Despite Putative Budget Cuts, the Bureaucratic Bloat at the Minneapolis Public Schools Continues: Increased Staffing and Expenditures at the Davis Center (Central Offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools), Autumn 2015-Spring 2017

Among the most dramatic of my findings in conducting research for my 300-plus paged, nearly complete new book, Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect, is the fact that despite the fanfare around then-Interim Superintendent Michael Gore’s 16% budget paring in the spring of 2015, not many moons passed over the Midwestern prairie before the bloat resumed and intensified. 

 

My figures show that from autumn 2015 through this early spring of 2017, staffing at the Davis Center (central offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools, 1250 West Broadway) increased from 551 to 655.  Expenditures for staff salary alone went from $37,361,274 to $43,322,790.

 

This is a dramatic and notable development as a discrete occurrence, now amplified by the fact that faced with a $28 million budgetary deficit, the administration of new MPS Superintendent Ed Graff is proposing a 10% cut at the Davis Center.  

 

But as so many exercises in persiflage at the Davis Center, this apparent central office budget cutting does not constitute bureaucratic paring at all.  If the current cuts go through, there will still have been a $1,629,237 increase since that autumn of 2015, in the aftermath of the putative paring of the Goar phase.

 

Consider this clear presentation of the figures from my research:

 

Increased Staffing and Expenditures at the Davis Center

(Central Offices of the Minneapolis Public Schools)

Autumn 2015-Spring 2017

 

Number of Staff Members at the Davis Center

 

Autumn 2015                                   _____551______  

 

 

Spring 2017                                       _____655______  

 

 

Expenditures for Salaries at the Davis Center

 

Autumn 2015                        _____$37,361,274_______  

 

 

Spring 2017                           _____$43,322,790_______  

 

 

Increase from Autumn 2015 to Spring 2017

 

_____$5,961,516________

 

Relevance to Projected Budget Cuts

 

Increase from Autumn 2015 to Spring 2017

 

               >>>>>                                   $5,961,516

 

10%  of  $43,322,790 =                    $4,332,279

 

 

                                                              $5,961,516

                                       -  $4,332,279

 

                                           $1,629,237

Observation  >>>>> 


After 10% budgetary cuts at the Davis Center to address a $28 million deficit, central office expenditures will be $1,629,237 greater than the figure in autumn 2015.

This is powerful evidence of the endemic problem of bureaucratic bloat at our Minneapolis iteration of the locally centralized school district, one the many problems that I address as I advocate for overhaul of all MPS programs and processes in Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect.