Week Four Assignment, Part 4 – Understanding Personnel Salaries in District Budgets

The education of students is labor intensive and the Board of Trustees places a high priority on funding direct classroom instruction. This is reflected in the large portion of Clear Creek ISD District's budget for payroll costs. The composition of the District's workforce is determined by the staffing policies and guidelines of the Board of Trustees on the basis of projected student enrollment and curriculum requirements. Clear Creek ISD spends 68.7% of its General Fund budget on Instruction and Related Services. These dollars go directly into the classroom and pay for teacher salaries and classroom/campus supplies. Almost eighty five percent (84.9%) of spending in the General Fund is for personnel, as a result a large part of this budget goes toward personnel and benefits associated with our classroom teachers. The District maintains a very low administrative cost ratio in comparison to the Texas Education Agency’s standard benchmark. For a large school district, 25,000 students or more, the Agency benchmark is an administrative cost ratio of 11%. Clear Creek’s administrative cost ratio is 4.7%.

In these time economic times like this it is hard to think about a five percent salary increase for all personnel. This last school year my district reduced 171 full time positions through attribution to deal with the State’s shortfall in funding. Most likely another 125 positions will be eliminated in the 2012-2013 school year. This last school year, was the first item since I entered education I did not receive a raise or at least my step. Our salaries were frozen and most likely this year our salaries will be too. However, no one in my district was too upset with not getting a raise because first we are fortunate to have a position, but also we are one of the highest paying districts in our area. We were also one of the few districts in our area that was not forced to do a reduction in force. Clear Creek ISD does not experience higher turnover rate and higher salaries is one of the reasons. Our district is able to recruit and main highly qualified teachers and staff.

Everyone would enjoy a five percent raise, but at this time I actually think the only positive that would come out of a raise would be morale would go up, but we would have to cut other items or programs from the district. By not offering a raise, we our able to maintain our fund balance at an acceptable level and maintain established educational programs. As long as my district can maintain salaries that are at a level comparable to area/regional districts then I think we will be able to maintain the excellent, highly qualified teachers we have currently in this district.