Editor’s Note: These were the comments that I made to the Huntsville City School’s Board of Education at the board meeting tonight. Dr. Wardynski’s response to my comments was, “I did not state that we were hiring people at a nationally competitive rate, but rather that the salaries were competitive on the state level.” I have decided to accept his word on this point. Yet the question remains, why are we competitive on a state level in administrative positions but paying our teachers the state minimum? I have altered the statement below to reflect this change.
It’s interesting that that was the only thing he chose to respond to.
Dr. Wardynski, I’m here to remind you to put students first.
There are soon going to be at least four salaried positions whose primary jobs are to assist you in doing your job. Right now, my son has access to two-fifths of one aide to assist him. These positions include your Administrative Assistant, The Director of Transition, and you’re planning to hire a Director of Community Engagement and Partnership Development at a rate of $58,000 to $95,000. Finally, you’re planning to hire a Deputy Superintendent at a rate of $84,000 to $134,000 a year.
The superintendent continues to hire people at, as he said about the new CSFO, nationally competitive rates state competitive rates. These new contracts include incentive based raises. In short, the superintendent has at least $252,000 in aides while my son has $4,000 in aides.
I would like to know how you can justify this?
How can you justify these positions when students are still waiting for teachers to be hired?
How can you justify these positions when students are still waiting for instructional assistants to help them in their transitions?
How can you justify offering raises to administrators when teachers’ step raises have been frozen for an indeterminate amount of time?
How can you justify offering nationally competitive state competitive salaries to your administration when new teacher salaries are set at the state minimum?
How can you justify adding these central office positions to the system’s budget when we don’t have money for teachers to buy basic supplies like ink or paper?
How can you justify spending 63 times more money on yourself as you have my son?
How can you justify putting your needs in front of the needs of the students?
Please, Dr. Wardynski, Mr. Blair, Dr. Robinson, Mr. Birney, Ms. Morrison, Ms. McCaulley, put students first.
Tough questions.
BTW, when are the central office cuts we were promised last year occurring?
I’m sure they’re just around the corner.
According to Dr. James Horn, associate professor of education policy at Cambridge College in Massachusetts and strong critic of the Eli Broad Academy, students are trained to use their power to hand over school systems to the Business Roundtable. They are to go in and rearrange all the furniture, cause chaos, then hand it over to the Business Rountable. Sounds like what’s happening in Huntsville School System right now. Teachers and other personnel are disappearing all over the place with firings,transfers,demotions – and public humiliation. People from other states and other school systems in Alabama are being brought in to either take their places or to fill a slot created for them, slots we’ve never had before.
Without all that expensive personnel Superintendent Wardynski is hiring,it is likely he could not stand up to the challenges and complexities inherent in large school systems. He needs lots of people to back him, tell him what to do,prop him up, never mind that some of those hired are not accredited either. Never before in his life has Wardynski had to deal with school children, much less the complexities inherent in large school districts. He’s led an obscure, sheltered life in the army where no one dared question him, yell at him, pinned him to the wall.
Welcome to the real world, Superintendent Wardynski.
He recently said that things were in a mess when he arrived. The system’s been in a mess since Jennie Robinson took over 10 years ago. She, Doug Martinson and David Blair – who is in his second term on the board – are all big friends of big business. They have appeased the Committee of 100, Chamber of Commerce, Home Builders Association and related others, which has resulted in our being $20M in debt.
In the meantime, over-crowded Grissom High School has areas too dangerous to be in. I attended a meeting there recently and was asked to move because the roof might cave in over my head. Students are assigned classes in portables while fancy schools in affluent areas sit half empty, waiting for homes to be sold and students to arrive. For years and years Grissom and other southeast schools have been neglected while the board obliged the business interests in other sections of town.
Before he came to Huntsville, Wardynski was chief financial officer for the Aurora Colorado school system. The Aurora School System is currently $23M in debt.