Paul Bass file photo
At a March 2022 rally for fully funded schools.
We are nearly a month into the new school year and here in New Haven there are still 80 teacher vacancies, according to the district’s website.
So much ink has been spilled already about quitting teachers, and here is more evidence that the current crisis will not abate anytime soon. Here, the district even hired dedicated staff to fix this issue.
Still, the vacancies remain.
But you know where there aren’t any vacancies? In administration. If you look at the school’s job page, there are only two administrator vacancies: one generic posting and the one for principal at Hillhouse High School after the current guy quit.
This school district seems to have no problem hiring and retaining administrators. The same district that is repelling teachers and other staff.
New Haven employs over 100 administrators for 20,000 students spread across about 40 schools. That’s compared to about 1,500 teachers, 40 counselors and 20 librarians. A quarter of those admin work in the central office, according to the most recent available school profiles.
The school budgets $16 million for administrators, which makes up a little more than ten percent of the total salary obligations. While relatively small compared to the school’s total spending, it’s still more than the $6 million stolen from the buses this summer.
In 2018’s Bullshit Jobs, late anthropologist David Graeber warns of a growing managerial and administrative class that is becoming increasingly alienated from the people who make, move, maintain and fix things. The work he described as having “social value.” Like teachers, counselors, and librarians.
Graeber saw the expansion of this expensive managerial class as the workers underneath them became increasingly stressed and burned out. This phenomena should be alarming to school districts like ours which are battling scarcity annually.
Starting salaries for an assistant principal and a principal at New Haven schools are $124,000 and $154,000, respectively. The average administrator makes three times what the average teacher makes. And what do we have to show for that money?
In New Haven, students aren’t coming to school. The ones that do say they’re not receiving an equal education. Their buildings are filthy and falling apart. And they don’t receive the supports they need to thrive and grow. Many sit in classrooms without teachers.
The students who go to school in New Haven deserve teachers. More than that, they deserve teachers who are respected, valued and appreciated.
In addition to cost, Graeber wrote that this administrative class made up of flunkies, box-tickers, paper-pushers and taskmasters also hold a “simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value.” So these middle-managers, who take a large role in the hiring and evaluation of teachers, also harbor a deep-seated hostility toward those same employees.
When the teachers union surveyed teachers about retention, after pay a whopping half of teachers identified unhelpful administration and hostile workplace culture as reasons for quitting. One in five said merely “competent administrators” would improve their working conditions. This is especially problematic here because a significant number of New Haven’s current teachers have fewer than four years experience which means their job security is non-existent. These teachers need support and are most vulnerable to this dynamic.
We also have anecdotal abuses of power, like the highly publicized case of the principal who was only reassigned – not dismissed – from her school to central office after using the N‑word.
Ultimately this leaves us with an expensive and possibly bloated managerial class of admin that aren’t very good at their jobs and are causing static with its teachers.
If districts wish to continue hacking away at this hydra that is the teaching crisis, they don’t have to look past beyond the buildings where these teachers work. To the district’s credit, they tried to address the pay issue. But there’s more to be done.
The answer won’t be to simply churn through new teachers until there aren’t any more. That’s already happening. The New York Times reported last week that people aren’t going into teaching anymore.
So it can’t hurt to look at this class of managers and explore some changes. I don’t profess to know where to cut, but I’m sure we can bring the number of these positions down to a more manageable level, and instead have more staff who have direct contact with students. And we can start expecting administrators to take on duties at other schools, like their colleagues already do. We can also separate administrators from the teacher evaluation process or create independent ombudspeople to mediate disputes.
Let’s get creative, people.
Because if we have conditions in this city that are pushing members of our school communities out in droves, but not others, my only conclusion is either these people are either benefiting from these conditions, or simply compensated well enough to put up with them.
Max Bakke is a creative writing teacher who lives in New Haven.
Spot on. Every word.
NHPS needs to be torn down and rebuilt. Outside auditors need to be brought in. Every administrator replies for their job with twenty percent of them cut entirely (we can bring them back if they are needed - which they are not).
Send redundant admins back to classroom. Yes, they will retain their salries, but only if they stay, which most woudn't (they couldn't wait to leave the classroom in the first place!).
What the public is aware of - which enough to make your head spin - is the tip of the iceberg. It is so much worse than people realize.