BY PETER NICHOLS
Pajaro Schools chief Mary Anne Mays has declared a "spending freeze" in anticipation of severe budget cuts from Sacramento. Students can expect there own "freeze" after the board approved hiring a $100,000 energy czar to turn down thermostats. Teachers see no thaw in the forecast as their salaries stall in a state of "permafrost." But new contracts awarded to four assistant superintendents, read like "global warming."
It didn't take a crystal ball to predict budget cuts as the mortgage market imploded and home foreclosures started rising. But the spending on, by, and for PVUSD managers simply can't be stopped. They sprang for a new Deputy Superintendent (temporarily the highest paid district employee), a new ELL Director, a second high-powered law firm, and numerous mid-level administrators and consultants whose jobs focus on either teaching teachers how to teach, or convincing a skeptical public that all is well and transparent at PVUSD.
So, a mere fifteen days after the so-called "spending freeze," and with the budget sky falling, Mays recommended contracting with a Texas energy conservation corporation (sounds like an oxymoron to me) to the tune of $300,000 per year to help trim the district's energy costs. After four years, the Texans guarantee to save enough energy to offset the $1.2 million in consultant and management fees. Mays recommends spending money the district doesn't have now on the promise of maybe saving money some time in the future—when she is long gone. The board (5-2 vote) liked her idea, as they always do.
If you read what Energy Education Inc., intends to do, you'll wonder why the same couldn't be achieved by assigning the tasks to a $40,000 per year classified employee. Surely, you or I would try that first.
But there's more. Only one day after the so-called "spending freeze," in a closed session meeting, the board (6-1 this time) approved new contracts for one associate and three assistant superintendents. Though their contracts weren't due for renewal until June, and the case could easily be made that the district could no longer afford Zone assistant superintendents, the new contracts take effect immediately and bind the district through 2010!
That's not all. Each employee had their mileage allowance increased whether they needed it or not. Health benefit protection was added by increasing their salaries if the cost of their coverage were to go up. And they've been given the opportunity to work up to ten additional days beyond their contract at approximately $570 per day. That will give a boost to their retirement benefits as well as cost the district more in retirement contributions.
But here's the shocker. Each of these top-level managers will be paid for 20 days of vacation they presumably haven't taken and have accrued over the years—approximately $11,500 per assistant superintendent. Their previous contracts allowed payment for up to 20 of those days "upon separation from the district." But this contract allows the payment "in one year," this one, the year of the budget crisis.
So far, the district has offered no explanation for these early renewals and contract enhancements. Are they rewards for the stellar job each is doing, for the irreplaceable service each is providing, or for the unflinching loyalty each has demonstrated?
The new contracts—and the old ones for comparison—were not offered to the public. And the public was never invited to comment on them. It was only through a citizen's request under the California Freedom of Information Act that Mays released them.
But on the same day that these new contracts were released to the public, Mays charged—in an article published in a direct-mail advertising tabloid—that such document requests were costing the district "thousands of dollars" in staff time and legal fees.
With irony now piling on top of irony, the authors bragged of their investigative reporting born of the fruits of their own document requests! (No complaint from Mays about fulfilling those requests.)
Expressing her displeasure with district expenses caused by citizen complaints and document requests, "It reflects a total lack of concern for taxpayer dollars," Mays was quoted as saying. "If there was a hint of malfeasance then it would be justified, but there isn't."
Pete Nichols is a PVUSD teacher and spouse of a trustee. He can be reached at peter_nichols@charter.net