Let's start in Philadelphia. Former Coca-Cola executive and Philadelphia school chief Paul Vallas departed the City of Brotherly Love with an extra $180,000 in his pocket, despite the district's deteriorating financial situation. In addition to his salary, his final pay check included $54,604 in unused vacation and sick leave, $25,000 in deferred salary, and a $100,000 annual retention bonus. The board did manage to get in some last licks by denying Vallas a 20 percent performance bonus for which he was eligible. Still, the payout brought Vallas's gross income from his last year in Philadelphia to $430,000.
After weeks of back-and-forth, Miami's school board decided to award Rudy Crew a reduced performance bonus of $41,000, though he was eligible for as much as $65,000. Some school board members thought he shouldn't get a bonus at all, given the district's financial woes and lack of academic progress. The controversy escalated into a series of racially tinged death threats directed at the African American superintendent in the predominantly Cuban American school district.
And in Washington,DC, Michelle Rhee's compensation package has some city council members put out. Her package includes a starting salary of $275,000 and a $41,250 salary bonus if she meets certain goals. While one city council member criticized the salary as excessive, noting that she makes more than the mayor and much more than the city's most-experienced teachers, another drew the corporate comparison, calling students the city's "most important product."
While a thankless job with no security may demand a high salary, let's show a little honesty here. These perks aren't really about giving superintendents incentives to do a better job. After all, do these boards really expect someone to be more effective if lured by a salary of $350,00 over a mere $300,000? The sorry truth is these perks are ploys to keep the public from paying too much attention to the bottom line.