{"id":647,"date":"2014-03-24T12:03:59","date_gmt":"2014-03-24T16:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bakeramitchell.com\/?p=647"},"modified":"2014-03-24T12:03:59","modified_gmt":"2014-03-24T16:03:59","slug":"salaries-salaries-whos-got-the-salaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/2014\/03\/24\/salaries-salaries-whos-got-the-salaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Salaries, salaries, Who&#8217;s got the salaries?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Although charter schools are subjected to the same accounting standards and annual auditing that govern traditional schools, they are not required to invade the privacy of their employees by publishing their salaries.<!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>For management and accountability, the accounting system required of ALL schools breaks salary information down by purpose and type.\u00a0 Every taxpayer dollar spent on wages must be allocated and tracked in one of<b>\u00a0267 different purposes and functions<\/b>. During the course of a year, an employee may serve in a number of different capacities: regular ed, special ed, substitute, remedial teacher, etc. \u00a0\u00a0From a management perspective, the total amount spent by function is what must be tracked and compared to other schools or districts \u2013 not what a particular employee may have been paid over the year.<br \/>\nDid school X spend more on special education than school Y, and how did their test scores compare?\u00a0 Did school Z spend more than normal on special education overtime pay?\u00a0 Were their scores better to justify this extra expense?<br \/>\nThese are the questions that the current system is appropriately designed to answer and which is publicly available.\u00a0 These data are available for all public traditional and charter schools.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But these are taypayer funded salaries, some argue, and the public has a right to know how much each individual makes! \u00a0Your neighbor is a teacher or school secretary? \u00a0Well, look up her salary.<\/p>\n<p>But scanning the NC Budget Manual at<\/p>\n<p>h<a href=\"http:\/\/www.osbm.state.nc.us\/files\/pdf_files\/BudgetManual.pdf\">ttp:\/\/www.osbm.state.nc.us\/files\/pdf_files\/BudgetManual.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<p>reveals that anyone can submit a \u00a0request for a grant to cover taxpayer-funded salaries (page 16) from the Budget Director or from the GA:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\u00a7 143C-3-4. Budget requests from non-State entities. Unless otherwise provided by law, budget requests from non-State entities shall be submitted to the Director or to a State agency designated by the Director. A State agency designated to receive a budget request from a non-State entity shall evaluate the request and forward its evaluation to the Director in accordance with procedures established by the Director. This section does not apply to the General Assembly or to actions of the General Assembly to appropriate funds to non-State entities. (2006-203, s. 3.)<\/p>\n<p>A mind-numbing list of thousands of state NC taxpayer-funded grants is here at the appropriately named &#8220;NCOpenBook&#8221;: <a href=\"http:\/\/data.osbm.state.nc.us\/pls\/openbook\/dyn_openg_browse_r2.show?p_arg_names=listype&amp;p_arg_values=keyword\">http:\/\/data.osbm.state.nc.us\/pls\/openbook\/dyn_openg_browse_r2.show?p_arg_names=listype&amp;p_arg_values=keyword<\/a><\/p>\n<p>and they range from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/data.osbm.state.nc.us\/pls\/openbook\/dyn_openg_html_r2.show?p_arg_names=cris_id&amp;p_arg_values=41\">Crime Victims&#8217; Services Grants<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0(972\u00a0grants) to\u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/data.osbm.state.nc.us\/pls\/openbook\/dyn_openg_html_r2.show?p_arg_names=cris_id&amp;p_arg_values=56\">Domestic Violence Grant<\/a>s\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0(1120\u00a0grants). \u00a0But not <em>too<\/em>\u00a0much of an open \u00a0book. \u00a0They do not divulge individual salaries.<\/p>\n<p>The home page for all of these grants is \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncgrants.gov\/NCGrants\/Home.jsp\">https:\/\/www.ncgrants.gov\/NCGrants\/Home.jsp<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here is a typical example designed to help the deaf:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/data.osbm.state.nc.us\/pls\/openbook\/dyn_openg_award_r2.show?p_arg_names=grantee&amp;p_arg_values=parents\">http:\/\/data.osbm.state.nc.us\/pls\/openbook\/dyn_openg_award_r2.show?p_arg_names=grantee&amp;p_arg_values=parents<\/a><\/p>\n<p>And their Form 990:\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guidestar.org\/FinDocuments\/2013\/581\/727\/2013-581727548-09bad0de-9.pdf\">http:\/\/www.guidestar.org\/FinDocuments\/2013\/581\/727\/2013-581727548-09bad0de-9.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<p>There are thousands of these \u201cgrants\u201d of NC tax money to corporations with no restrictions on board makeup or compensation or salary publishing.\u00a0 Why are some in the media singling out just charter schools?<\/p>\n<p>A number of points should be considered:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It has evolved that our traditional school system lists people\u2019s personal salaries.\u00a0 Yet, the system is generally acknowledged to be performing very poorly for many of our children.\u00a0 Our state is near the bottom in many national rankings.\u00a0 Divulging personal information of employees does not seem to have worked to improve the system.<\/li>\n<li><i>Good teachers and staff who value their privacy and abhor the intrusion into their private lives may prefer working for private schools or in industry.<\/i><\/li>\n<li>Thomas Bus Company, McGraw-Hill Text Book Company, Pearson Testing Services, and many more very successful corporations each receive hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money yearly through our school systems.\u00a0 Not a penny of salary information is available on their employees, yet they provide outstanding services and products.\u00a0 Perhaps they attract good employees who value the privacy of their personal information, and who would resent the intrusive public revelation of their earnings.<\/li>\n<li>The voyeuristic public listing of the personal information of every teacher, clerk, custodian, supervisor, and other employee serves no managerial purpose nor does it work to improve the education of any student in the system.<\/li>\n<li>Although the NC Constitution carries a specific prohibition on state monopolies, the state fosters such a near monopoly over teachers and schools.\u00a0 It is this monopoly power which allows it to invade the privacy of teachers by requiring the release of their salaries and to do so with impunity \u2013 but perhaps to the detriment of the students for whom these teachers are hired.<\/li>\n<li><b><i>All<\/i><\/b> nonprofits must file an IRS Form 990 return every year which may be viewed by the public at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.Guidestar.org\">www.Guidestar.org<\/a> \u00a0The Form 990 lists the salaries and total compensation of all employees getting over $100,000 and of any director or officer receiving more than $10,000.\u00a0 Why isn\u2019t this sufficient to satisfy the interests of the public?<\/li>\n<li>Charter Schools are controlled by nonprofit corporations just like <i>thousands of other NC nonprofits that receive taxpayer money<\/i> in the form of grants or subsidies from the General Assembly or their county or city.\u00a0 Many nonprofits operate medical clinics, volunteer fire departments, senior citizen centers, boys homes, etc. and are examples of nonprofits who are eligible to receive tax payer money.\u00a0 Why shouldn\u2019t they be required to list salaries also?\u00a0 Why should their employees be allowed to escape the invasive salary reporting?\u00a0 If nonprofits are going to be required to list all salaries, put this requirement in General Statute 55A to cover all nonprofits, and not just pick on nonprofits that operate schools.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If invading the privacy of workers receiving tax money is such a good idea, let&#8217;s cover everyone! \u00a0Amend GS 55A. \u00a0But wait, only 28.7% of our low-income children in the entire state passed the reading tests last year. \u00a0Maybe all this intrusive salary publishing is hurting, not helping!<\/p>\n<p>For a more informative measure on the total performance and accountability of charter schools and districts, we should consider how much money a school or district spends for each end-of-grade test that its students pass. \u00a0A sample of these measures can be seen at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/QcJAE0\">&#8220;Charter schools need to tell taxpayers what they are getting for their money.&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Although charter schools are subjected to the same accounting standards and annual auditing that govern traditional schools, they are not required to invade the privacy of their employees by publishing their salaries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-k-12","category-learning-and-education","category-politics","category-politics-nc"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}