NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/misc/educatio/4355

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-17 | 2.7 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!usna!faculty!baldwin
From: [e-mail] (J.D. Baldwin)
Newsgroups: misc.education
Subject: Re: Where the extra money goes.
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 16 Nov 92 20:32:42 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: Comp. Sci. Dep't., U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD
Lines: 37
In-reply-to: [e-mail]'s message of 16 Nov 92 06:36:50 -0400

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Jason W Solinsky) writes:
>In NYC in particular, a large fraction of this money goes to janitors
>who make $20,000 more than teachers in this school system with some of
>the highest paid teachers in the country. NYC may be an exception with
>respect to the janitorial situation, but any district where half of
>all personell costs go to non-teachers is doing something VERY wrong.

I'm a big detractor of the inflated "support" costs of our educational
system, but I have to register mild disagreement with this statement.
"Half of all personnel costs to non-teachers" isn't specific enough to
address any real problem.  I suspect that some substantial portion of
the people labeled as "janitors" in the source that quoted the above
factoid are actually what might more accurately be called
"maintenance" employees, which are and ought to be in a different
category from "janitors."

Any service industry (like education) that is people-intensive is
going to have to have quite an /* TRENDY BUZZWORD ALERT */
infrastructure (buildings, grounds, food service, transport, etc.).
Maintaining that /* TRENDY BUZZWORD ALERT */ infrastructure is going
to be a large portion of the cost.  A large portion of that portion is
going to be personnel costs.  I agree that non-teacher personnel costs
are probably, in most jurisdictions, outrageous (it's certainly true
of the Maryland schools), but I'm not quite as shocked as you are at
the "figure" of "half of all personnel costs" going to non-teachers.
When you add the myriad legitimate functions of administrative staff
to the staff we've already mentioned, a figure of "half" doesn't seem
to me to be so outrageous.  Show me specific numbers broken down into
more specific categories of school system employees, and I might start
to work up a sweat over it.
--
 From the catapult of:              |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
   _,_  J. D. Baldwin, Comp Sci Dept|+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
 _|70|___:::)=}-  U.S. Naval Academy|+| retract it, but also to deny under
 \      /   [e-mail]   |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
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