Guest column: Clarification on Oak Ridge Schools’ administrative positions

Note: Due to a technical error, this Oak Ridge Schools press release did not publish earlier this month with a chart comparing the Oak Ridge and Maryville school districts. We did publish the chart, which you can see here.

There have been a lot of questions recently about the number of Oak Ridge Schools’ administrative positions.

On the state website, it gives the impression that Oak Ridge Schools has added multiple administrative positions between 2007 and 2013. If the numbers reported were correct, it would appear that the number of administrators increased by about 63 percent since 2007.

In reality, Oak Ridge Schools only reclassified one existing position to an administrative position in that time period. Why is there a discrepancy between district data and state reporting?

First, we need to define administrator. In Oak Ridge, administrators are defined as superintendents, assistant superintendents, principals, vice principals, district directors, district supervisors, and district assistant supervisors. If you look at Oak Ridge Schools’ human resource files, we have had the following numbers of administrative positions between 2007 and 2013:

• 2007—28,
• 2008—28,
• 2009—28,
• 2010—28,
• 2011—28,
• 2012—29, and
• 2013—29.

To compare, on the state website, it says that Oak Ridge Schools had the following numbers of administrators between 2007 and 2013:

• 2007—19,
• 2008—21,
• 2009—22,
• 2010—23,
• 2011—25,
• 2012—22, and
• 2013—31.

Thus, the state data does not reflect our human resource information. In fact, because Oak Ridge Schools has had the same administrative positions during this time frame, we can infer that either the definition that the state is using for administrator has changed during this period or that the people they are counting as administrators varies from year to year. So far, our calls and emails into the state to ask these questions have been unanswered.

Also, how a district gives titles to their administrators determines how many administrators show up on the state site. Not all districts use the same naming conventions, so it is important to be vigilant when comparing the numbers of administrators in different districts. For example, on the state website, Maryville Schools has 21 administrators listed. However, if you actually count their administrators, the number 21 only represents building administrators and superintendents. It doesn’t count their central office administrators, although they do exist albeit sometimes with different job titles from equivalent jobs in Oak Ridge. In fact, if those positions were also counted as administrators, it appears that Maryville has the same number of administrators as Oak Ridge (29).

The state website also says that Anderson County has 46 administrators, Roane County has 34, and Clinton has eight, but for the above mentioned reasons, we can’t be sure that those numbers are accurate. 

Actual Number of Oak Ridge Schools Administrators (2007-2013)
Year	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013
Total	28	28	28	28	28	29	29

In summary, using the state website to count or compare numbers of administrators will lead to misleading results, as there is no apparent consistency between either how the state is counting administrators from year to year or in naming conventions for administrators from district to district. Oak Ridge teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals, teachers’ assistants, nurses, school psychologists, maintenance staff, counselors, coordinators and others all play a vital role in the success of the district as a whole. Thank you to all community members who support Oak Ridge students and staff.