Personnel Salaries Week 4 Assignment 4

As educators always say, “We are in the people business.” The employees of a school district are its most important asset. We can have state of the art facilities and materials, but without quality employees, educating and caring for our students would not occur. Attracting and retaining quality employees is essential for the success of a district.

Personnel costs for 2011-2012 are 87.75% of our district budget. Due to state funding concerns, we did not give raises to our employees this year. Had we done so, many positions and programs would have been eliminated in order to offset the cost of the raises. Ultimately this would have increased our class sizes and decreased additional instructional support and extracurricular opportunities. During budget workshops and community meetings, it was very clear that our stakeholders wanted class sizes, programs, and extracurricular opportunities to remain protected. Fortunately, we were able to make reductions in other areas, our enrollment numbers continue to grow and we have a very healthy fund balance. We will be able to maintain status quo for the 2012-2013 school year. Hopefully, salary increases can occur in 2012-2013. During this time we are looking for more ways to trim the budget to prepare for the next legislative session which is predicted to slash state funding even more.

A salary increase can potentially attract more quality candidates that can enhance your district. However, it can also create a need to eliminate programs and positions to cover the cost of the salary increase. For our district a 5% salary increase would equal $14,124,794. This would bring our personnel costs for our district to 91%.