Prioritizing Classrooms in Our District Spending

A question from a school board member, recently posed at a monthly board meeting, was direct: How does an administrative position get through the hiring freeze process? My response was one I’ve shared many times, mainly because Miami-Dade County Public Schools has been following the process for the last 13 years.

In August 2008, the board of education was notified that the district’s year-end unreserved fund balance was $4.6 million, or less than 0.1 percent, leaving the district flirting with bankruptcy just as the Great Recession was getting underway. Less than one month later, the board made a superintendent change, appointing Alberto Carvalho to the job.

As a member of the financial services department, my role helping lead the organization through the budget crisis had begun a couple of months prior. Within a few years, the district’s spending had grown as a percentage in precisely two functions: instruction and reserves. All other functions saw decreases. Central administration spending was down more than 55 percent and our total operating budget was smaller by $500 million, but the average teacher salary was higher, no teachers had been laid off and our contingency reserve was up by over 2,000 percent.