The economy is doing terrific, land values haven't stopped going up for about a decade and teachers will have to go without raises? Great job, LASD! Any teacher in LASD, good or bad, should be leave in protest. There are plenty of teaching jobs and from what's reported above, it's pretty easy to be treated better.

There is a signficiant data error in this article. LASD's revenues back in 2015-2016 were similar to MVWSD's, not more. They were $60.1M versus the $64.0M reported in the story ($61.8M for MVWSD). $64M was the LASD revenue just last year 2017-18. So LASD's revenues increased 10.8% over the period vs MVWSD's increase pf 23%.

But there's more to the situation. MVWSD saw a change from 5094 to 5110 in enrollment, so about flat. But LASD went from 4638 students to 4246, a drop of 8% in the number of students. On a per student basis, the changes were about the same. LASD gets $15.7K per student now and MVWSD gets $14.9K per student. Back in 2015-16, LASD got $13K per student and MVWSD got $12.2K per student. In both school years LASD drew in $800 more per student. So LASD per student revenue increased 20.8% and MVWSD increased 22.1%

The district with more to worry about is MVWSD. Neither district's revenues go up based on an increase in enrollment. MVWSD is more likely than LASD to see an increase in students going forward. LASD actually dropped off. MVWSD was flat. In the next few years with added housing units and added affordable BMR units, the effect will be felt more in MVWSD.

By the way, Dataquest teacher staffing numbers aren't out for this year yet, but last year MVWSD was at 289 and LASD was at 259. MVWSD had 17% more students than LASD but only 11.6% more teachers. That's the reason they can more easily afford raises even with less funding per student. It will be interesting to see the teacher staffing levels that were in effect this year 2018-19.

Since last year, LASD's enrollment declined by 157, and MVWSD's declined by 22. I'd imagine MVWSD kept the same number of teachers this year, and LASD should have reduced by a few teachers with 157 fewer students. That's why seeing this year's actual teacher staffing numbers would be informative.

@LongResident

Thanks for raising your concerns. Total revenues for 2015-16 (documented in the link below on page 10) was actually $65,703,970 that year, rather than the the originally reported $64,293,529. Turns out the latter figure was for expenditures that year, and there is a discrepancy between the two. The story has been updated.


Web Link

Teachers have been overpaid. It's about time they stop increasing their salary. Most teachers I know in the area are paid an average of $100K per year, and they work about 25 hours per week max, plus summer off, plus 20 days off in December, plus Winter break, plus Spring break....cry me a river!!!

The numbers that should be used to compare districts and to compare revenues from year to year are the ones reported to the CDE and displayed in Dataquest. Technical accounting concerns cause LASD to list in their budget money as "operating revenues" which actually result from transfering between various separate funds. In 2015-16 they made a lot of transfers from the Building Fund which are always very inconsistent from year to year. See page 109 of the PDF (numbered 103) for the extreme variability of the Building fund uses from year to year. Basically both building and capital funds are long term funds drawn on for work which has a long useful lifetime, not really operating expenses.

Are you kidding me?!?!? You think teachers work 25 hours per week? Maybe at Monta Loma (I’ve been there, maybe that is true). At our LASD school our current elementary school teacher works 7-7, is always upbeat, happy, and the kids absolutely adore her. She’s a gem but the school is filled with them. She also works many sundays. So, that’s about 70 hours if she goes home on time one day.
This is the kind of respect MVWSD gives their teachers from the top down, which may be one of the reasons for the turnover.

“Overpaid” must earn by the hour for shoveling BS out of a bull pen. Unfortunately many many cranks in the post Reagan era believe that teachers and other hard working public sectors employees are not deserving of competitive pay rates. What a mindless maroon. “Overpaid” sounds like the disgruntled “tech” workers who post here making $80K per year when the average among local “tech” workers is more like $125K. Hey, guess what: your n=1 experience is “exceptional” — buck up, pardner

Actually I think a lot of tech pay is $250k-300k with stock options around here. Which is much more than half of teachers. Who work much more than 3x 25 hours. The disrespect of teachers is just beyond me. I’m sure Overpaid doesn’t want to spend his whole day teaching 22 kids!