If you want to see the Largest amount of Bloat in the School Budget - Look at the Single Largest Expenditure - Salaries

 Well, for years the biggest hiding ground for all the Bloat in these school budgets has been buried in the single largest expenditure in the school budget - Salaries, which grows exponentially with every new school budget. Wrought with budget games like 'Breakage' and the 'Staffing Shell Game' in which they inflate the salaries and keep adding new employees that weren't in the original school budget and fail to disclose to you in these budgets.

Of course, the simplest way to flush out all that nonsense and Bloat in these school budgets is to have a Salary and Headcount Reconciliation from the Prior year to the Current year school budget. But if you notice, they don't provide any such reconciliation anymore along with their school budgets. 

Without such a reconciliation, it's impossible to understand if what they're asking for makes any sense.

According to a quick, down & dirty look at the numbers in their 2024-25 111 page 'User Unfriendly' Preliminary School Budget, the Salaries went from $165,797,114 in 2022-23, to $183,835,822 in their Revised 2023-24 Budget to $183,835,822 in their Proposed Budget for 2024-25.

Seriously, how did they go from $165,797,114 in 2022-23 to $183,835,822 in 2024-25 and not explain it?

Here's what they should be providing each year along with their school budgets but don't and won't - I know I asked:

Without such a reconciliation, you can't know anything about what's going on with Salary dollars or the change from the prior year.

Here's a quick, down and dirty list of all the accounts with Salaries in the FY 2024-25 Preliminary School Budget:

Anyhoo, there's other Bloat and Hoarding in this Preliminary School Budget for 2024-25 but it's hard to Top the Bloat that goes on every year in these Salary accounts and until we get some effective Board Oversight of these School Budgets - it will continue to go on at your expense.