Oklahoma legislators to get 35 percent pay raise

TerryMiller · Oct 24, 2019

One needs to consider ALL the logistical aspects before saying that schools need to be consolidated and thus reduce the number of administrators. Having come from and having been a school board member for a small district, I can say that there is a lot more to it than the superintendents' salaries.

Just for one thing, transportation of students to school. Look at Cimarron County. If the small schools there were forced to consolidate with the one larger school in the county, that school would have to transport students from all over the county, making transportation very expensive, not to mention the disadvantage to the students who live far from the larger school.

Uncle TK · Oct 24, 2019

TerryMiller said:
One needs to consider ALL the logistical aspects before saying that schools need to be consolidated and thus reduce the number of administrators. Having come from and having been a school board member for a small district, I can say that there is a lot more to it than the superintendents' salaries.

Just for one thing, transportation of students to school. Look at Cimarron County. If the small schools there were forced to consolidate with the one larger school in the county, that school would have to transport students from all over the county, making transportation very expensive, not to mention the disadvantage to the students who live far from the larger school.

Parents can drive students to school like in the big cities, Students can walk or ride bikes.
Their parents chose to live in the STICKS!

Example up to 1966 No Oklahoma City Public Schools bused students to school

TerryMiller · Oct 24, 2019

Uncle TK said:
Parents can drive students to school like in the big cities, Students can walk or ride bikes.
Their parents chose to live in the STICKS!

Example up to 1966 No Oklahoma City Public Schools bused students to school

You obviously don't know squat about country living and farming.

Fyrtwuck · Oct 24, 2019

We have 77 counties in this state, why not one superintendent per county? The teachers are always looking for more money, here’s an option.

Here is a link to a PDF that leads to 128 pages of superintendents with their names and salaries.

https://sde.ok.gov/documents/2018-04-12/2017-2018-superintendent-salaries

inactive · Oct 24, 2019

Fyrtwuck said:
We have 77 counties in this state, why not one superintendent per county? The teachers are always looking for more money, here’s an option.

Here is a link to a PDF that leads to 128 pages of superintendents with their names and salaries.

https://sde.ok.gov/documents/2018-04-12/2017-2018-superintendent-salaries

This wouldn't work for Tulsa or Oklahoma counties. Probably not Cleveland either. Way too many students and districts for that to be feasible. It would probably work for a few smaller (population, and size/density) ones though.

More broadly, I'm going to agree we have too many administrators, but what do we think private sector pay would be for a management level employee with the employee compliment (then throw student count on top of the employee count) and budget oversight some (most?) superintendents have? I don't think I would do their job for the pay.

SoonerP226 · Oct 24, 2019

TerryMiller said:
One needs to consider ALL the logistical aspects before saying that schools need to be consolidated and thus reduce the number of administrators.

We're not talking about school consolidation, just district consolidation.

According to the link on the previous page, 400 of Oklahoma's districts cover populations of fewer than 1,000 students each. For reference, Norman High alone is about 2,000 students. If you simply increase the minimum district size to 10,000 students, you'd cut the number of districts by 360; even if you assume that you have to hire staff to cover the multiple duties some of those superintendents were doing, you still won't need to replace all of them, and you certainly won't be replacing them with staff drawing superintendent salaries.

TerryMiller · Oct 25, 2019

SoonerP226 said:
We're not talking about school consolidation, just district consolidation.

According to the link on the previous page, 400 of Oklahoma's districts cover populations of fewer than 1,000 students each. For reference, Norman High alone is about 2,000 students. If you simply increase the minimum district size to 10,000 students, you'd cut the number of districts by 360; even if you assume that you have to hire staff to cover the multiple duties some of those superintendents were doing, you still won't need to replace all of them, and you certainly won't be replacing them with staff drawing superintendent salaries.

No argument with that, but not all counties have that option. In Cimarron County, for instance, there were four different districts, each of which is a single school, so school consolidation would be occurring. I doubt that it still exists, but there used to be one "dependent" school district within the county that was overseen by the county superintendent. (Dependent school districts tend to be grades 1 through 8.) All the other districts were independent districts.

Riley · Oct 25, 2019

Can't or won't comment on the legislators "windfall", 22 years of "catch up" in one fell swoop.

But the school district issue is a real one of distances. I'm in over 100 high schools a year, there are a "few" that would make sense consolidating but once you get over 20 or 30 miles, there are significant impacts to the students and residents.

Most of OK, from what I've seen is not Tulsa, OKC, Norman, Edmond, etc....It might be a haul to get to school in the first place. My thought is how far should someone have to travel for after school sports, or a Friday night game?

What's reasonable? 30miles, 40, 50, 60 miles? Then double it for the return. At night, in weather, by a new driver? It's not a simple solution.

By the way, Broken Arrow walks about 1300 seniors, Union 1100, and Jenks around 850, TPS I can't say in total, surely they would figure in to a sq mile solution. Should they all be a consolidated districts with consolidated funding and bonds?

So TPS would be able to vote a tax increase in Broken Arrow? Claremore? Jenks?
OKC vote increases in Moore, Mustang, Norman, Edmond? Personally, I can't see that going well....

So a High school with a population of 2K total is not much of a reference regarding size impacts on districts. How to administer 10K students in 80 sq miles vice 10K students in 3000 sq miles is really the question.

SoonerP226 · Oct 26, 2019

Riley said:
But the school district issue is a real one of distances. I'm in over 100 high schools a year, there are a "few" that would make sense consolidating but once you get over 20 or 30 miles, there are significant impacts to the students and residents.

Again, we're not talking about school consolidation, just district consolidation. Using Terry's example above, it makes sense (and might even be preferable) to have smaller schools, but it doesn't make sense for those four schools to each have a superintendent and the administrative overhead that goes with it when a single superintendent could cover all four districts.

dennishoddy · Oct 26, 2019

SoonerP226 said:
Again, we're not talking about school consolidation, just district consolidation. Using Terry's example above, it makes sense (and might even be preferable) to have smaller schools, but it doesn't make sense for those four schools to each have a superintendent and the administrative overhead that goes with it when a single superintendent could cover all four districts.

Exactly. One superintendent per consolidated district with assistant superintendents at lower salaries for a certain number of schools or students.

Oklahoma legislators to get 35 percent pay raise

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