Dear Editor:
As the human resources administrator for Gilroy Unified School
District, I was shocked and dismayed to read the inaccurate
statements made by Cynthia Walker in her March 28 column.
Dear Editor:
As the human resources administrator for Gilroy Unified School District, I was shocked and dismayed to read the inaccurate statements made by Cynthia Walker in her March 28 column. I want to set the record straight. The FACT is that 6% of Gilroy Unified School District’s certificated employees are administrators (32.65 out of 543.113). GUSD runs very lean on administration, by any comparison.
Cynthia Walker’s statements, “45 percent of the district’s certificated employees are not classroom teachers … They are administrators … GUSD is ridiculously top-heavy” are clearly not accurate.
I spoke with Ms. Walker on Tuesday and asked where she got her data. She said her husband extracted it from the district’s 2002-2003 budget. I went to this same document and found quite different information.
Under the “staffing” tab, there is an FTE (Full Time Equivalent) report for each school and department. However, there is no report for the entire district. As illustration, I’ve extracted information for Gilroy High School. Using the budget document, 91.6 percent of Gilroy High’s certificated staff are classroom teachers, 4.2 percent are administrators, and 4.2 percent are “other” (i.e. academic coordinators, librarian).
Compiling the data takes a bit of analyzing; there is one line listing “site administration” and another line listing “assistant principal”, totaling 4.9 FTE. One must find and add together 20 different line items listing “classroom teachers – contracted” and “special teachers – contracted” to get the total number of teachers salaries, 108 FTE. The total number of certificated salaries for GHS is 117.9 FTE.
Public education budgets are very complex. The District’s Final Budget document is designed to illustrate what funds are used to pay for positions or portions of positions. It is not a personnel document. Extracting accurate personnel data from the GUSD Final Budget requires a bit of analyzing, but the information is there.
I understand that you, the community, have the right to know how we spend taxpayer dollars. As a public employee, it is my responsibility to ensure that you receive accurate information.
Linda Piceno, Assistant superintendent human resources, Gilroy Unified School District
Submitted Wednesday, April 2 to ed****@ga****.com
