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As lawmakers and educational leaders across West Virginia take a hard look at school finances, administrative staff that work outside the classroom have come under increased scrutiny.
But Uriah Cummings, School Financial Operations officer for the West Virginia Department of Education, says administrators manage an increasingly complicated educational landscape. He spoke to reporter Chris Schulz about their necessary role in schools.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Schulz: Why is school administration so complicated these days?
Cummings: I think that’s a great starting point because school administrators have to deal with so much now, especially in comparison to even over the past 20 years. I think the last year has been heavy AI focused and having to take on that aspect of an already robust school system. It just continues to build, continues to have various risk points. In accounting, sometimes we live in the world of risk and the level of risk for an administrator in a school district continues to rise.
And to be quite honest, it’s not an enviable position whatsoever. I think we see that with the lack of candidates that we see even wanting to come in and fill the roles. I believe if we were to compare school districts today who would have a job posting for a school administrator in comparison to 20 years ago, the applicant pool, I would almost guarantee, I don’t have the data with me, but would almost say that it would be incomparable because the numbers have to be down.
Schulz: Can you explain to me, at a minimum, what are the administrative requirements to have a functioning school district in this day and age?
Cummings: The ranges are 800 (students) to 23,000 (students). We have Berkeley and Kanawha that fit that 20-plus-thousand enrollment mark. But no matter what, whether you’re an 800-student district or a 20-some-thousand student school district, you at a minimum have to have a superintendent as well as a treasurer, CSBO. Those are interchangeable terms in the state of West Virginia. So those are two central office administrators that every single school district is required to have in state code. There’s also an attendance director which the county schools are required in state code to have at least a half-time attendance director. There’s also requirements within, and I’m not an expert on this aspect, aspect of governance. But I’ve been told by our child nutrition folks here that there is a requirement that there be a level of service hours set forth by an administrator to deal directly with child nutrition within the school district, which makes sense. Those are no-brainers, the required positions that exist.
Beyond that, I feel like anybody can say it’s necessary to at least have some sort of governance over the transportation of students, which is a key aspect of the school district. The maintenance of facilities and making sure those facilities are safe for students to be able to learn and be engaged in. And then the instructional aspects. And some of those become more robust the more students that you have. You have federal programs that have to be overseen, whether it be special education, title programs, and then just the general instruction of students. Those are all aspects and areas in which the largest of our school districts have specialized individuals who are experts in each of those fields. But again, in the smaller school districts, that’s when the situation becomes: you have an individual who may be the child nutrition director, may be a half-time attendance officer or attendance director, and may be overseeing transportation. And those are all the hats that that individual was wearing on a given day. It’s impossible to do each of those jobs at the highest level whenever you’re having to juggle, in my opinion.
Schulz: What, on average, is the personnel cost of maintaining that minimum staffing requirement?
Cummings: Well it’s going to vary statewide depending on the salary of those folks. I would say that statewide, they’re comparable in a sense because not only are county boards of education having to be competitive with other states or even other markets, but they’re competitive against, you know, one another along county lines and borders. It’s easy for somebody to go to another county in West Virginia, so they have to be comparable in a sense.
Statewide, the average salary for a central office administrator is $99,000 approximately. But that includes the superintendent salary and assistant superintendent salary. So it would skew upward with some of those higher level positions in there. And an instructional director in the state of West Virginia, on average, makes $99,100. Then a non-instructional director, that would be a maintenance director or a transportation director, those types of positions on average are making about $87,000.
I think it’s a key point to make that those non-instructional directors, I know the argument. “Well, this is this is the public sector and we have to be good stewards” and all of that, but we also have to be competitive. Those are non-instructional positions, meaning that a maintenance director at a county board of education could go be a maintenance director at any private company who would need that same position. I know that that’s a position that counties are currently struggling to get folks, qualified applicants that are willing to take a pay cut to come be a maintenance director at a school district.
Same for a transportation director, you know, let alone bus driver salaries in this state and how difficult it is to get folks with a CDL to take a pay cut to not drive a truck for Walmart or wherever and come drive a school bus for the school system. But again, if you’re a director at a trucking company or something like that, you’re going to make more money than what you’re going to make at a school district.
Back in the day, whenever benefits used to be more competitive from a retirement and insurance perspective, maybe that was the draw to public education. Again, there are some people out there who just have that drive or that innate, just love of children or being able to play a role in children’s lives. And they’re going to do that regardless of compensation. But there’s fewer and fewer opportunities that exist out there with the inflation that exists across our country in terms of just being able to support your family and just being able to have a cost of living that allow for that to be a driving factor anymore.
Schulz: Why is average administrator pay is so high? Why is that necessary and how does West Virginia’s average compare to some of our neighbors?
Cummings: So I’m going to answer a few different ways, if that’s okay. With the first being, folks have to understand that teachers are 200 day contract employees in the state of West Virginia. So what that means is they’re only scheduled to work 200 days of a 261 day work calendar. essentially. So there are 61 additional days that an administrator, typically, if there are 261 day employee, an additional 61 days in which they’re receiving compensation. So it’s almost another third is what it equates to as to in comparison to what the average teacher is working. That math equates to if you were to take a teacher salary on average, let’s call it $60,000. Extrapolate that out onto a 261 day term, it would be about a $78,000 salary. So an increase of $18,000 in that circumstance. Teachers understand that whenever they take on the job, they are doing so for a less period of time than what an administrator would be. And that’s part of some of the draw that exists for becoming a teacher, right? So, you know, that’s aspect number one.
I think the aspect number two is just a general hierarchy that exists within our county and boards of education and having to have these levels in order to move up from one level to the other and justify why we have organizational charts in the manner in which they exist, with again, the superintendent being the upper, the very upper echelon, within it. If you have an assistant superintendent, which we don’t have assistant superintendents across all 55 county boards of education, typically then the CSBO, the finance director, is going to be at that same level as the assistant superintendent. So that’s the level 2 of the organizational chart. Then below that would be all of these directors that exist in a central office, instructional and non-instructional.
Then below them, from an instructional standpoint, we have principals and then assistant principals that would fall in line. And then finally, we have the teachers and the service personnel that exist there as well. So then to justify getting a teacher to take a jump up and becoming an assistant principal at a school, which we don’t have assistant principals in all of our schools, but just trying to use that as an example as to the scales that have to exist to take a step from one position to another to, again, have career advancement, but also incentivize or monetize career advancement. You have to have that, just like you do at any other job. or any other market that exists in this country. So I think that’s the second part of it all, just having to have that scale.
And then finally, the third is, again, the risk that is being taken on the further up you go on that scale. So obviously classroom teachers have an enormous amount of risk and they’re in the classroom and they’re the touch point for the majority of these kids in this state. And that’s never something to sniff at whatsoever. It’s a magnificent, it’s a huge, not only a risk, but also importance in a child’s life to be able to make an impact and be able to make sure that that child can advance. And that’s nothing to ever take for granted whatsoever. But then again, the further you move up, the more responsibility there is, because no longer do you have the responsibility of a 20-child classroom. Once you’re a principal, you have the responsibility of all 500 kids in your middle school. But also you have to worry about the discipline aspect versus the instructional aspect. You have to worry about the special ed students versus the non-special ed students. You know, there is so much in terms of additional work and, again, need that exists the further up you go. You start to see why an individual needs to be compensated more so as you move up that ladder. Because again, the responsibility and the risk that comes with those positions also just increases.
Schulz : The CSBO position, that county treasurer position or district treasurer position, is that one of the ones that is required by state law but not factored into the school finance formula?
Cummings: That’s correct, yes. So the school funding formula only provides funding for professional educators on the professional side of things. On the service personnel side of things, they provide funding for all service personnel positions to an extent. And it’s all driven by enrollment, ultimately. But the positions, the ratios that exist on the professional side were not built to include non-professional educators within that formula. So the treasurer position is not funded. The child nutrition director is not funded. Transportation and maintenance director positions are not funded under the funding formula. And if a county wishes to employ those positions, again, treasurer positions mandated, but if they choose to employ full time these other positions, which are an absolute necessity in operating in a school system, they’re doing so out of local dollars.
Schulz: What amount of the average district’s budget actually goes to these administrative costs, to these administrative roles compared to the entire budget?
Cummings: We ran the numbers, actually started actually looking at these numbers as a request from the West Virginia Legislature about three or four years ago, because again, that’s kind of when that conversation had first started. Members of the legislature just make claims that county board central offices were too robust, that there was too much spending going on there, and that they needed to rein that in. And actually, there’s been legislation proposed over the years that would put a cap on superintendent salaries and administrative salaries, which I think would be an absolute disservice to the students of West Virginia. But in comparison to the total budget in 2025 across the state, the average total salaries and benefits for central office administrators was 2.47% of the overall total current expenditure.
If you want to put broad numbers behind it, we’re talking $4.1 billion of expenditures in 2025 and $101 million approximately of those were for central office administrator salaries and benefits. And that percentage is fairly fluid throughout the state. It fluctuates somewhat, again, in these smaller school districts the overhead is heightened in those school districts. So of course, the percentage is going to increase in those.
Schulz: So just to be clear, as we start seeing some of this population loss and the de-enrollment that we have been seeing, as that trend continues, we should expect that percentage to go up.
Cummings: We will, yes, across the state. Now, there’s additional dollars that get pumped into public education every year, which offset some of that to some degree. You think about this teacher salary increases that we’ve seen in West Virginia over the years. Honestly, those themselves may have driven that percentage even a little further down over the years because of the increases that have existed there and maybe taking total expenditures from, I’ll throw out a number, but three and a half billion to $4 billion over a 10 year period. While, again, comparatively, there’s going to be some increases to those central office administrator salaries. But yes, as we continue to lose enrollment, these overhead costs remain the same. And yes, we’ll see those percentages. They should climb comparatively, yes.