Posted 2:41 PM by Susan Darst Williams

ONLY ELEVEN PERCENT GOES TO TEACHERS?

The average salary for a teacher in the Omaha Public Schools is something like $35,000 a year. But according to financial reports OPS made to the State of Nebraska, spending per OPS classroom totals $306,935.

So teacher pay is only about 11.4 percent of what OPS is spending.

The figures are influenced a great deal by the $230 million in construction spending OPS is doing, associated with its 1999 bond issue. But still . . . that percentage says a lot about what is really going on in OPS.

(Source:p. 50, '02-'03 budget, www.ops.org, $705,950,424 in total spending divided by the 2,300 classrooms OPS reports equals $306,935 per classroom, and an average per-pupil spending of $15,419.82.)