More on education spending
The Citizens Budget Commission has posted some nifty charts breaking out the difference between New York State and the U.S. averages for different categories of public elementary and secondary school spending. One noteworthy data point: between 1999 and 2009, spending per pupil on employee benefits for instructional staff rose 169 percent in New York, compared to 100 percent nationally.
As noted in my recent Newsday op-ed on this topic, “the big bucks in K-12 education [in New York] are tied up in the comparatively high salaries and benefits of teachers” — not in administrative overhead, despite our large number of school districts.
To date, in spite of all the public fanfare, neither Cuomo nor the Legislature have actually touched the public unions with anything of significance, either of impact to the unions or of significant savings to the rest of the citizenry - what makes you think they’ll start now?
Tenure and Triborough are the twin “third-rails”. They’re also the two items most crying out for change and the two that would have the greatest impact on bringing some sanity and parity to the table - of both improving education and creating savings.
But there’s little likelihood we’ll see any of that as long as the Governor and most of the Legislature are in the pockets of the unions, the very people they’re charged with overseeing, and a visit to the State lobbying database tells that story.
Comment by Livewire — May 19, 2012 @ 9:38 pm
This is very curious data since there is no way to disaggregate the cost of employee benefits for instructional employees vs. support employees from the data the districts report to the state. All employee benefit costs for the district are reported for all employees combined.
The NYS Ed Department sometimes reports an extrapolated number for this using the percentage of salaries for instructional employees vs. total salaries. They apply this percentage to total employee benefits to estimate the cost of employee benefits for instructional personnel.
Anyone who works with school districts knows that the cost of employee benefits for non-instructional employees is a much higher percentage of their salary than for instructional employees. The $15,000 salaried non instructional employee’s health insurance costs the same as the $70,000 teacher. The health insurance is 100% of the salary for the non-instructional and 21% of the teachers’.
Thus, the estimated cost of employee benefits for instructional employees is vastly over estimated and the cost of employee benefits for non-instructional employees is underestimated.
Most other states report employee benefits by employee type. But not NY.
So I would be very weary of this data and would not use it for any substantive policy conclusions.
Comment by Garondah — May 21, 2012 @ 10:23 am