A few weeks ago the edu-documentary The Cartel had a showing here in Columbus. If you've not seen it (which we highly recommend), The Cartel profiles widespread corruption and administrative waste in New Jersey schools. One particularly notable segment featured shocking numbers of NJ district administrators that were fired for not performing to expectations, yet still collected huge severance packages.
Think this sort of practice is confined to the Garden State? Definitely not.
The same situation is playing out with the resignation of a Columbus-area superintendent.
Steve Castle, the superintendent of the New Albany-Plain school district, recently resigned amidst a negative performance review from his freshly elected local school board.
The new school board, most of whom ran on platforms to depose Castle, brought enough pressure to force him to resign a year before his current contract expires. Complaints of Castle range from overall lack of vision to giving raises to teachers during a heated levy campaign. However, Castle was still able to walk away with a substantial golden parachute. According to the Columbus Dispatch:
?. Castle can stay on with the district as ?immediate past superintendent? and will do some other work, as spelled out by the board, until his contract expires July 31, 2011. But board President Mark Ryan could not explain what that work would be.
If Castle does that, he'll receive a salary and benefits package that would total $422,209, which would include his annual salary of $173,666; severance pay of $134,769; $91,000 in sick leave, and other benefits such as vacation pay and a car allowance.
If he chooses to leave before the end of the contract for another job, Castle would receive the difference of what he would have earned with the school district through the end of his contract ? $287,440 in salary and benefits ? and what he would be making at a new job.
$422,209 is the equivalent of 7 full-time New Albany teacher salaries for one year. (For comparison's sake, $422,209 in Ohio is around $600,000 in Washington DC, and $800,000 in New York City, according to CNN's cost of living calculator.) Additionally, the district has hired an interim superintendent (who's being paid $705 a day) and consulting firms to search for a new superintendent.
I'm not blind to the fact that politics played a role in Castle's departure, but these are alarmingly large sums of public money ? particularly for someone who was effectively dismissed. Do you think $422,000 is a reasonable severance package for a school superintendent, especially when the state and so many other school districts are struggling financially?
?Eric Ulas