A Very Different Model of Central

During the Board's budget planning work session, Director DeBell suggested that the Central Administration budget could be cut by about $12 million. Director Smith-Blum said that, nationally, central admin runs about 4-4.5% of district budgets. Don Kennedy, somewhat taken aback, said that such a cut would result in "a Very Different Model of central". Yep. That's the idea.

I advocate a "reset" for the central administration. I think it should be a whole lot leaner and more narrowly focused on just its core missions. I think that the central administration should do what we need it to do - and no more. I think we should rebuild it from the ground up and only put back those pieces that contribute directly to the central mission.

The Central Administration should only work on three things:
1) District Administration. Things like human resource, legal, and financial functions that need to be done centrally and shouldn't be done at the schools. There are other functions like facilities that, by virtue of their scope, need to be done at the District level.
2) Non-academic student services. Not only do these efforts benefit from economies of scale, schools shouldn't be spending their time and effort working on these tasks.
3) Academic support and review. The Central role in academics is two-fold. One is to provide support services, organization, and planning for disciplines and programs. The other is to fulfill a quality assurance role.

This can all be done and be done with a pretty flat structure. Here are all of the departments that occur to me off the top of my head:

1. Administration
A. Management
B. Budget and Finance
C. Human Resources
D. Legal
E. Communications
F. Facilities
G. Data management

2. Non-academic student services
A. Nutrition
B. Transportation
C. Discipline
D. Student Records
E. Enrollment
F. Student Health Services
G. Counseling

3. Academics
A. Math
B. Literacy
C. Science
D. Career & Tech Ed
E. P.E.
F. Music
G. Arts
H. World Languages
I. Library

4. Program Heads
A. Special Education
B. Bilingual Education
C. Advanced Learning
D. Safety Net Programs
E. International Education
F. Native American Education
G. Interventions
H. Homeschool Resource Center
I. Programs for other special populations (Campana Quetzal, South Pacific Islander program, homeless student program, MESA, etc.)
J. Miscellaneous (Traffic Education, Athletics, etc.)

I would be very surprised if this were a complete list. There must be some things that should be here that I've forgotten to include. There are, however, some things that are not listed here because they fall outside the proper mission of the central administration. For example, I can't see how Research, Evaluation and Assessment fits into this scheme.

The District could benefit tremendously from re-thinking the central office from the ground up. The rebuilding needs to be done with a narrow central office mission in mind. There's a lot of stuff that happens there that doesn't need to happen at all. There's a lot of work they do there that they shouldn't be doing. At the same time, there's a lot of work that they should be doing that isn't getting done.

The central office doesn't need a lot of folks for the academics, for example. What tasks are there for a cental math department other than serving as a clearinghouse for news and continuing education, doing a little professional development, working on curriculum maps, leading material adoptions, and organizing collaboration and sharing of best practices among schools. We don't need the central math department to script any lessons. There is some real question in my mind about the need for math coaches. Is that really a proper function of the central administration?

I don't know if this sort of a reset of the central office would result in more or fewer people working there. I suspect fewer. I think the cuts would mostly come in Learning and Teaching, Facilities (where more stuff could be outsourced), and I.T. (where some tasks could be dropped and some outsourced).