Poore-ing it on

Before Terry Bishop became Superintendent of School District 11, he was the Deputy Superintendent for IT. While serving in that role, Bishop built a fairly large infrastructure of IT administrators, most of whom had very little savvy when it came to technology related issues. One of the largest areas of dissatisfaction towards administrative support to the schools was in the area of IT.

As Bishop took the job of Superintendent, he stated that he was not going to fill the Deputy Superintendent slot that he was vacating. He said that he could save the district money simply by making the head of IT a Department Chair position. While we reformers were on the board, Bishop stuck to that promise.

It is a tradition in D11 for administrators to use tax payer funds to create wealth among like-thinking friends. While Terry Bishop, Mary Thurman, and Glenn Gustafson would be stumped if asked to create a plan to improve the academic performance of the district using the $500 million tax payer funded budget, none of them would blink an eye at how to funnel big money towards other administrators. No impact on student achievement needs to be considered when placing old buddies on the payroll, so this is much easier than educating kids.

We reformers implemented an administrative hiring freeze in D11 while Sharon Thomas was superintendent. This woman was planning an administrative hiring frenzy that would have placed every ex-D11 administrator she could contact on the payroll again. The hiring freeze required the administration to separate administrative hiring requests from general personnel actions. The administration was required to specify the job duties of any new administrative hire, to include the position's impact on student achievement.

Thomas was a student of former D11 superintendent Ken Burnley. Burnley designed the position of Executive Director to fit somewhere below the job of deputy superintendent. These slots were to be filled with loyalists and were designed to pay $95,000 per year or more. The joke among district employees has always been that nobody had any idea what executive directors really did for a living, other than collect big paychecks.

Now that Bishop has a board that answers to the administration rather than one that demands accountability, Bishop has decided to ignore his promise of leaving his deputy superintendent slot vacant. Bishop has changed the name of his old position slightly, but he has given his old friend Michael Poore the job of Deputy Superintendent and has given him a salary of over $120,000. Poore used to be the principal of Mitchell High School. Although he was liked by many people, he was rather ineffective at providing educational leadership for the struggling school. Poore has been working these past few years in the northern Colorado area. Although he has no real background in IT issues, that is irrelevant. He is being hired by Bishop because he wanted to move back to Colorado Springs and he needs a large salary. No one on the board questioned this hiring at all. On top of that, the administration has begun to ignore the hiring freeze with no vote ever being taken by the board to lift the freeze. Once again, the cowardly leadership on the board did not have the guts to tell the community that they favored tax dollars going to the admin building rather than to the classrooms.

In addition to the new deputy superintendent position, Bishop has created yet another executive director position. This position was given to Christian Cutter and is titled
"Executive Director of Student Achievement and School Accountability." The position pays over $95,000 annually and reports to Mary Thurman. Notice the fancy title. As Deputy Superintendent for Instruction, one would think that Thurman would be responsible for student achievement and accountability, but her $120,000 salary is apparently not high enough to allow her to handle those important responsibilities. No one on the board questioned Thurman or Bishop when they decided to tell the board to hire Cutter. No one asked how this position would possibly cause student achievement to rise. There are already executive directors for each level of schools (elementary, middle, and high school), so it is not clear where Cutter will fall into place. No chain-of-command relationship was required to be set up by the administration, and no clear area of authority has been detailed. As expected, no one on this board even cares.

Bishop took the job of superintendent with big promises of bold initiatives and a focus on students. It should probably not be a surprise that he has, instead, taken on the pattern of his D11 predecessors, which is taking more money from the schools to build a bigger administrative empire.

Notice that the labor union leadership, who are supposed to have the interests of teachers in mind, will never say a word about this. If they keep their mouths shut like good boys and girls, they know that the D11 Gravy Train will one day pass by their door steps, as well.