Administrative Costs per Pupil Compared to District Size in Utah 2013-2014

These most recent statistics compiled from the Utah Taxpayers Association "School Spending Report: Fiscal Year 2013-2014," April 2015 verifies the conclusions of my previous study comparing administrative costs per student to size of district (with the possible change of the number from 1000 to 2000 in student population). This graph shows that while the smallest districts (under 2000) do have higher administrative costs, as stated on the original study: "Administrative costs bear little, if any, correlation to size of districts over 1,000 students".

Administrative costs, rather than a function of size, are a reflection of decisions made by local boards of education or administrators. Usually the more money they accept from federal government programs, the more they spend in administrative costs per pupil due to government requirements.

The main point is: the assumption that bigger is less expensive with administrative costs is simply not true unless comparing to a district that is very small (like below 2000 students). It is certainly not a reason to avoid dividing a big district into a few community-sized districts. Dividing would not, by itself, cause administrative costs to rise. If they rose it would be for other reasons, such as a community's desires for another program, etc.

To be more specific, Cache School District has the lowest costs and is about the size that a Lehi School District would be. Alpine (72,419) is 2nd, but Tooele (14,107), South Sanpete (3462), Logan (5987), and Iron (8685) all have less administrative costs per pupil than Jordan or Davis SD. Box Elder (11,131) and tiny Juab (2287) are lower than Granite, Salt Lake, and Nebo.

District	Student Population	Admin $/student
Cache	16038	$ 491.00
Alpine	72419	$ 521.00
Tooele	14107	$ 540.00
So. Sanpete	3462	$ 555.00
Logan	5987	$ 556.00
Iron	8685	$ 578.00
Jordan	52855	$ 594.00
Davis	68573	$ 595.00
Box Elder	11131	$ 596.00
Washington	27099	$ 614.00
Juab	2287	$ 619.00
Granite	68106	$ 623.00
Salt Lake	23965	$ 637.00
Morgan	2632	$ 652.00
Nebo	31230	$ 658.00
Weber	31028	$ 658.00
Sevier	4585	$ 676.00
Uintah	7591	$ 697.00
Murray	6435	$ 745.00
Duchesne	5021	$ 747.00
Wasatch	5786	$ 757.00
Ogden	12489	$ 759.00
Millard	2841	$ 799.00
Provo	14799	$ 813.00
Canyons	33674	$ 901.00
No. Summit	990	$ 972.00
So. Summit	1495	$ 979.00
Carbon	3369	$ 1,102.00
San Juan	3020	$ 1,106.00
Grand	1455	$ 1,128.00
Beaver	1579	$ 1,159.00
Park City	4630	$ 1,315.00
Kane	1212	$ 1,360.00
Emery	2310	$ 1,370.00
Wayne	501	$ 1,512.00
Garfield	930	$ 1,554.00
Tintic	250	$ 2,026.00
Rich	479	$ 2,325.00
Piute	304	$ 2,380.00
Daggett	194	$ 2,825.00

The Answer is Reduce School District Size

Mike Antonucci, director of the Education Intelligence Agency (EIA), gives more information about how reducing school district size can solve many of the problems in education. His first bullet point is as follows:

One of the bits of information the EIA tables provide is whether a school district spent 65 percent or more on "instruction."

EIA ranked all 14,218 school districts by enrollment and checked the correlation between size and the ability to reach the 65 percent instructional threshold. The results should surprise economists, but not observers of public education.

In 2003-04, the U.S. had 26 school districts with more than 100,000 students. Of these, only New York City and Cobb County, Georgia, met the 65% threshold. That's a success rate of 7.7 percent.

An additional 61 school districts had between 50,000 and 100,000 students. Of these, five (8.2 percent) met the mark.

Let's continue down the rankings. There were 170 school districts with 25,000 to 50,000 students. Of these, 25 spent 65% on instruction (14.7 percent).

Then we reach a plateau. There were 7,152 districts with an enrollment between 1,000 and 25,000 students. Of these, 1,213 (17.0 percent) reached 65% on instructional spending. No matter how you subdivide this group, there is little deviation in how many districts meet the mark. But below 1,000 enrollment, the pattern resumed.

There were 2,382 districts with between 500 and 1,000 students. Of these, 476 (20.0 percent) reached the 65% mark. And of the 4,427 districts with fewer than 500 students, 976 (22.0 percent) met the 65% mark.

There are variety of theories to explain why this should be so, but the data demolish any notion that increasing the size of a school district will increase the resources available to spend "in the classroom." On the contrary: the larger the district, the greater the chance that more money will be spent on "non-instructional" programs and personnel.

Read more from the original article: http://www.eiaonline.com/archives/20060501.htm

Larger School Districts Tend to Veer 'Off Task'

Vin Suprynowicz, assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, recently posted about the problems that large school districts are prone to have.

Read more from the original article here: http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/suprynowicz030316.html

"While espousing the virtues of small schools with a community atmosphere, our public school system has monstrously large school districts, mainly in poor urban areas, which are home to the worst problems in education."

And of course, caught up as they are in the supposed "efficiencies of scale," the largest districts tend to house the largest schools -- Los Angeles Unified, alone, accounting for five of America's 15 largest campuses.  

...

The Los Angeles district actually managed to lose track of $228 million last year -- a mere 5 percent of its budget. "The (district) does not know how many employees it has working in what position at any given time, or how much they get paid," reported L&L Fuller Inc. in an official 1999 audit.  

...

A number of researchers over the past 10 years have found that large districts are increasingly "off task," in the language of education. A 1989 study from the magazine Education and Urban Society found, "As specialization in staff grows, program offerings expand, and administrative personnel increase, problems of coordination and control also increase. And in large systems, time and energy are more likely to be shifted away from core service activities."   

So why is there so much resistance to dividing large school districts?

School teachers' and administrators' unions "don't control the size of school districts directly, but they do resist efforts to break up large ones. ... Why? Because it's a lot easier for union officials to organize, administer and oversee one local union of eight thousands teachers than to have 80 local unions with 100 teachers each."

Larger districts are handier for administrators, too, Mr. Brimelow points out. "The larger the district, the larger the bureaucracy and the higher the career ladder. The American government school system suffers from penalties of scale. Through the principle of bureaucratic bloat known as Parkinson's Law, the larger a school district gets, the more resources tend to get diverted to secondary or even nonessential activities."

Videos interviewing David Cox during the campaign to divide Utah's largest school district in 2007

The following 6 videos were made to highlight the history, reasoning, progress, and issues of dividing large school districts during the 2007 campaign to divide Utah's largest school district at that time, Jordan S.D.

#1 of 6 How I came to realize the principle of dividing as the solution.
#2 of 6 The history of Utah legislation for dividing school districts.
#3 of 6 Why dividing large school districts is a better answer than vouchers.
#4 of 6 Many of the problems in education are because of large schools caused by large districts.
#5 of 6 This video deals with some finance issues of dividing large school districts.
#6 of 6 My advice to educators regarding dividing large school districts.

California 2011 study of their smaller school districts

California published a study on whether to consolidate its smaller school districts it did in 2011. It looked at costs and benefits. There were some interesting findings.

1. They found among other things that medium-sized districts did better in student performance than the large or very small sized districts.
2. While very small districts cost much more, districts of over 1000 students were considered as economical as large districts.
3. Most communities preferred their own school district and did not want to consolidate.
4. They determined that there would not be substantial savings financially for consolidating nor would there be improvements in student performances.
5. In the end, they recommended not forcing consolidation, but rather to eliminate disincentives for consolidating for districts under 100 students (which I agree with).

This video is almost 10 minutes long, concise, and worth watching.

Consolidation Research in Seattle, Washington

Here is an interesting gathering of research on the results of consolidation that pertains directly to the need to divide districts that are too large: http://www.cppsofseattle.org/consolidationresearch.pdf

The results show that:

1. School consolidation does not save money.
2. School consolidation does not increase academic achievement.
3. School consolidation is detrimental to the social and economic well-being of the community.

Principals

In a big district, principals have little say in district policy or direction. District administrators that form the superintendent's cabinet make those decisions. In a community-sized district principals ARE the cabinet of the superintendent!

All is not as it seems

Deseret News has done a poll showing over 3/4 of Salt Lake Valley residents feel that the Jordan District division and creation of Canyons School District was unfair. The poll result is not surprising when that's all the public has been told for the past two years by the media. If the media had done to our founding fathers what it has done to these modern day pioneers, George Washington, etc., would never have been able to split from Great Britain.

District administrators have also not been above arousing and inflaming the natural antagonism of one region against another to defeat any creation of a new school district. When it was proposed that Lehi split from the Alpine S.D., we were told Lehi would need a 40% tax hike while Orem would be able to lower their taxes. When Orem proposed dividing a couple years later, the district then said the opposite, that Orem would see a reduction in their funding.

Among many other things the public hasn't been told is that Jordan S.D. has MORE tax base per student than Alpine, Cache, Davis, Nebo, and Weber School Districts WITHOUT any extra! These districts are facing the same problems of growth with cuts in funding. Jordan administrators are using the current economic shortage to blame and scare people against dividing our huge Wasatch Front school districts, which would be the best thing we could do for education.