> These are just examples that are fresh in my mind based on recently discussions with my wife. Unfortunately, a lot of this isn't made evident by budgets.
I urge you to look at your district's budget in detail. Many of them do in fact break out administrative staff costs separately from teaching staff costs. Decades of frustration on the part of the electorate has forced them to in some cases. You might have to dig for it, but its in there. I don't doubt your wife's experience with an overbearing administration, but one person's lived experience does not count for your whole district, let alone the entire nation. You have to examine the data.
My wife's district's budget includes "Instruction" as one opaque budget item which accounts for 47.9% of the 2020 budget (up from 46.3% in 2017). Admin accounts for 9.6% (up from 8.3%). There is also a vague "Non-Instructional Expenditures" category which accounts for 5.1% (up from 4.6%). Almost everything else is operation/maintenance, transportation, construction, and debt service.
Less than half of the district's budget goes to "instruction" and who knows how much of that budget item really ends up being spent usefully. The "instruction" budget item did increase as a portion of the budget, but budget items specifically labeled as "admin" increased disproportionately by nearly 5x as much. "Non-Instructional Expenditures" also increased disproportionately by nearly 3x as much.
Comparing to your district, yours spends much more on instruction and much less proportionally on construction and debt services. Your district's budget is also much more granular, splitting out categories like utilities, printing, safety, and IT, plus a breakdown of your instruction budget.
I'd link to my wife's district's budget but like I said, I don't think it's wise to name my wife's employer as I'm complaining about them publicly.
I urge you to look at your district's budget in detail. Many of them do in fact break out administrative staff costs separately from teaching staff costs. Decades of frustration on the part of the electorate has forced them to in some cases. You might have to dig for it, but its in there. I don't doubt your wife's experience with an overbearing administration, but one person's lived experience does not count for your whole district, let alone the entire nation. You have to examine the data.
My kid's district's breakdown is on page 92 of https://www.adams12.org/sites/default/files/uploads/document...
Administrative staff is only 9% of the the labor budget.