Upper Darby saved on teacher expenses in 2017-18
UPPER DARBY >> Turnover of teachers and staff has kept the Upper Darby School District under budget the last school year.
According to administrators at a Tuesday committee meeting, the district ended up with an extra $500,000 in district coffers in a $199 for million budget for 201718. Part of that attributed to spending $4.47 million less on salaries and benefits than projected. Turnover in the district was at
80 teachers for the year; 55 of them had a Master’s degree or higher.
“Staff turnover in the
100s and 200s (salary and benefit budget line items) contribute to us allowing to balance our budget in the other areas that may have been over, which then states that we actually put back into our fund balance
$509,000,” said Acting Superintendent Dan McGarry.
McGarry said the district brings in teachers with lesser experience who then get professional development and attain a Master’s degree while employed with the district. They then go on to other districts after earning those benefits. With that comes lesser-experienced teachers to replace them and at a lower pay scale.
A presentation during a September committee meeting revealed that 43 percent of the teaching staff had been with the district for five years or fewer, but 75 percent had a Master’s degree or higher.
“You want to keep staff that you’ve invested in, and that’s a consideration as we continue to work on our contracts. We want to support teachers and encourage them to stay in our district and appropriately compensate them, that’s number one,” said McGarry. “Number two, the business office might say that turnover, however, has allowed us to survive as a school district financially, in some ways.”
Being under budget for salaries and benefits helped offset $325,000 in overages in other areas of the budget for the year. All told, expenditures were $4.1 million under budget. With revenues and other financing sources listed under expenditures the district was in the red by $509,000.
When asked by school board member Neil Desnoyers if hiring lesser-experienced teachers means more purchased services and if those services would be affected by having moreexperienced (and, thus, higher paid) teachers, McGarry said the latter knows the systems in place in the district and that it “creates a culture, relationship” in buildings.
“I think there’s a positive there,” he said in response to Desnoyers. “The turnover in learning the curriculum, especially in special education, is a lot.” McGarry added that this was only his opinion and that it is not something that has been proven yet.
The presentation by McGarry and district Chief Financial Officer Patrick Grant was a financial update to the school board and public that was originally be a presentation of the latest audit by Baker, Tilly, Virchow, Krause LLC. That presentation has been pushed back to the work session of the next school board meeting on Dec. 4.