SHEVEPORT, La. – Hard economic times have clearly impacted the students of the Caddo Parish school district in Louisiana.

Consider the following item from the Shreveport Times, dated May 29, 2013:

“The Caddo Parish School Board took a step toward reducing a $21 million budget shortfall Wednesday by eliminating 107 elementary and high school teaching positions and implementing a modified high school block schedule with planning periods every other day for the 2013-14 school year.”

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School board member Lillian Priest was quoted as saying, “We know there is a $21.5 million deficit and that there is something we must do. There are hard decisions that must be made … and this is, at this point in time, the best decision we can make with our budget …”

Those sort of cuts are apparently a pattern in the district, at least in recent years. In 2011 the district eliminated 313 jobs from the payroll to help balance the budget, according to a news report.

Perhaps cuts in the teaching ranks were necessary in the 2013-14 school year.

But it’s hard to justify the elimination of teachers, who are on the front lines actually helping children learn, when the Caddo Parish district paid 126 individual employees over $100,000 in combined salary and benefits, totaling $14.1 million, in the 2012-13 school year.

The highest paid employee was Superintendent Gerald Dawkins. His compensation package came to $253,669, of which $201,999 was straight salary.

Was Dawkins worth that kind of money? One media report suggested that academics improved under his leadership, but his track record with finances is reportedly pretty spotty.

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In 2009, one year after he resigned as superintendent of the Saginaw, Michigan school district to go to Caddo Parish, a Saginaw newspaper columnist wrote, “…the district continues to reel from the budgetary mess that Dawkins left.”

In early 2013 the Caddo Parish school board voted to not renew Dawkins’ contract, in the midst of its budgetary crisis.

Eleven more employees made at least six figures in straight salary in 2012-13. They were Mary Nash Robinson (total compensation $156,671), Antoinette Turner ($149,750), James Woolfolk II ($145,932), Bryon Lafield ($138,424), Arthur Roberts ($137,296), Daniel Durr ($134,340), Brenda Pullen ($133,543), William White ($130,176), William Peterson ($129,972), David McGee ($129,612) and Kevin Sanford ($126,107).

There may be some teachers in the $100,000 club – it’s hard to say, because the specific positions of the employees were not listed by the source, which was the Shreveport Times. Teachers making big bucks may be a bit easier to swallow, particularly if they were effective in the classroom.

But at least 44 of them were high-ranking administrators of some type, who have limited or no direct impact on student learning. There were probably also a lot of building principals on the list, based on salary studies from other school districts around the nation.

Most of the employees on the $100,000 list probably did some sort of work that benefitted the school district. But when times are tough and priorities must be established, they should be based on what’s best for students.

It’s hard to defend $150,000 salaries for administrative pencil pushers while the pool of people who teach the students is shrinking.