Let’s hope the new boss at JCPS gets busy fixing a system that not only overpays its administrators, but goes overboard paying overtime to people who make sure microphones work at board meetings.
It’s not Norman Hartman’s fault that he happens to work in a place that allows him to nearly double his salary by working overtime. It’s the fault of incompetent administrators like Mike Mulheirn, the JCPS executive director interviewed in Pohlman’s story. I think Donna Hargens’ first priority should be to get rid of overpaid administrators like Mulheirn and focus on using money more efficiently.
WLKY’s Duane Pohlman, whose expose of JCPS’s generous salary structure for administrators made local headlines in May, did a simple investigation to learn that the system is blowing $2.2 million a year paying overtime. This money went to people like Hartman, with a base salary of about $62K, who denied on camera being part of the JCPS six-figure club. Now, JCPS shouldn’t have let Hartman appear on camera, and he was made to look a bit foolish. But he does make more than $100K.
Here’s the big question — what is it that is so time-centric over there that JCPS can’t figure out how to get microphones turned on by workers during their regular 40-hour week?
I’s absurd that Mulheirn could say, with a straight face, that it’s an excellent use of taxpayer money to spend $2.2 million paying its regular staff overtime. The recipients include secretaries at high schools and bus drivers and security personnel, but no teachers. How about setting up their schedules so they get the job done in 40 hours?
And Pohlman pointed out, with the help of attorney Teddy Gordon, that the overtime pay could have financed 40 more full-time teachers at JCPS.
I wonder what the new superintendent is going to say about that?
