Dan Wever on the EPISD superintendent’s compensation

March 5, 2017

This came in from Dan Wever:

How much is the EPISD really paying their Superintendent?

 Three areas need to be looked at to determine what this figure might look like. The first area is EPISD expenses that reimburse the Superintendent for anything that he spends doing the district’ work. No figure is available for this expense.

 The second area is his salary. Here is a chart of his salary to date from his September 2013 arrival date.
226 Days in Contract
2013-2014 = $285,000.00 
 2014-2015 = $291,555.00
2015-2016 = $303,326.53 
 2016-2017 = $348,825.51
Note a 15% raise was given January 17th, 2017

If teachers get a raise this year the Superintendent will get same percentage increase. 
Example If Teachers get a 2% raise it will be about $1,100 while the superintendent will get about $7,000.
Before this happens, in 4 years, the Superintendent has gotten raises of $63,845 or $15,961.25 per year.

Teachers have gotten about $3,200 with a possible raise this year which the superintendent will also get as stated above.
The third area is BENEFITS
All figures are in Annual payments

 Automobile Allowance -__–$18,000
Telephone Allowance ——$14,000
Incidental Employee Incidental Benefits———-$30,000
Disability Insurance ——=–$8,488
$1,000,000 Term Insurance policy———— $2,355
Annuity Benefit————————-$20,000
Texas Teacher Retirement TRS—————-$25,300
Administrative Benefits –Same Holidays as other 12-month employees
Vacation Days 20——–$26,840
Leave Days 20——–$26,840
The total for these benefit payments is ——————$171,623 which is 49% of his base salary.
Teachers and other employees have benefits of about 12%.

But then again you still have to add the “Gifts” the trustees gave him on his new 15% increase contract.

15 extra vacation days so he could work at another job and still be paid by the EPISD. Many other districts allow their superintendents to give speeches and consult for money but most use their vacation days and most only get about 10 not 35 like ours. When he wants to go work and earn some extra money he tells the President of the board, she OK’s it and the district gives him one of the extra vacation days, pays him $1,543 for the day off and lets him go to work someplace else. Does this sound nuts? Well, it is! In his contract, it says “Except as provided in this Contract, the Superintendent agrees to devote his full time, skill, labor, and attention to the performance of these duties in a faithful, diligent and efficient manner.” This was before any changes to his contract.
 
15 extra days so he could work at a second job and 20 extra sick days so he would have a cushion if he gets sick. What is funny about his cushion is that the EPISD is paying him $1,543 a day for the cushion on top of paying for the disability insurance that he is putting off going on with the cushion he was given.

15 extra vacation days cost $23,145 
20 extra sick days cost $30,860

Which increases his benefit payments to $225,828 or 65% of his base pay.

Base salary and Benefits total ————$574,673

And this, of course, does not count all of the civic and professional activities he is allowed to participate in.

Of course, this total amount will not be quite as high next year because the 20 sick days “gift” (my view of these 20 Days)”gift”.

 How much would a superintendent in Houston have to be making in salary and benefits to be equal to El Paso ISD’s superintendent?

 Cost of Living Comparison:
El Paso, Texas – Houston, Texas 
A salary of $574,673 in El Paso, Texas should increase to $703,218 in Houston, Texas
I think the EPISD can easily say we have the highest paid superintendent in the state of TEXAS

Is it not always good to try to be number one not when you are using our children’s money!

I am reporting this mess to TEA.
***************************
Brutus

27 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

EPISD–transcript corrective action plan

March 1, 2017

The recently released “Transfer Credits Follow-Up Audit Report” outlines a corrective action plan.  From the report:

A Corrective Action Plan (CAP) was provided by administration outlining activities to e implemented to address the audit report findings.  The activities, person(s) responsible, and projected implementation dates are outlined below.

The report is telling us that district administrators came up with a plan to fix the problems.

There were evidently eighteen “activities” that staff proposed.

Partial disclosure

Incredibly the report starts with activity number 3.  Activities 1 and 2 were left out of the report.

We have to wonder what happened.

We deserve better

Brutus

2 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

EPISD–transfer credits follow-up audit

February 28, 2017

EPISD recently published a report dealing with an internal audit of the process used to grant or deny credit for course completion to students transferring into the district.

The audit report outlined seven problems as follows:

  1. 39% of applicable students’ transfer course credits were either not earned or shorted by the district.
  2. 40% of applicable students’s transfer requests were not correctly evaluated.
  3. 13% had the incorrect school year recorded
  4. 24% of the cases had inadequate documentation in the files
  5. 31% of the courses that were evaluated resulted in an incorrect grade being credited to the student
  6. Roughly one third of the cases were not documented within the state required 30 day period.
  7. 61% of the foreign transfers resulted in the student being awarded the incorrect Spanish course.

We have heard a lot of lip service from the district staff, their board, law enforcement agencies, and The El Paso Times about how horrible it was when in the past the district “cheated” in evaluating transfer credits.

We deserve better

Brutus

11 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Council–members at play

February 27, 2017

Of the four city representatives being looked into by the Texas Rangers and our local district attorney for potential violations of the Texas Open Meetings act, two of them will have to face the voters in May.

Representatives Limon and Tolbert will need to be reelected in order to stay on council.

Representatives Niland and Svarzbein each have two more years before their terms expire.

Recall elections

Our city charter does not allow a recall election for a city representative that has less than one year remaining in their term.  Representatives Limon and Tolbert fall into this category.  If one or  both of them resign the state constitution requires that an election to fill the vacancy occur within 120 days.

If  either Niland or Svarzbein resign at this point the constitutional [correction, city charter] provision will require an election within 120 days.  If a recall effort gets certified and one or both of them [correction, then] resign, our city charter states that “no recall election shall be held”.

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | City government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Trying to hide?

February 26, 2017

One of our city representatives complied with the open records request requiring that he turn over text messages relating to the serial quorum that he seems to have been involved in.

Partially

Actually he failed to turn over a key one that proves that he and others intended to violate the law by manipulating the number of members of council in a secret meeting.

What does that tell us?

We deserve better

Brutus

2 Comments | City government, Open Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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