One of the most depressing things I write about in Stealing You Blind is what is happening to public education, which has become just another source of plunder for the public-sector elite. My nieces have been affected by the Atlanta scandal, so I take this personally. Then Lynn Woolley in Texas told me this morning about this story, which is all too typical.
Lake Travis ISD’s Rocky Kirk, who was paid $351-thousand dollars to oversee a district of under seven thousand students, has resigned. He walks away with a small fortune. But it get worse.
Lake Travis has hired Mike Moses to find a replacement. Moses is the retired superintendent of the Dallas District, where he made $340-thousand dollars — highest in the nation. Under Moses’ watch, the Dallas ISD was embroiled in scandal that included fishy vendor contracts and misspent bilingual education dollars. Three of Moses assistants were indicted and two were sentenced to federal prison.
Moses somehow escaped from the investigation unscathed. He now receives $224-thousand per year, directly from taxpayers. Local taxpayers should be in open revolt.
Local school boards appear to have ridiculously cozy arrangements with the class of people they hire to run them. It’s about time people started paying attention to what’s going on with them at their local level. If you have a tale like this, let me know.
The whole thing needs to be privatized. It is so obvious.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOh, heck yes, even in a bright red state:
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That's just the end of the story. His original severance package would have been $800,000. He "accepted" over $400K. The whole school board was asleep at the switch, thinking he was the best superintendent ever and determined to pay him the top salary in the state. This drove up salaries around the state as his salary was used as a comparison.
One of the most lucrative hidden benefits is cashing in unused time off. The superintendent had claimed $350K in unused vacation and sick pay (even after an extended illness). The school board had a habit of increasing his vacation time, well beyond what someone in his position could/would actually use. The rules the school board set up allowed unlimited accrual rather than setting up a "use or lose" policy. This created a massive financial overhang just waiting for him when he left.
The school board (many of whom have lengthy service) took practically zero responsibility for allowing this to happen over the years.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI used to listen to my local school board meetings, simply because I had the public radio station on all the time, and they would come up.
I don't have kids, nor was I raised here, so I don't have direct involvement with the schools. But listening to those school board meetings, I'd say Murray is correct regarding the coziness with the administrators and superintendents.
If you're going to have this type of system, then a school district needs to be limited to a certain number of students (maybe 15,000?). The best schools are in those areas where there are lots of school districts, and therefore competition. For that matter, where there are small competing municipalities in an area, that also fosters competition.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseExcept that in the example given the school district has under 7,000 students.
Imagine there's no public school board . . . it's easy if you try . . . .
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI am from the Dallas area, and as I recall, one of the fishy vendor contracts was with Kinkos. Typical government deal. Kinko's went in with a "study" concluding that DISD spent millions of dollars in man hours making copies. So, they convinced the district to sign a huge contract where the schools would lease copiers from Kinkos, and Kinkos would also staff the copiers to free up the man hours. Two big problems. First, it turned out that the study was flawed in that the reality was that all those man hours were simply teachers and staff that were already being paid as a fixed cost all taking a few minutes out of their day to make copies. So, hiring Kinkos to make copies for them was just an additional cost, the functional and financial equivalent of hiring a bunch of new employees. Second, instead of selling all the existing copiers, the district stored them. So, they paid for the copiers, then paid to store them, then paid Kinkos to lease new copiers. I don't think it was ever proved, but somebody had to be getting a kickback. The Dallas school district has been historically corrupt. Another superintendent was caught charging tens of thousdands of dollars on her district crdit card for furniture for her home. This was in addition to getting rid of the existing office furniture she found when first hired and spending tons of money to totally redecorate and refurnish her office. It's like Danny Devito says at the start of his movie "Other People's Money", the only thing better than money, is other people's money. External Link
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMy local school district, Wake County, NC (Raleigh/Cary), has been in great turmoil for the past couple of years. The cozy clique of "progressive" educrats that dominated both the administration and the board had been aggressively busing students all over this very large district in pursuit of their diversity ideal. Children were spending hours on buses that were not mandated by any court; siblings found themselves in widely separated schools; extra-curricular activities were extremely difficult and parents were effectively shut out of the childrens' school lives.
Finally, there was a revolt by the citizens and a board pledged to end the needless busing was elected.
And then came the hammer: Egged on by the state NAACP, the district's accrediting agency (AdvanceEd/Southern Schools and Colleges) intervened and threatened the system's accreditation. This is a strong district with great schools that is an economic magnet and has many parents with high expectations. The threat of a withdrawn accreditation is political dynamite, however bogus the process is.
I make these remarks in support of the condemnation of school boards and the "cozy arrangements with the class of people they hire to run [the schools]." The entire education establishment is a set of cozy relationship between teachers and their unions, university education departments, school administrators, many school boards, and accrediting agencies. When regular citizens step in and try to restore some sanity to "progressives" running amuck, the whole organism lets out a collective howl of outrage. They are cozy regarding compensation, working conditions, progressive politics, and pretty much everything else.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSome great examples here. Thanks for them and keep them coming! I'll be using them in interviews about the book and will probably write a longer article on the subject.
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