While public school teachers “starve,” central office administrators FEAST
We’ve heard ad nauseum from Bill Barber, his rabble, their mainstream media comrades, and the educrats about the “starving” of public education. Our public schools superintendent, here in Moore County, recently parroted the Moral Monday talking points. I hate the class warfare / envy game played by the left and their friends in the media. But Barber, et. al., have been so obnoxious about it lately that I think turnabout is only fair play.
WRAL did some excellent reporting — I know, shocking — about the sweet deals racked up by senior school system officials while classroom teachers are having to pay out of pocket to supply their classrooms and to work multiple jobs to pay their bills.
The TV station’s web site features a pretty impressive database with contract information for each county’s superintendent. Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s Heath Morrison is the state’s top-paid superintendent at $288,000 per year. Morrison oversees a system with 139,737 students. Tom Daly, of Person County, is the state’s lowest-paid superintendent at $96,000 per year. He runs a system with 4,828 students.
Moore County’s Dr. Aaron Spence pulls down $182,437 per year. He oversees a system with 12,499 students. The database includes a copy of Spence’s latest contract, which includes some interesting items:
- Eight extra days of paid leave above and beyond what the State allows school employees
- An initial salary of $165,000 per year
- Up to $2000 per month (for six months) for Spence to rent a place when he first moved to North Carolina
- The school board pays the full cost of moving Spence’s belongings to Moore County and any required storage.
- The school board pays 100 percent of dental and medical coverage for the Spence family
- The school board pays for $250,000 in life insurance for Spence
- The school board pays expenses related to Spence’s membership in up to FIVE professional organizations and THREE civic organizations
- The school board provides — and maintains — a cell phone for Spence’s personal and professional use, a home fax machine, a home laptop, and home Internet service
- Spence is required to get ONE medical examination each year. The school board will reimburse him for ANY and ALL expenses incurred as a result of the exam.
It’s awfully convenient for edu-crats and school boards to point their fingers at legislators and county commissioners on financial matters. But this database makes it clear that specific spending decisions are made at the local level in the various central offices.
These educrats are terribly overpaid. The legislature ought to put some serious limits on their salaries, and bennies. That is usually true of much of the central office as well as the superintendants. Every county superintendant I have ever had contact with was a blowhard dumbass.
One house of the Florida legislature once passed a bill to make the office of county superintendant in some counties as elected position. I would be all in favor of that in North Carolina, but a variant might also work. Let the school board hire them, but make them subject to voter recall by petition and referendum, and if recalled, they have no further salary rights. Unfortunately, too many school boards knuckle under to these blowhard dumbasses and act like the superintendant is their boss.