The report in the July 26 Star Courier on potential savings in the Plano Independent School District should come as no surprise to most residents. The Texas Auditor's Office says that the district spends $7.5 million more in non-instructional categories than it would have if it spent the same per student as the the Texas average in these categories. About two thirds of this excess is in the physical plant area, and may relate to a desire to present a more affluent image. The other one third is administrative expense, however, and should be of greater concern. Jim Damm was reported as saying, "We've had that same report two years in a row. Some of these issues have been corrected during this year." They "corrected" this in the 95-96 budget by transferring about a million dollars in contracted services and supplies from "administration" to "instruction", increasing the non-salary portion of the instruction budget 81% in one year, so the non-salary portion of the administrative budget could decrease 16%, although administrative salaries increased 8%.

Last year the district spent (in millions of dollars) 107 on salaries for about 2830 teachers, 9 on 222 school administrators, 7.7 on 204 physical plant personnel, 6 on 107 counselors, 4 on 147 librarians and media specialists, 2.5 on 177 bus drivers, 1.8 on 51 nurses, and 10.7 on about 140 people at central administration. This is probably many more central administrators than we really need to efficiently manage the district, and results in too many people sitting around looking for changes to make and control to exert in order to justify their existence.

Shortly after the last school board election my curiosity drove me to conduct a survey. I randomly called several hundred of those who voted to ask their opinions on some of my campaign issues such as phonics, integrated curriculum, block scheduling, and bilingual education. I got a variety of answers, but the ensuing discussions led so frequently in one direction that I was impelled to add one more question to my list: "Do we have too much administrative overhead in the district?" Every one of the hundreds of people I called answered yes to that question. It appears that the Texas Auditor's Office agrees with this "gut feeling" of the Plano electorate.