Notes from the Field
Submitted by Frank Murphy, May 17, 2011
In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie has imposed salary caps on pubic school superintendents in districts with less than 250 students, at $120,000. In districts where enrollment exceeds 3,000 students, the cap is set at $175,000.
This is but one of several tactics unleashed by a group of newly elected governors who have exploited budget crises, whether real or fabricated as an excuse for cutting funding to public schools and demanding salary and benefit concessions from teachers and school administrators.
Elected officials such as Christie in NJ, Corbett in PA and Walker in WI have become prominent advocates of the strategies purported by corporate school reformers. These politicians and business leaders argue that an educational system operating in accordance with free market principles will be more economically efficient and academically effective. Their goal is to create a diverse portfolio of school choices that are market driven. In order to acquire the funds to do so, they discredit the efficiency of public school systems. Then they advocate public revenue being redirected to charter schools and voucher programs.
These reformers lead the public to believe that the charter schools and voucher-supported private schools they favor, have a much lower overhead than public school systems. This is not necessarily the case.
One just has to look at the administrative overhead of the Multi-Cultural Charter School in order to see that public funds are not necessarily reduced by the charter school model.
According to the most recent tax returns of the Multi-Cultural Charter School, its founder and chief executive officer Vuong Thuy, was compensated $206,342 in 2009. Thuy received an additional $69,550 in compensation as the Director of the Indochinese-American Council, which he also founded. The building in which the school is located is owned by this council. Multi-Cultural Charter pays $500,000 per year for the use of this space. Thuy’s combined salary from these two sources is $275,892. Nationally, according to a report published by the Council of the Great City Schools, the average salary for a head of a public school district with a student enrollment between 100,000 and 200,000 is $275,000 (Urban Indicator: Urban School Superintendents: Characteristics, Tenure and Salary Sixth Survey and report).
In contrast, Multi-Cultural Charter School enrolls 200 students in grades 9 through 12, yet compensates its CEO at a level greater than districts with hundreds of thousands more students. The yearly revenue for Multi-Cultural Charter in 2009 was $1.5 million according to board tax returns. Of this amount, 18% was spent on the CEO’s salary. This represents an administrative cost at a minimum of $1,375 per student. Not included in this figure are the salary of the assistant CEO, office staff and other administrative staff. As a point of comparison, in the 2007-2008 school year, the average administrative cost per student in the Philadelphia School District was $826.43.
Over 50% of the revenue provided to this small charter school is expended on administrative costs and facility rental. This certainly isn’t an example of how a school’s overhead is lowered by a charter school model. It could be argued that this is but a rare example of the inappropriate use of charter school funds. But is it acceptable for even one school to use public funds in such a questionable manner? This is an even more pressing question in lieu of the findings of an investigation conducted by the City of Philadelphia Office of the Controller and the Federal Bureau of Investigation of other city charter schools.
The board of Multi Cultural Charter recently removed Thuy as the CEO and placed him on leave in response to parental complaints regarding his lack of responsiveness to various fire and health code violations at the school. This isn’t the first time that questions concerning the management of this school have surfaced. Yet it continues to draw funding from the School District of Philadelphia with little if any oversight regarding the use of the money it receives.
This is not necessarily a case of negligence on the part of the School District leadership. It is primarily attributable to the near lack of regulation imposed on charter schools by state law. In Pennsylvania, charter schools are exempt from most state mandates, except those ensuring the health, safety and civil rights of students. This is also the case in the other states where charter schools have become prevalent.
The rationale offered by these legislators is that excessive monitoring will impede the operators of these schools from implementing an effective instructional program. Such a claim is absurd, considering that charter schools are being financed with tax dollars. Even more absurd is that when it comes to the use of private school vouchers, these same individuals propose even less oversight.
In Pennsylvania, State Senators Jeffery Piccola and Anthony Williams, authors of voucher bill now under serious consideration by the state legislature, claim that it is unnecessary for the state to monitor private schools that utilize state funds. According to them, parents will perform this function. They reason that if a school is not operating well, the parents simply move their children along with their voucher funds to a more effective school.
If Multi Cultural Charter School were operated in New Jersey, then surely Governor Christie would have questioned the extravagant compensation offered to Thuy. However this is hardly likely since Christi has had little to say about the extravagant salary paid to the director of the 300 student Teaneck’s Community Charter School. This New Jersey charter school leader was compensated more than $200,000 in 2009-2010. The salary caps Christi proposes to impose on school leaders only apply to public school officials.
Since Thuy has been removed as the CEO of the Multi Cultural Charter School, his assistant, James Higgins has been appointed the acting headmaster. However, Thuy will continue to be employed by the school in the newly created role of Director of Strategic Planning. The salaries for these two positions were not made public.
In Philadelphia, where charter schools receive a large share of the district’s budget allocation and where converting additional public schools to charter schools is a preferred turnaround strategy, more public attention should be paid to how public funds are used by charter school operators. If one of the main points for creating more charter schools and providing voucher funds is to maximize student achievement, than shouldn’t the bulk of the revenues expended on these school reform models be directed towards student instruction?
How much is too much to pay charter school executives? This is a question that was asked in this post published on the Notebook blog. An equally important question to ask is should salary caps being mandated for public school leaders also be imposed on charter and private school leaders whose compensation is derived from public funds.