Published in the August 7 Leader
All right, kids – what time is it?
Older Baby Boomers might answer, “Howdy Doody Time!,” recalling the question that host Buffalo Bob asked his young audience each day at the start of that ancient television show.
Their grandkids would have a different answer, possibly groaning, “Back to school.”
Here’s my wish for county schools for the upcoming school year: Please, please don’t let it be both.
Education is too serious of a business to be equated with a 1950s puppet and clown show. Sadly, the giant clown shoe came close to fitting in a couple of cases.
The past school year was a rough one, public relations-wise, for both Fox and Hillsboro.
The Fox incidents have been hashed over many times. A series of nasty Internet comments led to the early retirement of Superintendent Dianne Critchlow and the firing of her administrator husband, Jamie Critchlow. Two current administrators, husband and wife team Dan Baker and Angela Burns Baker, also were implicated, put on paid administrative leave during an investigation and recently reinstated after losing some pay and vacation time.
As that sad saga was unfolding, outraged citizens suddenly also became aware of how much money the entire administrative team was making. Teachers, too! Then new Fox CFO John Brazeal, before he even officially began work, reported that Fox was deficit-spending its $108 million operating budget by $5 million.
Suddenly, it looked like Rome was burning while the Critchlows had been fiddling, and with very expensive, taxpayer-purchased fiddles at that.
For most of the summer, the Fox Board of Education has been fending off cannon shots while trying to straighten out the mess. Reinstating the Bakers was going to provoke those circling the castle, but the board did it – with justifiable mercy, in this view. With the help of money man Brazeal, the district tried to move ahead.
The Critchlows walked with a pile of money – a typical go-away severance deal for Dianne Critchlow of accumulated vacation and sick time, an annuity payout, etc.
At 48, because of her final quarter-million-dollar salary, she’ll collect an annual state pension of at least $140,000 as long as she lives.
Then an unexpectedly positive thing happened – six Central Office administrators voluntarily took a pay cut of 5 percent, urging building administrators to follow their example. The critics, of course, still wanted their heads, or at least salary whacks of 10 percent, or 20 or 30 percent.
Here’s the funny thing – these same villagers now storming the castle are among those who have voted these school board members in office, year after year.
The salary schedule of administrators and teachers those board members approved should not have been shocking to the torchbearers. The Leader last summer printed a list of all administrator salaries countywide – the second time for the paper to do so – and it annually reports teacher salaries from every district in the county.
Fox always tops both lists.
The dissenters have been simmering since the 2013 hiring of Kelly Nash as food service director over what appeared to be more-qualified candidates. Her mother-in-law happened to be the school board president at the time.
Nepotism, long a tradition in the Fox district, became a battle cry once again.
As it did in Hillsboro, where it hasn’t been as long a tradition as it has been at Fox.
Hillsboro Superintendent Aaron Cornman has been on the job since mid-2013. He was hired on a 4-3 split vote in March of that year.
In September, the Board of Education changed its nepotism policy, allegedly to conform to state policy, to make it possible for relatives to be hired. Hillsboro’s stricter policy had been to prohibit it, period. The new policy made it possible, but kept board members from voting for their own relatives.
In May of this year, Cornman’s wife was hired to fill a newly created position of instructional coach for teachers (there already was one such position at Hillsboro) at $48,119 per year. She was chosen over 33 other applicants.
When some board members objected to the hire being made in closed session, the board rescinded it in June, then re-hired her in an open session.
By then, the nepotism war drums were pounding – loudly. They have since diminished to the occasional solo by board member Bo Harrison, who voted against Cornman’s hiring from the beginning and who has been his most vocal critic, even asking (unsuccessfully) for his resignation recently.
Bottom line: Taxpayers usually don’t mind funding schools, but they almost always rise up if they think a district has become a hiring hall for the big shots’ relatives.
That’s not professional management. That’s Howdy Doody stuff.
