Two Fayette school board members speak out against money budgeted for Central Office staff

Two Fayette County school board members are taking issue with a budget item for the upcoming school year that will be used on central office positions.

School board member Tom Jones cast the lone vote against the tentative 2023-24 budget two weeks ago where he and school board member Amanda Ferguson expressed similar concerns over the budget and had some sharp exchanges with Superintendent Demetrus Liggins. Fayette school board members will be asked to vote on a working budget in September.

“I just don’t think we need all that extra staff at Central Office all at once,” Ferguson said.

Ferguson said Tuesday that despite her concerns about the spending on Central Office staff, she voted for the tentative budget because it does a lot of good things, especially giving teachers raises.

Fayette County will be the first district in Kentucky to bring starting teacher salaries above $50,000 since the board of education has approved a $677.4 million general fund budget for next school year.

“While I fully supported the teachers’ salary increases, I did not believe all 30 new district office positions were justified,” Jones told the Herald-Leader. “I was also concerned about the imbalance between the $40-plus million increase in recurring expenses and only $18 million increase in annual revenue.”

Liggins at the May 22 school board meeting described the budget as conservative and said it will leave the district in a comfortable position.

Even though he attended budget work sessions, Jones said he only learned of certain expenditures of hundreds of thousands of dollars, such as those for legal expenses and public engagement, when he was called upon to vote on the budget.

Ferguson also expressed concerns about school board members getting information late.

The three other board members — chairman Tyler Murphy, Marilyn Clark and Amy Green — said they thought they had received ample information. Clark said board members could continue to work on the budget through September.

District officials said they had presented a balanced budget that had taken hundreds of hours to prepare.

Ferguson said at the meeting that the budget puts too many staff in Central Office and not in the schools.

“That’s how teachers feel, that’s how principals feel, that they are not being supported,” she said.

Liggins said 82% of the positions are going to the school campuses.

Ferguson said by state law, school board members have to examine the budget.

“Some people resented the fact that I asked any questions about the budget,” Ferguson said Wednesday. “I feel like I was elected to ask questions.”

District explanation

According to the most recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the average public school district in America had one official/administrator for every 278.4 students during the 2019-20 school year, district officials said this week.

Fayette County Public Schools currently has 72 officials and administrators in its district office, which is a ratio of one per 577 students. With the additional district office staff for the 2023-24 school year, the district ratio will become one official/administrator per 526 students — reflecting much leaner administrative staffing than districts across the nation and the state, district officials said.

As part of the development of the district’s New Way Forward strategic plan, stakeholders from various groups spoke openly about the need to dismantle barriers, build structures that support higher student achievement, and improve district systems.

While helping schools implement these changes has required more district office staff, FCPS leaders maintain a commitment to fiscal conservatism and financial stewardship, district officials said.

Additional data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that during the 2020-21 school year, the average public school spending for district administration was $279 per student. The 2023-24 tentative budget approved by the Fayette County Board of Education last month calls for spending $233 per student on district administration. Nationally, the average spending for district administration is 1.95% of the total district spending per pupil, district officials said.

The budget recently adopted for the district allocates 1.3% to the district administration, officials said.

Half of the additional district office positions were recommended by external reviews of Fayette County Public Schools’ departments that found existing staff numbers to be inadequate to provide needed support to schools, officials said.

These new positions will expand opportunities for students in the arts, support students learning English, students with special needs, and preschool students, and strengthen the district’s focus on key strategic areas like public engagement and fiscal transparency, a district statement said.

The approved 2023-24 tentative budget includes $47.2 million in new spending above and beyond current expenditures, district officials said.

Of that:

• $28.9 million is for employee raises
• $11.8 million is for personnel, which includes:
• $8.3 million for 148.2 positions located in schools providing direct service to students and teachers
• $3 million for 38 positions providing direct service to teachers or schools. (35 housed at the John D. Price Administration Building, two at the Warehouse, and one at the bus garage.
• 5.5 of the positions in the John D. Price Administration Building are existing positions that are moving from being funded out of safety money into the general fund. The remaining 29.5 are new districtwide positions.
• $465,642 in supplemental duty stipends for 172 teachers

This story was originally published June 9, 2023 at 11:02 AM.