T.C. Weber is the parent of children in the Metro Nashville public schools. He is a strong supporter of public schools and a strong opponent of privatization. He reported on the battle against charter schools on his blog “Dad Gone Wild,” which ended in a sharp electoral rebuke to the privatization groups like Stand for Children.
But now he turns his attention back to his children’s public schools, and he worries because their schools are underfunded. His children’s elementary school does not have a playground.
The Nashville public schools have a new leader, Dr. Shawn Joseph. Weber filed a FOIA request and learned that Dr. Joseph has added new top administrative posts and has raised the salaries for the top layer of administrators. His pick for his chief of staff was an administrator who has worked to promote charter schools in other states. The board room of the schools was remodeled. Each of the administrators gets an expensive staff car. What’s going on? Was the school board the victim of a clever trick? Is it turning its electoral victory into a real-world loss?
Weber writes:
We recently hired a brand new director of schools, Dr. Shawn Joseph, from Prince George’s County in Maryland, at a salary of $285k per year. A significant raise from the previous director’s salary. We all clapped ourselves on the back because he didn’t seem to be a reformer. But everything is not that simple. I recently put in a FOIA request for what has been spent since Dr. Joseph came to Nashville, and I found some pretty appalling things happening. Maybe the public and the school board have been too busy with other things to notice. But we ought to be asking questions, even if it’s unpleasant. Just because someone does some things that are okay, it doesn’t mean everything is okay.
Once Joseph began his tenure here, he proceeded to hire 4 “Chiefs,” 3 from out of state, at an annual salary of $185k each along with the use of a car. In order to attract a few other desirable hires, the pay schedule for Executive Officers was raised to $155k and there are 8 at that designation. If I’m reading the previous salary schedule correctly, EO’s should max out at $110k per year. To put things in context, the previous Number 2 person in the district, responsible for creating an academy model that has won national accolades, earned only $154k a year until he left the district in April. Just 5 months later and there are now 12 people making over that amount. Perhaps the district pay schedule was way out of line, but that is a significant difference, and if so, I’m not sure that it’s one that should be rectified in one year. Especially when teachers have been asked to be patient for so long.
After he reviews the new salary schedule for administrators and the fact that each of them gets a Chevy Tahoe (which cost about the same as a teacher’s salary for the year), he adds:
Much has been written about the outside money that tried to buy this year’s school board race. In fact, last week the Election Commission announced that there was enough evidence to warrant an investigation into Stand For Children and the candidates they supported in the election. Dr. Joseph’s response was to hire Jana Carlisle as the new Chief of Staff. She is from New York City and knows virtually nothing about Metro Schools. She worked to enact the charter school laws that were recently ruled unconstitutional in Washington by utilizing a flood of outside money – the very same tactics that were employed in Nashville. Despite voters and parents clearly saying they were against the policies that organizations like Stand for Children support, Dr. Joseph ignored those voices and offered Carlisle $185k per year, a car, and money to relocate from NYC to Nashville. Dr. Joseph argues that she is extremely smart. I’d argue that there are a lot of smart people in Nashville who don’t have ties to dark money.
Now I ask: what’s the difference between a charter school’s board of directors that ignores the community and a Director of Schools who does the same? We argue often about the manner that charter schools lock out the voices of those who they serve. How many times have we heard it argued that with an elected board, a parent who has concerns has a venue to voice those concerns? But if a community makes its opinion known and a school board director chooses to ignore it, what’s the difference? I don’t know that there is a bigger expression of a community’s voice than the results of an election. So if nobody’s listening to our voices, we’ve got a problem.
Nashville, you have a problem.
Caveat Emptor — but Caveat before you sign the contract!! JVK
Does anyone know how many years this education líder taught in a K-12 classroom?
In my district all superintendent appointments had to receive a majority of vote of the board of education in order to be approved. This is a layer of checks and balances that would stop the process if a superintendent goes rogue as seems to be the case in Nashville. It would stop the superintendent from usurping too much power.
Every district should do that !
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
How does he hire 12 people without board approval and an adjustment to the budget? There are too many moving parts for red flags not to go up.
Dr. Joseph was probably given a glowing review to get rid of him. Some big doo doo is going to be happening in PG County soon and Dr. Joseph was right in the middle of all the dirt. Child abuse allegations, sexual predators hired by the school system, unsafe school buses, unsafe school conditions etc…. on top of the Charter expansion in PG County.
Oh and the biggie is the disappearance of Head Start funds!
Link please.
sorry, looking for it but I can’t find it….but all that comes up now are the reports of the child abuse and sub par conditions leading to the grant for head start being pulled. The County Exec (Rushern Baker) is deeply involved. I believe that yesterday or today the PG county school chief resigned and when asked why, he replied “no comment”.
Thanks!
http://www.fox5dc.com/news/207081712-story
Please take note about the issues with the school board and it’s ties to the county executive and his family members. I can’t find the article linking to the misuse or disappearance of the funds. The CE wants to return to an ALL elected school board (they currently have a hybrid) so that he has control over all the funds. PG County is a mess and deeper digging will find Dr. Joseph heavily involved.
Thanks for the link, Lisa!
Taxpayers are being BILKED. Everything is up for sale, even our young. Sick society at the top. And this sickness does trickle down and affects everyone in the end, even the deformers. History repeats itself.
Kevin Johnson has a problem. He belongs in prison.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/sacramento-mayor-former-nba-star-132320270.html
You beat someone’s face to a “bloody pulp” and then joke about it. Wow. And he wasn’t cuffed and booked?? Wow.
“. . . this ranks as Johnson’s second-most famous public brawl.” For a picture of the pie thrower: http://deadspin.com/heres-the-guy-kevin-johnson-reportedly-beat-up-for-hitt-1786939479
I suppose technically a pie to the face is an assault, but Johnson was not physically harmed. I don’t understand how he can claim self-defense for pummeling the protester with reportedly 10 punches. If an ordinary citizen did this, they would be arrested.
Cushy jobs with a free Chevy Tahoe for all his friends? Remodeling the board room? Morally repugnant at best, might even be criminal. I wish people like this would be prosecuted for fraud and serve prison terms.
Nashville, you have a PROBLEM.
“We recently hired a brand new director of schools, Dr. Shawn Joseph, from Prince George’s County in Maryland, at a salary of $285k per year. ”
So he wasn’t elected. That’s the problem in Nashville and in Tennessee, in general: leaders in education (K-12 or higher are no different) are appointed and not elected.
There are two tricks to increase the salaries of administrators, while not giving raises to educators.
1) Admins stay only for couple of years, then the next one naturally will get 20-30% higher salary than the previous admin did. They justify this by saying “this is not a raise but market value”.
2) Create new, absolutely essential admin positions: vice president, associate vice president, assistant vice president, all with appropriate secretarial staff. Admins need a lot of help in their difficult and responsible job.
As a result of these two methods, admins salaries increase much faster than educators, and so is the number of admins. In many (moöst) universities, we have the ridiculous situation that more admins are employed than profs. At my university, we have about 1,000 profs out of 2500 full time employees.
Private colleges could be worse. For example, MIT employs 12,000 people of which less than 2,000 are profs. http://web.mit.edu/facts/faculty.html
This may be an American problem: at Oxfod University there are more profs than admins. http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/media/global/wwwadminoxacuk/localsites/personnel/documents/factsandfigures/staffingfigures2015/Chart_1.pdf
This is not a hoax. These conditions exist
we need to look deeply at all facets before we judge. an educator/administrator must be from inside our state in order to help right our schools? in these short months, Dr. Joseph has done more to listen to parents and community voices than the previous administration has over the last seven years of our daughter’s schooling combined. he has already taken action that protects specific children in my daughter’s current school. let’s go carefully here.
i should mention that Joseph began working a month before he got paid. as a metro parent, I began receiving information from him in June – his start date was July 1st. let’s be cautious in drawing conclusions