D65 spending more of its budget on administrators, even as student enrollment drops

Evanston/Skokie School District 65 has seen a precipitous decline in student enrollment over the past five years, losing more than 1,300 students since the 2018-2019 year.

The district has undertaken measures such as eliminating a net total of 25 classroom teaching positions last year through attrition and staff reassignments, which helped save money by tying the number of educators to enrollment. That represented the first reduction of any staff in the last five years because of the drop in the student population, according to Business Manager Kathy Zalewski.

And in spring 2021 the district replaced 22 reading specialists in elementary and middle schools with 18 more flexible “interventionists”; the new job title reflects that the educators can provide added support for students with high needs in math as well as literacy.

During that same time, from 2018-2019 to now, District 65 has increased its administrative staff from 46 to 60 positions. Expenditures on administrator salaries and benefits rose from $7.1 million in 2018-2019 to $10.1 million for the current year, according to district documents.

In an effort to analyze these changes in staffing and budget expenditures, along with their impact on the administrative and teaching staffs, the RoundTable obtained compensation reports from the last five school years through a Freedom of Information Act request. The report for the current year is publicly available on the district website.

The district’s compensation reports define administrative staff as central office administrators, principals and assistant principals.

There has been a nearly 18% increase in the budget for the administration this year alone, when the district added five new administrators and $1.5 million in administrative expenses. Meanwhile, spending on teacher salaries actually decreased slightly due to attrition, retirements and reassignments, going from $55.6 million last year to $55.4 million this year.

“At all levels of the organization, the demands on public education are greater than ever before. From an administrative lens, the district has been operating with a lean team for years,” Executive Director of Communications Melissa Messinger told the RoundTable in an email.

“Gaps were further exacerbated by the pandemic and the increased need for deeper levels of administrative support, a stronger focus on culture and climate, services to better meet the unique learning needs of students, an increased emphasis on safety measures and response, enhancing curriculum and interventions, and sustainability in our schools.”

Spending on teachers vs. administrators

As shown in the graphs below, the portion of the total budget going to the administration has also grown over the past five years, even as the overall budget increased in large part thanks to about $10 million in federal pandemic relief funding. Between increased investments in administrators and recent teacher cuts, administrators now receive a little more than 8% of all salaries and benefits paid to staff, up from just more than 7% five years ago.

When it comes to total spending on public education in the United States, about 6.6% of all dollars have gone toward administration each year since 2000, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Among the new administrative roles added to District 65 staff recently are an executive director of communications (a new title for Messinger’s position), student services coordinator, director of professional learning, bilingual program director, a director of multi-tiered systems of support and social-emotional learning and a diverse learning coordinator. Terrance Little also moved into the new role of assistant superintendent of operations from his previous job as assistant superintendent of middle schools.

This fall, the district also hired a special assistant to the cabinet, who “reports directly to the Superintendent of Schools to ensure that the district is partnering collaboratively with schools, families and staff to enable equitable outcomes for all children,” according to an online job posting from last June.

That posting listed the salary range for the position as $70,000 to $93,000, but the actual base salary for the role, according to this year’s compensation report, is more than $140,000.

“Some of the increases in administrative costs are a result of bringing some of our administrator salaries up to par with neighboring school districts as well as scheduled pay increases per contracted salaries,” school board President Sergio Hernandez told the RoundTable in an email.

As shown below, average salaries have risen 6.9% for teachers and 5.8% for administrators in the last five years. Between last year and this year, teacher salaries went up by 1.8%, compared with administrator salaries increasing by 7.4%.

On the high end, the base salary for the chief financial and operations officer has shot up by 26% since 2018-2019, and the deputy superintendent salary has also increased by nearly 16% since the position was created in 2020. And, on the low end, pay for the assistant superintendent of human resources has actually fallen by 4% since 2018-2019.

Kevin Jauch, regional superintendent for school districts in north Cook County, told the RoundTable that when looking at the jump in administrative spending, Evanston residents should also keep in mind the additional revenues received from pandemic relief funding, as well as the increased cost of labor and insurance thanks to high inflation.

Comparison to ETHS

During those same five years, Evanston Township High School employed 20 total administrators every year, including in 2022-2023.

ETHS does have the luxury of only running one building, though, as opposed to the principals and assistant principals that District 65 has to hire for 15 different schools.

ETHS enrollment remained relatively flat throughout that time, increasing from 3,613 in 2018-2019 to 3,690 today. The teaching staff rose from 305 to 333, as shown in the graph below.

This year, District 65 has a ratio of about 10 teachers for every administrator, while ETHS has a little more than 16 teachers for each administrator.

“While our educators are second-to-none and undoubtedly have the greatest impact on our students, they can’t do it alone,” Messinger said. “Administrators, both at the school and district level, do an incredible amount in support of our students and greatly affect the smooth operations of schools and the district overall.”

Messinger also pointed to the fact that the district continues to submit balanced budgets every year as evidence of good fiscal stewardship. Since 2018, District 65 has increased its property tax collections by more than $15 million due to inflation and new properties coming onto the tax rolls in Evanston.

“Some of our investments in administrative costs have yielded results,” Hernandez said. “For example, our creation of the Student Support Coordinator position has allowed our school district to build out our Academic Skills Centers, which provide high impact tutoring in math and literacy to students who have demonstrated a need for support in the classroom.”

“At the end of the day, as Dr. [Superintendent Devon] Horton has stated, if a school system truly believes in equity, their budget should reflect it,” Hernandez said. He pointed to the recent creation of a student support coordinator job, which helps with tutoring in the district’s Academic Skills Center, as evidence of staffing changes better reflecting a commitment to racial equity.