NEW ROCHELLE, NY — Where are all the teachers?
After Hurricane Sandy, effected schools in New York were required to add 5 days to the school year. New Rochelle used two “snow days” around Memorial Day weekend. That left three more days. The plan was to make up those days with teacher development programs on June 23, 24, 25.
As you can see from these photos taken around noon on Tuesday June 24th, not everyone got the memo.
Personnel costs are 70% of the district’s $240 million budget. On a simple average basis, the district pays $930,000 a day for 180 days a year. Some staff are 12 month instead of 10 month employees like teachers so that figure overstates the cost. A safe guestimate is that an average school day costs the district about $750,000.
Three days at $750,000 is $2.25 million.
Those empty spots suggest that a large chunk of that $2.25 mm went to pay people who did not work.
Ironically, that is money that could have restored over 20 positions, the people the district fired this year because they do not have enough money.
It costs about $25,000 to install time and attendance systems in New Rochelle to teachers and staff are paid based on checking in and checking out each day. That would have been paid for by applying 38 seconds of the time paid out this past week for staff that did not work.
Go figure.