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Super Pay for a Civil ServantIf Frank Moscati was not the highest compensated civil servant in Orange, Ulster, and Sullivan counties, then the Monroe-Woodbury School Board is setting out to ensure they hire that highest paid person. The M-W district has some of the highest paid civil servants in the tri-county area. More than 26 employees make more than six figures in salary alone! Including benefits their total compensation is over $3.2 million! The former superintendent, who resigned/retired after a mere eight months of a three year contract (a contract that had no penalty clause for not fulfilling his obligation to serve) was paid $175K plus $43K in benefits for a total of $218K!! Not bad for a civil servant! In the July 1st edition of the TH-R it was reported that Clare Perez stated that the next superintendent would be offered a salary of about $185K. Coupled with $43K in benefits we will be paying more than $228K! And all this to run an average performing school district! It is, arguably, Orange County’s best performing district, but compared with the wider view of NY state it’s just plain average. M-W ranks about 131st of over 500 districts in New York for performance according to schoolmatters.com. So why are we paying so many people so much money? That’s a very good question. You’ll have to ask the school board why. Let’s start with performance compared with lower per student instructional and operational costs. A total of 31 school districts out performed M-W for one year in both Math and Reading Proficiency while having both lower instructional and operating expenditures per student! One Orange County district out performed them along with one Dutchess County district and three from Nassau County! So much for the cost of living argument. For three years running 19 districts out performed M-W and cheaper in both areas! Four of these are on Long Island. What should superintendents do? Getting excellent performance at costs the taxpayers can afford? We don’t need to pay someone such exorbitant money just because this school board thinks we need to. People who want that kind of money are people we don’t want or need running this district. They are in it only for the money. For the children is a slogan that few believe in. If they got a superintendent for $150K (too much if you ask me but they have to pay more than her subordinates make) it would probably be someone “for the children”. We need that person. Someone who could make this district out perform for cheaper costs would do it with passion. The Denver City School District, a place whose cost of living is not much different than here, recently hired a superintendent. He presides over 13,000+ employees who teach 72,000+ students in 154 schools. Although offered $200K he tuned it down, instead accepting a salary of $160K with incentives of $40K if he does what he said he’d do to turn around the district. We need to hire someone like this. Another superintendent grossly underpaid by M-W standards is the Lieutenant General that runs West Point. He just runs a small city that includes a hospital, a college, an elementary school and everything else needed to run the place. And he does it with only three deputies that get just over $120K in pay and benefits. The Superintendent? He gets about $184K in pay and benefits! So now you tell me who has the tougher job? This problem isn’t limited to just M-W. Other districts are doing the same thing. It has to stop. Taxpayers need to tell them to get costs under control. Parents need to tell them to get performance up. Much more information can be seen at our web site. http://ctmw.org is the home page of Concerned Taxpayers of Monroe Woodbury.
John Collins is a retired US Army Master Sergeant who settled in Monroe “for the schools”. He is the public spokesperson for the Concerned Taxpayers of Monroe Woodbury group. |
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