In a message dated 6/8/2003 7:20:35 AM Central Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> It's the revenue, not the spending, that's the problem. > > This year's budget cuts are the third consecutive year of cuts for MPS, a > three year tally of nearly $100 million dollars. The administrative fat (if > there was any) was cut long ago. > The last time I checked the MPS web site, information about the budget was not up to date. And what the MPS administration has had to say about the budget has been misleading. This may be the third year of cuts for MPS programs, but not the third year of declining revenues. Cuts were made in programs because actual revenues fell short of what the district projected. Some programs had to be cut to offset increased costs for things like employee heath insurance benefits (which have been rising by something like 4% per year) and a huge pay hike for Carol Johnson. > Our current administrative overhead (as calculated by the Deloitte Touche > accounting firm in their most recent audit of the district) is a mere 4% of > our total operating budget. This is miniscule by any standard and would be > unthinkable in any private business (10% is more average). > As I have pointed out before, the cost of administration for the MPS is not low if you compare it to what is spent by other school districts, was a little over 2% in the early 1990s. Also, the figure for administrative costs was in the neighborhood of $30 million, which was about 4% of total revenues of $650 million dollars, but the operating budget was something on the order of $450 to 500 million (over $9,000 per student). The money spent on administration represents about 6 to 7% of the OPERATING BUDGET. > On the contrary, I am more concerned that we may have cut our administrative > corps too much, so much that we may encounter difficulty in our oversight of > the numerous and complex programs (federal, state and local revenues, > grants, records, transportation, etc.) for which we are responsible. > I think that a large, highly compensated administrative corps is needed because the district has an overly complicated accountability system and has an extremely complicated system of curriculum tracking. I think that a lot of the administrative overhead could be eliminated if the district based its accountability system (school report cards) on student performance as measured by the aptitude and curriculum content tests (data which the district has to collect and break down anyway). -Doug Mann, King Field School Board candidate in 2002 http://educationright.tripod.com TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
