William Larsen

Renovate Carroll or build a new high school?

One of the points made by the school board in support of renovating the current Carroll High School is that a new high school would duplicate administrative personnel. Is this true? Have you seen any numbers or analysis to support this? Are they talking about 1 additional or 30 additional? I could find no analysis so I did my own.

I went to the NACS web site and there I found the names of all staff at all the schools. In fact they broke down the staff in terms of teachers, support, food service and custodial. Knowing their title, I figured out if they were aides, teachers, or what.

I created a nice matrix of all the schools. I compared the ratios of students to principal, support, aides, librarian, food service, custodial and special education.

Carroll High School has four times the number of custodial workers to elementary schools and nearly three times the number of food staff. When I compared the Freshman Academy I found very slight differences. In essence the freshman academy could be said to duplicate the Carroll High School administration and if it were one school, well you would save in consolidating. But wait, when you get over 1,200 students you really do not save on administration personnel. Administration personnel except for the principal, assistant principal, librarian and nurse are not based on student enrollment, but guidance counselors, aids, food service and custodial are.

My model shows there is very little difference in total administrators between renovation and building a new high school. If salary is based on student enrolment, then this lessons the difference even more.

The next time a school board member brings this subject up, they better be ready to present facts.

posted by William Larsen @ 7:41 PM