"With more budget cuts looming, a Noozhawk review finds administrative spending below state's average. We've got the lists, too"
With the Santa Barbara school board poised to cut millions of dollars from the school district’s budget for the fourth consecutive year Tuesday, the perennial call to keep the knife “as far away from the classroom as possible” has come to sound almost cliché. So, too, have the demands to cut what many perceive to be the administrative bloat.
With the Santa Barbara school board poised to cut millions of dollars from the school district’s budget for the fourth consecutive year Tuesday, the perennial call to keep the knife “as far away from the classroom as possible” has come to sound almost cliché. So, too, have the demands to cut what many perceive to be the administrative bloat.So it begs the question: How bloated is the administration in Santa Barbara’s K-12 school system? Comparatively speaking, not very, according to a statewide school consulting agency based in Sacramento.
The Santa Barbara school board is expected to trim $6 million from its $120 million discretionary budget Tuesday night, with about 9.3 percent of the reductions coming from the administration side in the cash-strapped district. (Kirsten Macfadyen / Noozhawk photo)
Throughout California, in 2008-09, the average school district spent about 7.2 percent of its budget on administrative salaries. The Santa Barbara School District spent about 6 percent, according to School Services of California, whose director of management consulting, Suzanne Speck, providedNoozhawk the figures last week.
The findings do not jibe with widespread opinion.
“There’s no question the general consensus is that the administration is top heavy,” school board president Ed Heron
