Indiana public school teachers need to start assessing how their archaic

and wasteful school business structures are hurting their pay/benefits.

Indiana State Rep. Jim Lucas gave an economic breakdown in a write-up published in The Journal Gazette:

One of the biggest challenges is resource allocation. In a 2013 study of Indiana education, professor Ben Scafidi of Kennesaw State University discovered some interesting facts.

From 1992 to 2013, the student population increased by 9 percent, while the teacher population increased by 26 percent and other staff increased by 46 percent.

If the non-teaching staff had increased the same rate as students did, Hoosier teachers could have an almost $15,000 pay raise.

Data from the Indiana Department of Education show 70,966 teachers for a student population of 1,046,527 students in 2015-16, providing a student to teacher ratio of less than 15-1.

Currently, the percentage of teachers as a total percentage of public education personnel is only 40 percent, which is significantly behind the national average of 50 percent.

Also significant is that only 58 cents of every education dollar makes it to our classrooms. The facts show that we don’t have a funding issue; we have a dollar-allocation issue.