What 180K Will Get You
By Mitch Berg
Saint Paul Schools officially have a superintendent:
The St. Paul school board on Tuesday unanimously approved a $180,000 salary and a three-year contract with its new district superintendent, Valeria Silva.
Silva, who most recently served as the district’s chief academic officer, was chosen over two other finalists after a five-month search for the job of overseeing the state’s second-largest school district.
“Chief Academic Officer?”
The Saint Paul Schools have among the worst achievement gaps of any major-city school in the country. The graduation rate is hovering around 50%. The minority graduation rate is much, much lower.
What exactly did Ms. Silva do?
The district has 38,000 students, 6,000 employees and an annual budget of more than $600 million.
Which means the actual budget is just south of $16,000. Which is 50% more than a charter school student gets.
But here’s the part I love (emphasis added):
“Now I can get down to the work of leading St. Paul Public Schools for at least the next three years while we all continue our work of providing a premier education for every student,” Silva said.
Read another way: “I am now on the Celebrity Superintendent train! Whooooooooo! Three years ’til Denver! Three more years I’ll be in Chicago! All abooooooooooard!”
December 16th, 2009 at 8:48 am
I’ve told people about St. Paul schools low graduation rate but when challenged, I have no official source to cite. “Mitch said so” isn’t cutting it.
Is there a link to that data on-line?
.
December 16th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Our superintendent also applied for that job. I think he should be fired because if he thought a straight, caucasian human with a penis had a shot at the St Paul Schools superintendent job, he obviously isn’t smart enough to run a kindergarden classroom much less a school district.
To Ms. Silva – Good Luck (and I mean that). In three years, look for somewhere warm like Tampa or Miami or Phoenix.
December 16th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Three years? Has anyone put in three full years there?
December 16th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
The prior title of Chief Academic Officer and a graduation rate of 50%? She should have been sacked long before now, much less given the Superintendent job and a $180k salary! Astounding!!!!! What other perks came with the job?
December 17th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Here’s what you’re looking for, Nate:
http://datacenter.spps.org/sites/2259653e-ffb3-45ba-8fd6-04a024ecf7a4/uploads/SPPS_grad_rate_trend.pdf
For extra credit, it’s fun to set that graph on top of the funding chart….the more money they got, the lower the grad rate.