Time for a Reorganization
With a new Superintendent of Schools, declining enrollment, and a windfall of CARES Act federal money, now is the perfect time for a reorganization of Decatur Public Schools Central Administration. DPS suffered a 4% drop in students from 2015 to 2020 (9,123 to 8,742) and from 2020 to 2022 (using the FY2022-FALL-ENROLLMENT-REPORT for the state of IL) we lost another 482 students - a 5.5% drop, in just two years! National education trends toward private schools and home-schooling, along with a little local knowledge of the Decatur job market, suggest that these numbers will not improve, but will likely even worsen. So, a reorganization of DPS 61 isn’t only timely, it’s probably required – now or in a few years. Suffice it to say, we should plan for the district we will be in 5 years rather than the district we had in 2020.
My name is Mike Mathieson and I have joined Duane and the DPS Chalkboard team. I’m a product of Decatur Public Schools (MacArthur ’81, Woodrow Wilson, and Dennis) and am excited to join Duane on his quest to make our school district the best work environment possible for teachers – the most important variable in providing the best education possible for Decatur students. And if you like the work Duane’s been doing, please share his Substack with friends (make sure you tell them it’s free!).
When mapping out a new organizational structure for our Central Administration we need to first decide what direction we want to go: larger or smaller. According to the Illinois Policy Institute, School District General Administration national average cost per pupil is $230. (Please note this is “General Administration” cost per student, not total cost per student.) Using the Decatur Public Schools reported state budget numbers, our General Administration cost per student is $371. (Page 30, ESTIMATED LIMITATION OF ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS WORKSHEET… $3,069,774 / 8,260 students = $371). For our district that encompasses the following buckets of the budget:
Combine the $230 national cost per student compared with our $371 cost per student with the fact that our District is getting smaller, and it’s obvious, at least to me, what direction we need to move. Additionally (and I’m giving away some final conclusions here) if you have read any of Duane’s previous articles, you’ll recall that we firmly believe increasing teacher and school autonomy is one of the ways we can quickly improve our district. Reducing administrative bloat will certainly help increase autonomy because, like it or not, too much bureaucracy, forcing administrators to rationalize their existence, removes decision making from the classroom level, reduces teacher autonomy, and in turn decreases effective teaching and subsequently student learning! This is a difficult direction for any Chief Executive Officer, or Superintendent in this case, to take – nobody wants to reduce the number of direct reports they have under them. It simply isn’t human nature to want to reduce your perceived level of importance, but the financial decisions our leadership, Superintendent and School Board alike, takes right now is how they will be judged for years to come. It would be impossible for anyone to make the case that adding one or two perfect central office administrators is going to increase test scores in Decatur Public Schools, but it is easy to see how engaged and happy teachers, which show up every day, will help.
To help me understand the requirements of a districts central administration I tried to explore the structure of our district office and compare it with Bloomington (District 87), Springfield (186), and Champaign (4). State law (IL Public Act 097-0609) requires that a district “must post on its website the total compensation package for each employee having a total compensation package that exceeds $75,000 per year” so I used this information to help me understand the job categories of each district General Administrative Expenditures. (However, Champaign posts their information by broad job category, making their information useless. And as another side note - Champaign didn’t respond to my request for more information, even though the posting of the information by employee and not by job is required by law. So, if anyone has a bone to pick with the Champaign school district and wants to take up this issue, I’ll help. What they’re doing is not right.) The salaries below aren’t the important thing, and I hesitated to include them for fear the pay rates would distract from the real issue – the jobs people do, but I decided to include them because they helped me understand the level of importance (real or perceived, I suppose) of jobs relative to one-another. Also, as another note, the sum of the salaries does not equal the total expenditures any of the districts have for the General Administration budget. These are simply the people listed on the “executive” teams on each of the district’s websites. Here’s what I found:
*Numbers rounded to the nearest $1,000 are guesses, using information available.
Imagine walking into the central admin offices at any of these districts. The HR people are scrambling around, hiring new teachers (every day!), fielding complaints about substitute teachers, monitoring law suites, etc., etc. The IT Director is working his ass off, trying to figure out how to integrate iPads into the network, or working on a huge security issue with the latest release of a piece of software, or… And the CFO is on a conference call with the state of Illinois on how some new piece of legislation is affecting a million dollars (or more) in revenue for the next five years. But, what about the Communications Directors? Are they coming up with a way to get more parents to sign up for the Montessori school (and couldn’t/shouldn’t the Montessori Principal be doing this), or trying to effectively spin our students’ absurd access to AP classes as a positive for the district? What are they doing all day? There are jobs that, like secretaries at Staley and ADM which vanished in the ‘90s, can and should be done by everyone rather than by one or two specific people. I’m going to make a prediction and say that in 10 years there will not be PR jobs. They will be ubiquitous. Everyone grew up with social media, everyone should be able to “manage” social media, everyone should be able to handle their own PR. Admittedly, I’m certainly naïve to the day-to-day operations of many of these positions, but we need to plan for a district of around 7,500 students. And while I don’t want to come down on any single person in Decatur’s Central Administration, it’s time to get real. If these are good employees, move them to HR, where I imagine everyone is overworked and I’m sure they can be put to work immediately - hiring teachers! (Who knows – we may be able to use CARES money to pay their salaries over the next few years, if the reassigned individuals are put in a teacher hiring capacity.)
And what about all the different jobs under the “Student Services” or “Teaching and Learning” subgroup? A Curriculum Director is necessary - keeping up with changing requirements is probably a full-time job. Additionally, in this category (and Springfield may be on to something here) a Director of Safety and Discipline might help alleviate some of the burden the principals feel in this overwhelming environment of school safety and changes to discipline norms. All the discipline room teachers and security personnel would take direction from this individual and the new Director would also be tasked with tracking local and national trends to keep our schools safe and train teachers accordingly.
Finally, it appears to be a trend in our surrounding districts to have jobs with “Leadership”, “Equity” and “Diversity” in the title. Please understand as you read our conclusions that we do not feel that these jobs are unimportant. However, there are some jobs (like “College and Career Readiness Coordinator” popular in other districts) that we simply believe that we are not big enough to support. And just as I explained with the job of Public Relations - leadership, equity, and diversity must simply be the job of everyone in Central Administration! If an Assistant Superintendent is not providing Leadership or is not aware of issues around Equity and Diversity, they need retrained or replaced. We are not now, and we certainly won’t be in five years, a large enough district to pay people singularly to do jobs everyone should be doing.
So, here are our recommendations:
1. The Superintendent should have three direct reports: an Assistant Sup for Learning, a Chief Financial Officer, and a Director of Human Resources. We got along fine with one Assistant Superintendent for years (and years! even with a much higher enrollment), now is the time to go back to that structure. (1 + 3)
2. The HR Director for every district we talked to appeared overburdened compared with the other directors. If Assistant Directors are needed, we would start here. Keeping up with hiring teachers and subs is impossible and Central Administration is (obviously) critical to keep that spigot flowing. (1)
3. Financial Director – likewise is the burden of the Finance Department - top level talent is required to maximize state and federal programs and revenue, so an excellent Director of Finances seems critical to a Districts long term success. (1)
4. IT – see above. Wow – tough job. (1)
5. Public Relations and Communications - This is a new world where every employee should have communication skills. If the Superintendent can’t comment (herself!) on issues involving the district, or the CFO can’t comment on financial issues, etc. we have the wrong people in jobs that can and should pay close to $200,000 per year. We (the public) do not need spin. We need good, honest answers directly from our district administration when called upon. (0)
6. Two director level positions in Education and/or Student Services also seem appropriate for a district our size. One for curriculum and another for Safety, Security, and Discipline. (2)
7. Building and Grounds (1)
So, we cut the executive team from 15 to 10. Enough? I’m sure it’s good by Illinois standards but still probably not enough by national standards. We believe this scaled down Central Office will help in the overworked areas and we made hard cuts where we can and should get by with less. Also, keep in mind that this is not the totality of the General Administration team for Decatur Public Schools. This is merely the leadership team that will guide the district forward. Our hope is that this would cut the budget by about $750,000. In a budget friendly environment this would allow us to add close to $1,700 per year to the salary of every teacher in the district. Would that help attract more teachers?
What do you think? Does our Executive Team make sense. Do we need more or less? Comments are welcome! This is your district - make sure you voice is heard in how it is run. Create a pseudonym if you’re uncomfortable commenting with your name.