I agree with you in every particular, even to the point that my
numbers were inflated (although not in the way I expected).

Class sizes are significantly lower than 24, and cost per student
is significantly higher than $11,000.  From the Mpls web site:

http://www.mpls.k12.mn.us/about/facts.shtml

# of teachers        :        4,658
Mpls school budget   : $662,683,442
# of students        :       48,991

Some derived numbers...

'Revenue' per teacher: $142,268
Cost per student     :  $13,527

Again, if you assume a teacher costs $72,000 / year (which
is the equivalent of a full time worker making $80,000/year),
that leaves $70,000 overhead per teacher.  That seems a little
high but not extremely so.

If you assume a teacher makes $40,000 / year (a cost of $48,000),
that means an overhead of $104,000 / teacher / year.

I think I'm done.  I wish I had the $13,000 / year to educate my son.


"Thomas T. Veldhouse" wrote:
> 
> Assuming your numbers below are correct (and I believe them to be quite
> inflated), we should not necessarily be paying our teachers more because of
> the amount we are putting out, we should find out where the hell all that
> money is going.  When we know that and take care of the buracratic financial
> drain, we can then decide whether we should now increase salary, leave it
> the same, decrease it or what not.  We don't pay the teacher, we pay the
> taxes, which pays the government which pays the hog that is the school
> buracracy and they decide what to pay the teachers.  If they take 95% off
> the top and the teachers are still paid adequately, the problem is not the
> teachers pay, it is what the 95% is being used for.  We need to look at the
> entire picture and fix the system, teachers are but a fraction of the cost.
> 
> Tom Veldhouse
> veldy at veldy.net