Wichita school employee-student ratio drops

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In my article Wichita schools: why so many employees? I illustrated the rise in the number of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, employees per student. The number of students per certified employee has been dropping rapidly, from 13.7 students per employee to 10.9 over a period of 12 years. In percentage terms, that’s 20.4%.

Someone asked about all Wichita school district employees. I gathered some numbers from the district’s comprehensive annual report for the 2007-2008 school year. (The report for the 2008-2009 school year, the most recent complete year, should have been posted in December 2009, according to the district’s website. It’s not there as of this writing.)

Here’s a chart using these figures:

Wichita school employees per student

For the 1998-1999 school year, there were 8.55 Wichita public school students for each employee. For 2007-2008, that number dropped to 6.74 students per employee. That’s a decrease of 21% over a period of nine years, meaning that employee costs per student have been rising rapidly.

Comments

5 responses to “Wichita school employee-student ratio drops”

  1. Anonymous

    What a bunch of Koch Bros. inspired, pompous crap. You can do better Mr. Weeks.

  2. Anonymous

    It’s downright sad when a simple presentation of facts result in such vindictive.

    Why would someone attack the messenger rather than attempting to deal with facts?

  3. Anonymous

    The “facts” are toally skewed and irrelevant in the big picture of education. “Students per Employee” is just totally meaningless. This is just another RW canard to deflect the public from seeing the real problem.

  4. johnnybbad

    Annoymous,

    What is the real problem in your enlightened opinion?

  5. KipSchroeder

    Anonymous 1,

    I’m confused by your comments. The logic Bob displays in this article is so simple that even our high school drop outs can comprehend it. It goes something like this: More public school employees = more taxpayer money. Taxpayer money is our hard earned money. More taxpayer extortion has never equated to better educated students. Why continue to pour money into a broken system? When your primary work tool (computer, jackhammer, tractor, etc.) is no longer keeping up you start over and look for better solutions. We don’t have to keep doing things the way we have always done them. What a wonderful hope.

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