I resist the temptation to respond to every thread, because I do have a life, and I have other things that I need to spend my time on, and besides, if I wait long enough Wizard or LWW usually pipe in with what I would have said, and usually (well ok, always) say it better than I would.
I am responding on this issue because it is an issue I struggled with, learned a lot about, and changed my mind on. (Yes Virginia, I do sometimes respond to facts, not just create facts to support my preconceived opinions), When I first ran for School Board I was convinced that the superintendent's salary (Richard Green was making about 90K in 1991, caped at 95% of the Governor's salary - but he had a lot of other non-income revenue that the state auditor later made him give back), I also thought that the deputy sups, the other high level admins, and the principals were also over paid. I believed that we needed to institute more merit pay, and pay for performance for teachers, and I set a goal to get the number 50K to appear on the lower right hand corner of the teacher's pay grid. (PHD with over 20 years experience). This was based upon the people I knew, the salaries that I was familiar with. 50K was, for me in 1980 a fortune, 90k was stratospheric. By the time I left the board 10 years later (yea I only served 8 years, for trivia buffs I didn't win the first time I ran, won two years later) Sups were well into six figures and principals were approaching the 90k number, and teachers had their 50k goal but not much more than that. The salaries for the high level admins were still double or triple the average income in Minneapolis, but I saw the results of going on the cheap. the Robert Ferrarra fiasco was partially a result of the quality education coalition (Peter McLaughlin, Tony Scallon, Jane Ranum, Len Biernat et al) but also possibly a result of who would apply given what the board was willing to pay. Even to attract that level we needed to augment salaries with what I considered legal graft. Board positions on the boards of local corporations which paid 10 to 20k for four meetings a year, memberships in various clubs paid by the taxpayers, or, more often, by grants from local foundations. I hated these things, and I still do. I believe that a major problem with the school system is that it is serving the needs of local businesses first, and creating intelligent citizens much farther down the list. Putting our super and our district in the debt of the people whose influence I was fighting was certainly not something I was in favor of. When I became chair of the board, these things virtually ended. There was not a fight about it because the Boards did not like Ferrara anyway so they were glad to seem him go. Our Supe didn't like it, and it was one of the reasons he lobbied for me to be replaced as chair. - But that is another story. The summary is, that the salaries of school administrators do look like they are excessive, they are not. Industry is paying 50k to people right out of college, and six figures is within reach to high performers in most technical and managerial positions with a lot of responsibility. The level of vision, skills, experience, etc. that are needed for school admins to do what we expect of them, requires that we pay enough to attract good people. Well this has gotten too long. See why I don't post that much. I have so much to say about the current testing stuff, about the Belton statement, about the Superintendent flap, about the relationship between the demographics of a school (students, teachers, admins) and performance. etc. etc.But all of the issues seem to me to require so much more than the sound bites which can be posted on a list like this. I try on my blog, but even there I don't seem to have enough space - will anyone read my book? later David Tilsen Powderhorn REMINDERS: 1. Be civil! Please read the NEW RULES at http://www.e-democracy.org/rules. If you think a member is in violation, contact the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[email protected] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
