Study Says Schools in State Are Top-Heavy With Administrators

Contributing to the image of school districts as top-heavy bureaucracies, a report released Tuesday by the state controller’s office found that California public school districts could have paid for at least 200 additional teachers last year if they had complied with a state law limiting the number of administrators.

According to a study released by Controller Gray Davis, six out of 12 school districts surveyed statewide were found to have an excessive number of administrators.

Citing other recent studies, including one by the state auditor general that found districts with more administrators or managers than allowed by state law, Davis said, “We have every reason to believe that the problem is systemwide” and that too many state dollars are being spent to pay for “pushing paper” and too few dollars are going directly to teachers and classrooms.

L.A. Unified Not in Study

The Los Angeles Unified School District was not among those audited, but a representative of United Teachers-Los Angeles, the teachers’ union, who joined Davis at a press conference Tuesday, said Los Angeles is one of the worst offenders.

District and state education officials contacted Tuesday disagreed that districts are padding their bureaucracies.

“I don’t think Gray Davis (understands) how you make schools better,” said state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig, who like Davis is considered a possible gubernatorial candidate in 1990. The controller’s study took “a very narrow view of things . . . and ends up hurting the very system they are setting out to protect.”

State law stipulates that elementary school districts may have no more than nine administrators per 100 teachers. High school districts are allowed seven administrators per 100 teachers, and unified districts eight administrators per 100 teachers.

The purpose of the law, Davis said, is to discourage the growth of bureaucracy in public schools. Districts report the information and the state Board of Education has the power to levy fines against districts that exceed the limits.

Of 12 districts surveyed by the controller’s office over the last 18 months, six were found to have a total of 19 excess administrators. The districts were Rowland Unified in Los Angeles County, Fremont Unified in Alameda County, Yuba City Unified in Sutter County, Woodland Joint Unified in Yolo County, Ocean View Elementary in Orange County and Fresno Unified.

Richard Angarola, deputy superintendent of the Rowland Unified School District, said: “I don’t know how they got those numbers, so I can’t really respond. (But) we don’t have an excess of administrators.” The controller’s report said that Rowland, which has 19,000 students and 780 teachers, exceeds by two the number of administrators allowed under the state law.

“For every excess administrator, we could hire 1 1/2 teachers,” Davis said. The figure of 200 additional instructors who could have been hired statewide is “very conservative” and was based on an extrapolation of the figures obtained through the audit of the 12 sample districts, he added.

Davis said that students suffer the consequences of the administrative bloat. Hiring more teachers would help reduce class sizes in California, which generally ties with Utah for having the biggest classes in the country.

He also criticized the state Board of Education for “routinely” granting waivers to districts that exceed the number of allowable administrators.

But Honig said the controller was “off base” in making such charges because most districts have presented valid reasons for requesting a waiver of the state requirement. Honig said the Rowland district, for instance, takes many teachers out of the classroom for temporary assignments to develop ways to improve instruction and counts such teachers as administrators, a practice for which it should not be penalized.

State Department of Education spokeswoman Susan Lange said many districts calculated the number of administrators incorrectly, counting, for instance, mentor teachers who spend part of their time helping to train other teachers.

Marvin Katz, a vice president of United Teachers-Los Angeles, praised the controller’s study as being “right on the money,” even though it did not specifically address the Los Angeles school district. He said the district has more employees performing administrative tasks than it owns up to, including 500 “teacher advisers” who have been assigned to work on jobs outside the classroom, such as writing curriculum.

But district spokesman Marty Estrin disputed that figure and cited district statistics showing that since 1979-80, the 590,000-student school system has actually reduced the number of administrators by 158, even though enrollment has grown by 50,000 students.