Two administrative positions were officially added to the list of positions being cut in the school district’s upcoming budget. This action at Monday’s meeting trims about $147,104 in planned district spending.

This trimming is part of a larger effort by the district to spend $2.3 million less than last school year to respond to budget cuts. It will also save roughly $1,050,000 in spending after the board nod to cut 25 positions, including 20 classroom teachers, as reported last month.

There were few teachers at last week’s board meeting, a month before the board gives its first of two nods on what the district will spend next school year. No one spoke during the public comments section of the meeting.

Those who spoke on record at meetings previously have praised the district’s proactive approach in budgeting money.

But how money is spent, and budgets being trimmed, has not met with praise everywhere.

An e-mail circulating among school stakeholders tags Newberry as one of five notably “wasteful school districts” in the state by a blog from The Voice for School Choice group.

The blog says Newberry has a six-year pattern of “growing administrative spending at nearly twice the rate of instructional spending,” based on a report called “Local Government Finance Report.”

Prosperity resident Chad Connelly was part of the e-mail chain, and has some concerns. Connelly, the chairman of the Newberry County Republican Party and board member of South Carolinians for Responsible Government, says there is wasted money in the district’s bureaucratic overhead.

“Knowing how many of our hard-working teachers have been told they might lose their jobs due to budget cuts, then discovering the blatant waste of the district’s bureaucracy tells me that all of the hype is only a diversion to keep the teachers from finding out this isn’t about a money problem,” Connelly says, “but about a priority problem.”

Claire Wessinger, a school district parent who also received the e-mail sees spending on “overhead and administriation” as a concern.

She also anticipates a tax hike.

“The Newberry County taxpayer was fortunate not to have an increase in the school taxes this past year,” she says, “but you can bet with this kind of spending they will be increasing our taxes as soon as they feel they can get away with it.”

She also sees a connection between money spent on “overhead and administriation” and “low test scores” of district students.

Wessinger says the district has enough money, and needs to learn how to spend it more wisely.

Payroll spending

The school district’s average pay for administrators has gradually increased for the last five years, according to the district’s report card information.

Tucked among rows of data from the state is a line listing the “Average administrator salary.”

Since 2005, Newberry School District’s “average administrator salary” has inched higher, surpassing the average salary of administrators in “Districts with Students like ours.” “Districts with Students like ours” is a phrase used by the state to indicate an apples-to-apples comparison of districts that have similar poverty rates.

Spending on the average school administrative salary in Newberry County climbed 8.9 percent the 2007 report card states.

Per student spending has risen along with administrators’ compensation.

The dollars spent per pupil have increased since 2002, inching upward each year to continually top “Districts with Students like ours” per pupil spending.

Data released this month, reflective of the 2009 school year, shows the Newberry School District spending $10,068 per pupil, compared to the average of “Districts Like Ours” of $9,316 per pupil.

Dollars spent per pupil is the total federal, state and district funds spent for the education of each student during the most recent school year.

The trend of spending on teacher salaries in Newberry County has gone in the opposite direction.

The district’s “percent of expenditures for teacher salaries” has been continuously cropped since 2004, save in 2007 when that year’s report card says there was no change.

About the disparity, Superintendent Bennie Bennett says the two categories on the report cards are calculated differently.

“The administrators’ average takes the total salary of administrators and divides it by the number of employees that are coded administration,” he says. “The ‘percent of expenditures on teacher salaries’ takes the total salary of teachers, substitute teacher pay and instructional assistant salaries and divides it by the total dollars spent on students. A more accurate comparison would be to take the percentage of both or use the same formula to calculate both.”

No matter the calculation, Connelly is counting on being watchful of school spending.

“I hope the teachers and taxpayers can hold the administration accountable on the expenses,” says Connelly, “and I hope the bureaucrats come clean and admit that if any cuts are due, it’s not in the classroom, but in the overhead.”