Last Sunday, The New York Times carried a shocking education story on its front page. The story, based on a report by the office of the City Comptroller, compared New York City school expenditures with those of other cities. The report found that while New York City spends more money for the education of each child than other cities, so much of the money is diverted to purposes which are not directly educational that the money actually reaching the students in the form of teaching, guidance and other direct services is less than other city school districts. 

For many years, there have been complaints that large amounts of money in our schools were being spent on "bureaucracy," and there have been periodic charges and outcries. During the 1960s, when federal, state and local funds continued to increase, there was little pressure to root out waste in the system. But now that the schools have lost thousands of teachers, guidance counselors, attendance teachers, secretaries, paraprofessionals, laboratory specialists, psychologists, social workers and others who work directly with children, every penny which can be used to restore these services must be used.

Furthermore, we know that the city's crisis is not a temporary one. With continued erosion of our economic base, increasing problems of providing welfare and medical aid to the indigent, and national policies which place the entire Northeast at great disadvantage, we will face continuing difficulties in trying to maintain our schools.

Three Times as Many Non-School Administrators

The 80-page first section of the Comptroller's analysis compared data from 18 cities and revealed that the other cities had one out-of-school administrator for every 632 students while New York City schools had one administrator for every 208 students. These are not principals, chairmen of departments and assistant principals who work in schools. They are administrators who work far from children and teachers either at the headquarters of the central Board of Education, or the offices of the 32 decentralized school districts.

According to the report, New York City spends $500 more for each child than many other major cities, but it spends only $934 in direct instructional programs compared to $993 for the other cities.

Some other figures in the Times account:

  • New York City had the third worst attendance rate of the 17 cities which provided attendance figures. Only 71. 3 % of our high school students were in school on any given day in 1976.
  • New York City had the poorest ratio of guidance counselors of all the cities in the survey. New York City spends only $11 per pupil for guidance compared with an average of $3 5 for the other cities.
  • In spite of frequent criticism charging that New York's problems are the result of unusually high salaries, the
    report indicates that New York City salaries ranked not first but fifth when regional cost-of-living adjustments
    were taken into account.

Such Data Should Be Available Regularly

The Comptroller's report - still in draft - can't be accepted as a basis for action at this time because it has not yet been put into final form or released. We can only react to the New York Times account. Until the full report is made available, it will be impossible to tell whether it is accurate or whether some important errors have crept in.

But even before we have these answers, one thing should be said: These are the kinds of questions which should be raised. And this is the kind of information which should be available not only when a special survey is made. It should be available on a regular and ongoing basis.

The report raises many interesting questions: Is our very high absence rate largely due to the fact that we have halved the ranks of attendance teachers, whose job is to improve attendance, while sparing the jobs of office bureaucrats? Why have the school districts provided the lowest ratio of guidance for students while retaining the largest office staffs?

There are state mandates which set requirements on how school boards must arrange their budgets, but, whatever the regulations, most people cannot tell where the money is going. This might be a good time to require that each school district in the state provide the public with full information each year. They should let the public know how much of the school budget is spent on personnel who provide direct service to children.

How much goes to non-child services? How much is spent on school buildings? How much on various headquarters? Once such information is available, it could become the basis for legislation which would make state aid to schools dependent on a high percentage of the money being spent on children instead of political plums.