Times editorial: Pinellas school district still bloated

From an editorial in today's St. Petersburg Times, following Tuesday's story:

Pinellas School Board member Janet Clark is right. While the school system has made progress on paper in downsizing its administrative overhead, "it's a facade almost.'' Much of the success is the result of changing accounting techniques. The bottom line is that the administration is still bloated in an era of declining tax revenues, and the district needs to get more aggressive about becoming more efficient ...

Pinellas still ranks no better than the third-biggest spender on administration among the state's 12 biggest districts. Hillsborough, a bigger district and the eighth-largest in the country, spends less on administration per student. Pasco, a smaller district, spends the least of the top dozen districts. Meanwhile, the number of Pinellas district employees who earn more than $70,000 has dropped all the way from 91 to 87. That hardly reflects today's economic realities, where private companies and other local governments have dramatically downsized and become more efficient by necessity.

(Photo from imway2fat.wordpress.com)

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Comments

[Gabriel]

Well said, fleecedtaxpayer, well said. It's like school accountability. Manipulation of the facts 'to put you in a favorable light' is a dead art. Come clean school districts a little more transparency is needed on the part of your administrations. Perhaps the taxpayers may need to require this as a criteria for voting the next Superintendents into office.

[fleecedtaxpayer]

Even Pasco manipulates their costs..........look up people who work at the land o lake district building but are classified as teacher on assignment. This category eliminates them as administrative expenses.

Every county manipulates their numbers differently.

Please do not be so naive to think that Pasco and Hillsborough are not doing the same but by a different method. Perhaps they are merely more creative in MANIPULATING the numbers and have hired better creative accountants.

It is a good idea to also look at the PERCENTAGE increase in admin. cost per student over the last 10 years vs. the $ cost per student.
This will show which counties have truly changed compared to prior years vs. those who appear to have changed.