School District Overmanned – But won’t cut anyone

The Interior Journal reports at least one Kentucky school district seems to think that maintaining a significant overstaffing in teachers at taxpayer expense is the right way to go even as more education funding cuts are being discussed in Frankfort and taxpayers are reeling from the bad news in the economy.

Local taxpayers in Lincoln County should pony up for this folly on their own because state education dollars drop when attendance falls.

With its classrooms emptying, Lincoln County seems set on keeping all of its teachers on staff, even if 48 of them are an overage even according to the district’s own finance officer. There are real fiscal penalties for this action.

Lincoln County certified to the Kentucky Department of Education earlier this year that they had 307 full time equivalent certified staff members, which are mostly teachers. An overage of 48 teachers is an incredible 15.6 percent overage. That’s a lot of tax money that could, and should, be going to something else, which might include better salaries for the teachers that should be retained on staff.

For example, in the 2006-07 school year, the average classroom teacher salary in Lincoln County was just over $41,000, so the 48 unnecessary positions cost an extra $1.97 million, give or take. If the 48 teachers were eliminated, the remaining teachers could share an average salary increase of nearly $8,000 – each.

I wonder if any other school districts are pulling the same, fiscally irresponsible stunt.