{"id":4676,"date":"2010-05-19T09:59:17","date_gmt":"2010-05-19T14:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/?p=4676"},"modified":"2011-10-08T23:17:39","modified_gmt":"2011-10-09T04:17:39","slug":"wasteful-spending-at-milwaukee-public-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wasteful-spending-at-milwaukee-public-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Wasteful Spending at Milwaukee Public Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have spent plenty of time ranting about the employee costs at Milwaukee Public Schools. The bulk of the problem is teacher salaries and benefits,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/2010\/04\/30\/no-surprise-mps-is-cutting-teachers-because-of-out-of-control-employee-costs\/\"> which average $100,000 per teacher per school year<\/a>. In order to make things work financially within MPS, they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/2010\/05\/14\/someone-is-finally-starting-to-talk-sense-at-mps\/\">must cut salaries and benefits for the teachers<\/a>. If they don&#8217;t, the only other way to control teacher costs is by laying off teachers.<\/p>\n<p>But don&#8217;t forget that administrative costs in MPS are way out of line as well. Simply put, &#8220;central office&#8221; provides limited value to the students, but costs taxpayers a ton. Of course, we do need administrative staff to keep things running as a district. But how much staff does the district need?<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>More importantly, people seem to forget that the administrative overhead does not teach our children to read and add. That&#8217;s why administrative spending needs to be kept to an absolute minimum, in order that money can be spent directly on classroom instruction.<\/p>\n<p>The district&#8217;s spending is astronomical. Here are just a few items: The school board and its related functions (like governance) will spend  $3.6 million in the coming school year. The district will spend $4.5  million on &#8220;accountability,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jsonline.com\/news\/education\/89573622.html\">but will still fail to comply with state regulations<\/a>. $1 million will be spent on &#8220;communications and  public affairs.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And here are a few details on central office spending. Part of the budget is for the<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jsonline.com\/news\/education\/94222504.html\"> top level staff<\/a> in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jsonline.com\/news\/84666677.html\">Superintendent&#8217;s<\/a> office. And the costs are huge:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/spend.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazyload aligncenter size-full wp-image-4677\" title=\"spend\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/spend.png\" data-orig-src=\"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/spend.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"396\" height=\"188\" srcset=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%27%20width%3D%27396%27%20height%3D%27188%27%20viewBox%3D%270%200%20396%20188%27%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%27396%27%20height%3D%27188%27%20fill-opacity%3D%220%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/spend-300x142.png 300w, https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/spend.png 396w\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-orig-sizes=\"(max-width: 396px) 100vw, 396px\" \/><\/a>For one school year, we need to spend over $1 million for the superintendent and his cronies, none of whom actually provide a direct benefit to the children. Nice. Let&#8217;s start cutting costs in the administrative area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have spent plenty of time ranting about the employee costs at Milwaukee Public Schools. The bulk of the problem is teacher salaries and benefits, which average $100,000 per teacher per school year. In order to make things work financially [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fraud-news-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Z0e-1dq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}