Update: Apparently the superintendent has changed her mind. (No word on the board of directors and this letter is a bit cryptic) http://www.abington.k12.pa.us/media/posts/2018/03/Letter-From-Superintendent-Regarding-Donation-High-School-Name-Will-Not-Change.pdf
This came to me today. Yeah, a “minority” raised an issue, lol. Right.
So the details have finally been revealed. Under the original “deal”, a non-profit foundation (separate from the school district and operating independantly as a private foundation) was set up a year ago to hold and control the money and this was never disclosed to the community. The donor was to have the power to control the contractors selected, approval power over curriculum, and various wings and rooms were to be named after his family members. And a huge prtrait of him was to be hung in a central location. No wonder the school board tried to rush this through with no public involvement.
Whoa.
That doesn’t even sound remotely legal for a public school to let private individuals control curriculum. Wow!
I’ve lived in this school district for 57 years, went to its schools, both my kids went to its schools. This whole situation stinks. The School Board and superintendant have much too cozy a relationship and all semblence of School Board oversite has vanished except for budget. The superintendant, in a district with 8000 students, is paid a salary alone of $315,000 and no one on the Board questions the Superintendent’s policies and actions. The Board members have served far too long and are much too complacent about their positions.
Wow, only sports coaches in our state draw that kind of a state salary. Sorry things aren’t more open and transparent.
This is not uncommon though. Plenty of establishments have buildings or performance spaces or stadiums named after private a private donor. That doesn’t mean the guy isn’t over the top or obnoxious but if you make a large donation you can stipulate stuff like this. It isn’t surprising at all.
I just read the update - the district sounds corrupt if they were basically going to let an outside group call the shots. Is that even legal for a public school? Ick.
Lots of ‘issues’ related to this donation, but the biggest is having a donor determine curriculum issues. That might actually be a deal-breaker. Having said that, if you were charged with running a school district that gets probably 80% of its funding from local taxpayers and somebody offered to donate 25 MILLION dollars to your district, it would be borderline irresponsible to not take the money. I’d hate turning over naming rights to the donor and his family but that would be a relatively small price to pay. However, it is the job of the administration, with Board oversight, to make curricular decisions. Can’t picture allowing a donor to make those calls. Suppose there’d be some oversight from the state, but probably not enough to protect the District completely. I can envision all kinds of knotty problems related to non-educators who may have an unrelated agenda makng decisions on what is taught and how it is taught.
Remember, Board members are voted into office by residents of the school district. If they’ve been in office “too long”, or fi they have inappropriate relationships with employees and/or donors, they should be voted out. Too often, incumbents in these volunteer positions continue to run because nobody else runs against them.
As to a superintendent salary of $300K+ (plus performance bonuses) in a district of less than 8000 students, that’s very unusual–triple the state average. She is the highest paid superintendent in PA. (Of course, it’s worse to pay football coaches comparable salaries.) This is a relatively big, above-average, diverse suburban school district located on the northern edges of Philadelphia–Montgomery County. A quick search online shows this supt. manages only about 1100 employees in 9 school buildings. Again, the Board determines salaries and the constituency has a vote!
I think the bigger issue is that the super and school board did all this in secret. It did not disclose the agreement with the donor and it set up a separate 501c3 to accept the donation instead of using its education foundation.
IF this were done properly, there would have been public notice and ability to comment on a proposed name change and curriculum issues. The board, super, and donor would then have been aware of the dislike of this and could decide whether to proceed.