Before February 1 of each year, the Madison School Board must decide whether to renew its administrators' contracts. If the Board plans to cut administrative positions, it must give the administrators notice that their employment contracts will not be renewed. Otherwise, the contracts automatically renew for one or two years.
Because continued shortfalls in state and federal aid for schools force budget reductions each year, the number of administrators and the total cost of their wages and benefits is a factor in the budget for the next year.
On January 24, 2005 Superintendent Art Rainwater used the following graph and table as evidence of a trend of reductions in the MMSD administrative staff.
This presentation has two conspicuous features.First, the columns that contain numbers of administrators for each year have no totals. Second, the graph separates administrators into four categories based on the source of funding.
I made a different chart using the superintendent's data. For this chart I used the total administrators on contract for each year and charted the change in numbers from year to year. I did not separate contracts by funding source because the source of funding does not change the district's relationship to the administrators. Administrators have contracts with the district that continue whether or not outside funding continues. Note that the final column on this chart is the administration's proposed number of administrators for 2005-06.
Judge for yourself. What is the trend in numbers of administrative contracts?
