Report shows Valley schools have more staff than other districts

Schools throughout the Rio Grande Valley have many helping hands.

In fact, they tend to pay more people per student than anywhere else in the state.

School districts throughout Region One, which includes the Rio Grande Valley, had more support staff members per student than most systems of similar size during the 2007-08 school year, according to a report the Region One Education Service Center compiled this summer.

Districts in Rio Grande City, Donna, Edcouch-Elsa, Weslaco, San Benito and La Joya showed up over and over as having more staff members per student than systems of similar size.

The Region One Report took data from the Texas Education Agency’s financial reporting systems and broke down the staffing ratios by job type. Data for the 2008-09 school year should be released later this year.

The large payrolls have dug deeply into districts’ pocketbooks and now districts are having to pare their workforces to make ends meet.

Edcouch-Elsa, which was among the top 10 on nine of 20 lists, laid off hundreds of employees after it was discovered the district was $10 million in debt because of overstaffing.

Donna’s school board agreed to shed more than 200 employees for the coming school year so it can stay financially afloat and raise teacher pay to remain competitive with neighboring districts. That, along with other restructuring at the district, is expected to save Donna about $8 million.

While Edcouch-Elsa has made strides in trimming its support staff, it will take a long time for the district to become financially stable, said Fred Liner, a conservator the Texas Education Agency appointed earlier this year to review the district’s financial situation.

“You have to stop the bleeding before you can have a transfusion,” he said.

The district might even become understaffed as it continues to lose teachers through attrition and cut support staff before its money woes improve.

Because state funding for schools is tied into how many students districts have, systems with declining enrollment have had to lay off staff and make other cuts to make sure they don’t slip in the red, Liner said.

Santa Rosa did just that, laying off employees last year after the district realized its student population dropped and would have to pay back the state, Liner said.

That district laid off six educators to close an $800,000 shortfall. Those layoffs were expected to save the district about $300,000.

“They caught it before it happened,” Liner said.

But staffing problems are not unique to districts with shrinking student populations. Growing districts can be tempted to hire staff at a faster rate than their enrollment increases, Liner said.

That’s why the state offers parameters in its financial reports on what normal staffing to student ratios are to help districts keep their payrolls in line in case they hit hard financial times, Liner said.

Five school districts show up on at least half of the 20 staff position lists in the report.

Rio Grande City and Weslaco showed up the most frequently in the report in their respective categories.

Weslaco ranked among the top 10 on 13 lists and ranked first or second — meaning it had the most support staff per students — in a few staffing categories, including those for administrators’ secretaries and staff members for curriculum and instructional support.

Rio Grande City made it on the top 10 a dozen times, and had the smallest student-to-staff ratios for athletic secretaries and clerks, security guards and nurses’ aides.  

Weslaco Superintendent Richard Rivera acknowledges the district is overstaffed compared to others in the state in regard to support staff, but said that based on financial reports compiled by the state this has only been an issue for the past two school years.

That is why the district has been freezing positions vacated by employees who leave the district. He insisted in an interview a few weeks ago that employees would not be laid off. “No one is going to lose their jobs because we’re overstaffed,” Rivera said earlier.

But last week, the district placed its five police officers on paid leave while the school board mulls over whether to reassign them to be security guards, contract police services with the city or expand its police department.

Rio Grande City Superintendent Roel Gonzalez, however, said overstaffing at school districts did not happen overnight, and it will take awhile to trim their staffs.

In the case of Rio Grande City, the district had hired more staff over the years as it received more federal funding, Gonzalez said.

Like many other districts throughout the Valley, Rio Grande City has been closing positions vacated by employees and is looking where positions can be consolidated rather than laying off employees, the superintendent said.
“It’s going to take time because we’re dealing with people’s livelihoods,” Gonzalez said.

As for the Mercedes school district, having more support staff is cheaper than having more higher-paid professionals, said school board President Benjamin Castillo.

Castillo said the district’s human resources director took a job at Region One a couple of years ago and the district consolidated that position with the deputy superintendent’s.

“We may have given (the deputy superintendent) an extra secretary,” Castillo said. “It’s much cheaper to hire an extra secretary than a whole new H.R. director.”

Hiring employees is left to the discretion of individual school boards, said officials from Region One and the Texas Education Agency. While the state and regional education agencies might compile data on staffing among other information from districts and list norms, they do not give any recommendations as to how many employees districts should have, they said.

Region One districts have higher percentages of economically disadvantaged students and the districts are eligible for more federal money to hire people for federally funded programs to help those students, said Frances Guzman, chief financial officer for Region One Education Service Center.

But other districts with high percentages of economically disadvantaged children have managed to operate with fewer staff members.

North Forest school district in Houston, which had the highest economically disadvantaged percentage among districts with enrollments between 5,000 and 14,999 with 99.5 percent, consistently ranked lower in the report than most of the Region One schools in that category.

George McShan, who serves as the chairman of the newly formed board of managers for North Forest ISD as well as president of Harlingen’s school board, said both boards are trying to make sure they keep their budgets in line with their student enrollments.

(The state removed the former North Forest school board last year amid financial and academic problems.)

Districts receive money from the state based on student enrollment, and each year are asked to estimate how many students they will have so they can plan their budgets accordingly. Sometimes districts overestimate and end up receiving less money the following school year to make up for the extra money they received.

“If it’s not in the budget, we don’t hire people,” McShan said.

While Harlingen did not top any lists, it did rank fairly high in some areas; it ranked third in the number of custodians and library aides, fourth in secretaries for assistant, associate and deputy superintendents, sixth in counselors and 10th in educational aides, according to the report.

But McShan said the district is financially healthy with a fund balance of nearly $30 million. As of the end of the 2006-2007 school year, the Texas Education Agency’s Academic Excellence Indicator System report confirmed Harlingen had a fund balance of just over $30 million.