Increasingly more local school districts have been seeking to add high-paid administrative positions, growing their expenditures despite seeing no enrollment increases nor significant improvements in student performance.

In fact, many local school districts that have been increasing expenditures by adding new positions have experienced enrollment that barely has held steady, or even dropped, due to variables like declining population or losing students to open enrollment transfers or attendance at nearby charter schools. If new state legislative proposals to expand school voucher programs are approved, the potential will further grow for even more public school students to transfer to private or charter schools.

Also, let’s not forget that taxpayers facing a challenging economy and high inflation have been increasingly less willing to approve tax levies, particularly for new money for local government and school districts.

Based on all these factors, one might surmise that prudent public school officials would be looking for ways to operate more efficiently — even trying to cut costs. Instead, in many school districts, just the opposite is occurring.

Girard is the latest school district to add a new high-paid administrative position — an associate superintendent. The board of education last month approved promoting Julianne Ware, former Girard Intermediate School principal, to the new post at a salary of $96,000 per year. As principal, Ware was earning $79,000. Then, a few weeks later, the board of education voted to hire William Bogan to fill Ware’s former post as principal at the $79,000 salary.

School officials were quick to defend their decision, telling our reporter that they believed the newly created associate superintendent position will pay for itself because the district no longer will need to pay the Trumbull County Educational Service Center for the gifted student services she will provide. But that expense was only a quarter of the new nearly $100,000 salary, not including the additional cost of benefits that come along with her paycheck.

Superintendent Bryan O’Hara added that Ware also will serve as the school district compliance officer and handle Title IX programs, including handling harassment issues, relieving building principals of some responsibility and allowing them to focus more on curriculum and management of the school buildings. He said the new associate superintendent also will handle state and local grants for the district and will oversee the district’s positive behavior intervention support districtwide. Some other duties will include assisting in strategic planning for instruction, staff development and financial goals and operation; analyzing student performance data and courses of study; leading implementation of academic programs, and more.

It all sounds good, but at the end of the day, it means devoting more expensive resources to programs that likely already were being handled by other administrators. And let’s face it, the district’s enrollment, about 1,700 students, is not an overwhelming number and, while it’s been holding steady, it has not been growing.

When questioned by our reporter, O’Hara was quick to point out that other nearby school districts also have associate superintendents, sometimes with different titles.

But let’s not forget that in many of those districts, enrollment is significantly higher. For example, Warren City School District has an associate superintendent of student services and student wellness and success. That school district’s enrollment is 4,627 students, nearly 3,000 students more than Girard.

Howland schools employs a supervisor of curriculum and instruction / federal programs / and Title IX compliance. Its enrollment is 2,464.

Niles city schools has a director of teaching and learning / federal programs / and curriculum instruction with an enrollment of 2,035 students.

Like private industry, we believe maintenance of new public sector positions should be results driven.

If Girard school district officials are so convinced this nearly $100,000 per year new position is warranted, then they also should be willing to base maintenance of the position on measurable results, including things like student performance on statewide testing, graduation rates and other student performance benchmarks, not to mention sustaining and growing student enrollment.