State DPI and Number of Employees

I have lived and followed education in 3 states. Alaska, Texas, and Wisconsin. The DPI is a first. After 4 years I have tried to understand this governmental body. There is a Leader, Ms. Burmaster and based totally on the web site anywhere from 441 to 600 employees in this agency. When I have asked what all these employees do for the education of the state no one seems to know. The many teachers I asked stated their only interaction with the DPI is to renew their license. This seems like a logical function of a state but does it take 400- 600 people? When I view the directory on the DPI web site I am amazed all these people work for the education department yet none of the people I know that work at SCHOOLS actually benefit from all these state salaried persons. Can anyone educate me on the department, I mean really what they do, before I am once again asked to vote for a leader of a governmental body I fail to understand?

2 thoughts on “State DPI and Number of Employees”

  1. Ms. Battaglia:
    Have you gone the Wisconsin DPI website?
    http://www.dpi.state.wi.us/
    The information is very extensive. I believe that there are so many employees in DPI because there are so many school districts in the state of Wisconsin. Given that public schools use public taxpaying dollars, there has to be some very stringent oversight regarding curriculum & instruction, data, testing and a whole lot more.

  2. Yes I thoroughly reviewed the site before I asked the question.
    Follow my train of thought for a moment. My problem is I am a flaming liberal with a very financially conservative upbringing (this is a problem sometimes) that dislikes waste and, “middle management” is the biggest waste in any company or organization in my opionion. I give our teachers much more credit and feel these middle management positions are a waste of money that our teachers could otherwise use.
    Example:
    On the DPI web site there is a
    1. information and technology dept.
    2. Instruction and Media and tech. dept
    3. Public library dept
    4. Development technical services department.
    At MMSD per their web site we have a:
    1. Library and media service dept downtown
    2. Media Production servic dept downtown’
    3. Public information and business relations dept. downtown
    4. Technical service department
    5. Technology and learning dept. downtown
    6. Instructional Material Selection Service dept. downtown
    7. and a Dept of Assistive Technology that I am unsure if there is a staff or what but it must require funding.
    I just selected the topic technology to make my point. When I asked what do these people do at DPI, I mean do we need them at both levels and do we need all these people to provide the services to educate Madison children or are we just providing jobs.
    How often do these departments at MMSD utilize the staff at DPI? I do not mean to be difficult,DPI provides great stats to compare our state to others and our district to others and etc. But how much power does Burmaster have and is she managing this huge department and am I getting my money’s worth out of these people. I would rather have more $ in the classroom help, at the building maintiance. I am not against education, I am against waste that makes education inefficient.

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