Teachers Subsidized Pencader's Budget while Others Got Sweetheart Deals!

Troubled school

Pencader is a public school near New Castle with about 430 students. It has a taxpayer-funded annual budget of more than $5 million. In the last school year, teachers there bought their own supplies, collected donations and scrimped as the school struggled to survive financially. The school was nearly closed by the state Department of Education last year because of those financial difficulties.  - News Journal, 7/22/12

While Pencader teachers subsidized their school by buying their own supplies, and while volunteers  (the unpaid kind) worked to established an Annual Giving Campaign and collected funds for that campaign, the school leader, empowered with her diploma mill degree, was giving sweetheart deals to her spouse and friends.  Her husband collected more than $6,000 a month for teaching one class while another teacher was paid twice as much as her peers in the same department for less work. 

Thus, while some teachers went out of pocket for the school they love, and three to four others were RIF'd (reduction in force) due to the lower than anticipated 2011 September 30th Count,  two respected peers collected off-scale payments totaling about $120,000/yr for their contracted services.

Since both contracters were to collect more than $50,000/year, one must ask "Where is the RFP?" 

Another Question - Did anyone realize that if the two contracters had been payed scale to their peers or at least paid only for their services and not above and beyond for things like volunteering, Pencader could have afforded two additional contractors or at least one more full-time employee.  Pencader could have reduced its RIF by TWO.  Wonder if it would have been beneficial to have a Guidance Counselor? Or an employee dedicated solely to the Co-Op class instead of the PTO president?

Wonder if having those 1-2 additional bodies on staff (presumably qualified) would have reduced any of the thousands of dollars spent on Kelly Services.

The Bottom Line - Pencader did not spend its tax-payer funded budget with transparency nor conservancy.  Instead, sweetheart deals were sanctioned at the expense of Pencader's students and their education. Just think - this school did well on its DCAS scores - imagine how much better those scores could have been if the students were put first by the leaders and the adults stopped playing "the game" *

If you are not angry yet - You SHOULD Be!

* "The Game" as used in the sentence:  “Money has never been the object. That’s not why I went back into the game,” Lewis said.

If it's not about the money, Mr. Lewis, then Give It BACK!