The St. Joseph School District is working on cutting costs and announced that it has eliminated over one million dollars in administrative positions during the 2017 – 2018 school year.
According to a press release from the district, three director positions have been eliminated during the 2017 – 2018 school year: the Director of Technology, the Director of Data Management and the Director of Food Service. In each case, the position was replaced by a lower-paying coordinator or supervisor position. At the same time, those departments have been restructured to reduce the number of full-time employees, causing further savings.
The District will also be eliminating two principal positions during the upcoming school closures, which will be replaced with assistant principals, for a total cost savings of $71,305, including salaries and benefits.
“Administrative costs make up only six percent of our overall operations budget, a number that has decreased over the last three years,” said Superintendent Dr. Robert Newhart. “That includes our building principals, administrative assistants, human resources department and business department, in addition to district administration. The community has a perception that we have high administrative costs, but in actuality we have one of the smallest administrative cost-to- operation cost percentages in the state for public school districts, or other private or non-profit businesses for that matter, and we have worked hard to make that number even smaller with efficiency.”
The district has also eliminated about $125,000 by restructuring curriculum advisors, moving from sixteen curriculum advisors (three full-time and 13 part-time) to five full-time advisors.
Most of these changes have been made through attrition, by restructuring a department after retirements or resignations. The rest have been realized through administrative restructuring.
The overall reduction in administrator salaries was $1,073,178. Including the curriculum advisor restructuring, this is a net reduction of $926,557, figured using this year’s salaries.