Nuevo Herald - July 9, 2006 - PAGE: 1A SECTION: Frente

El Nuevo Herald has analyzed statistics that show that during the two
years in which Rudy Crew has been superintendent, the number of
administrators with salaries over $100,000 per year has increased by
40% with a cost to the district of $7.5 million per year.

The number of such high-paid employees has increased from 163 to 225
between July 2004 and today.

The Superintendent's Cabinet, the inner core of administrators around
Crew, has tripled over its size under Merrett Stierheim – from five
members to fifteen.

Joseph García, the spokesperson of the system, said that the budget
directly dedicated to education is 5% higher than under Stierheim,
while the administrative budget is 3% lower. Garcia did not say that
the total budget of Crew is $500 million larger than under Stierheim.

Garcia explained that general salary increases pushed 58 employees
over the $100,000 mark.

El Nuevo Herald found 51 high-paid jobs that did not exist in 2004.

89 MDCPS employees earned more than $110,000 in 2004, but this
increased to 120 in 2006. Today, 22 earn over $120,000; 18 earn over
$130,000; and 7 earn over $150,000. No one except the superintendent
earned over $150,000 in 2004.

Garcia cited many successes of the Crew administration over the past
two years: better FCAT scores; a stronger contingency fund; reduction
of disciplinary cases among students; a salary increase for teachers;
and 38,000 new student stations as a result of school construction and
expansion.

In 2004, Crew eliminated 202 non-teaching positions and saved the
system $35.6 million. 

Some School Board members noted that the number of F schools in the
MDCPS increased this year. The School Improvement Zone has cost $40
million and has not sufficiently improved the very low scoring schools.

According to a report published in Education Week, Miami-Dade is one
of the seven districts with the lowest graduation rates among the 50
largest districts in the nation. Only 45.3% of the Dade students
graduate.

Mercedes Toural, second in command in the MDCPS under Merrett
Stierheim, points out that the total number of students in the system
has declined over the pas two years. She argues that the bureaucracy
should also have declined, but it did not.

Frank Bolaños, a member of the School Board, questions the lack of
efficiency in the school system: "There is not a single department
that can demonstrate that it has significantly reduced costs thanks to
better administration, and that this money is used for classes of
children."

''This is a very expensive administration, and we are one of the
poorest counties in the United States," added Marta Pérez, another
member of the School Board. 

Another member of the School Board, Evelyn Greer, said in an email to
El Nuevo Herald: ''I totally support paying good salaries to keep the
best people for educating the children in our schools." 

Greer declined to answer a questionnaire on the administrative budget
that El Nuevo Herald sent her.

None of the other School Board members responded to various telephone
messages or the questionnaire.

In previous positions as superintendent in Tacoma, Washington, and New
York City, Rudy Crew also increased administrative expenses. His
success in improving student academic achievement was decidedly mixed
in both cities.

When Crew took charge of the MDCPS in July 2004, he promised the
School Board that his reorganization of the cabinet would result in
savings of $53, but it ended up costing an additional $150,000.