In Delaware, most schools in our districts have a Principal and an Assistant Principal. Some schools have two Assistant Principals. For those schools, you can be looking at over $300,000 in annual salaries between the three positions in some situations. As the Delaware Department of Education guides teachers into accepting “Teacher-Leader” roles, I have to wonder what the end goal is. Eventually, the role of the classic teacher will be greatly diminished if the current trends in personalized learning continue. I predict more seasoned teachers will leave the profession because of this. Is this why we are seeing this big push for more leaders? Will we see more teachers with a background of Teach For America and Relay Graduate School of Education infiltrate school leadership roles?
In this round of “Delaware Education Funding”, I just looked at traditional school district Principals and Assistant Principals, not the charter schools. For the very simple reason that only about a 1/3rd of the charters put this role in that category on Delaware Online Checkbook. The other charter leaders are spread out over many coded categories and it is very hard to know what is what. But I will get to them, I promise! These are by district only, not by school. Exact Principal and Assistant Principals are not readily available unless a newspaper does a story about state employee salaries over $100,0oo.00.
This chart shows the total Principal salaries for each school district in FY2016. For the most part, it follows the total student population of each district with a few exceptions. What surprised me the most was Capital’s slot on the chart which will become clear in the below picture. In Delaware, Principal units are also based on the student count as of September 30th of each year, just like teachers. This provides the state share of principal salaries, so anything left comes from local funds collected through property taxes of the citizens in that district.
Seaford is way up on this chart when the total principal salaries are divided by the number of students in the district. And as predicted, Capital seems to pay their Principals a lot more than other districts based on this chart. Red Clay, like the previous picture, takes the top spot. This does not include the principal salaries from the charters within their district that they are the authorizers of. This chart does not follow student population at all.
Assistant Principals in Delaware can be just as important as Principals. In many schools, they handle more of the discipline issues and frequently serve as the school administrator for IEP meetings. We see, mostly, the same pattern as Principals with overall salaries following the student populations. Notable exceptions are Cape Henlopen, New Castle County Vo-Tech, and Polytech. Once again, Seaford is a bit ahead based on their student population compared to the districts two slots below them.
When it comes to per student cost for Assistant Principals, two of the vocational districts leap to the top. Christina falls to the middle. We see, on this chart, more of an indication of the economic levels of the citizens within these districts. Aside from Seaford and Woodbridge, most of the districts near the bottom are in Sussex County.
I wanted to see what happened with these numbers when I combined both the Principal and Assistant Principal salaries. It is almost exactly in line with the first graph for the Principal salaries.
For the money, it appears New Castle County Vo-Tech is the go-to district if you want to be an administrator at a school, followed closely by Red Clay and Brandywine. With NCC Vo-Tech at $461 a student for combined Principal and Assistant Principal salaries and Sussex Tech at $224 per student, there sis a world of difference between the two vo-techs in our state. But once again, money does not always equal quality and performance. But higher needs can. Keep in mind, the vo-techs are given a by-line item in the state budget as their funding source. Are the vo-techs getting favorable treatment with this budget method? It depends on which county!
As with many situations with school districts, the more buildings you have, the higher the costs to run them. I see definite trends with these towards socio-economic levels for the three counties in Delaware when you take the vo-techs out of the picture. This makes sense because a referendum can decide what type of funds school boards can spend on administrators in schools. This is very different from district administrators, which will be coming soon. That one will be more complex and may need some outside help on my part.
The Season Of Myths 