Actual Cost of Salaries Figures Into Budgets for Oakland’s Schools
When Cecilia Mendoza recently hired eight teachers for her school in Oakland, Calif., the principal had to consider something that most school leaders in the country rarely take into account: the cost of their salaries.
In the Oakland Unified School District, the actual amount of staff salaries counts against individual schools’ budgets. So a more experienced employee—who has a bigger paycheck—eats up more of a school’s funding than does a less experienced one.
“You start to look at things very differently,” said Ms. Mendoza, the principal at Calvin Simmons Middle School. “You think: This person is costing me a certain amount of money. Are they earning the...
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