themselves look better. Unfortunately, politicians are all alike. They are devoid of morals, and will push their agenda -- no matter how damaging -- at every opportunity.

[Mr. Ed]

Exactly, Pat; it's nothing but a shell game. Pinellas Politicians have mastered that play. There's a HUGE difference between "lowering a budget" and "lowering taxes".

They just hope you don't figure that out.

[Pat Connolly]

So they DIDN'T really cut their administrative costs, they just called it by a different name to look better, because everybody else does it. Well, as my mother used to say, "Just because everybody else does it, that doesn't make it right."