Rotten Apple Nominations
Send us your nominations for the Rotten Apple Award! During School Choice Week, we’ll be giving away one $50 Visa gift card to the person who sends us the most outrageous example of their school district’s spending. Places to find information are the school district’s check register, school board meetings and minutes, and news articles highlighting egregious spending.
Email your examples to texas@afphq.org. The top two-three examples will entered into the Rotten Apple Award survey, and the entry that gets the most votes will win the $50 gift card.
Past Recipients
Week 1 Winner – Cypress-Fairbanks ISD
Week 2 Winner – Lake Travis ISD
Lake Travis ISD’s superintendent makes $252,799 per year (base salary) and the three asst. super’s make $131,750, $127,500 and $126,000. There are several (14) either Directors, Exec. Dir. or Senior Dir. making $101,000 down to $75,000. One elementary school principal makes $81,097 per year, while one third grade teacher who has been teaching 30+ years earns just $63,086 per year, and one kindergarten teacher who has been teaching for 20+ years earns just $52,706 per year. Enrollment is just over 6,000 with one high school, two middle schools and five elementary schools. The High school football coach makes $117,550 per year, and one of the elementary school librarians makes $66,234 per year. The Dir. of Food & Nutrition makes $77,539… if they outsourced this service to ARAMARK or Sodexho the directors would make about $50,000 per year.
Week 3 Winner – Beaumont ISD
Beaumont ISD – has the highest-paid superintendent in the state, Dr. Carrol Thomas, who earns $347,834 per year (19,000 students in the district). BISD is in the middle of a budget “crunch” yet plans to hire a communications specialist to help the district’s communications director, who earns more than $90,000 per year.
Week 4 Winner – Dallas ISD
Dallas ISD – $3.03 billion in debt. The district is rated Academically Acceptable (second from the bottom), has a dropout rate of 32.4%, and spends about half of the tax revenue it receives per pupil on classroom instruction. Superintendent Eliu Hinojosa takes home an annual base salary of $332,832 for a district with 157,162 students.
Week 5 Winner – Keller ISD
Keller ISD administrators told a group of 500 students that the only way to save 137 teaching positions is to raise school district taxes. They laid the blame for their district’s budget shortfall squarely at the feet of the Texas legislature – even though the superintendent earns $225,000 per year (not including perks and bonuses) and only 51% of the current revenue even makes it into the classrooms. Clearly, there’s room for cuts at KISD without firing teachers!
Week 6 Winner – Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD
Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD spends almost $300,000 on 7 painters (1 department head, 2 supervisors, a grounds painter, and 3 painters): average salary $40,000 per year.The district retired an assistant superintendent from the 2009-2010 school year and rehired him part time (less than 20 hours per week) at $80,000 per year. He is also drawing his retirement of about $150,000.The district spends $50,000 on coffee for administrators.The district spends $500,000 on catered food, up from $300,000 only 2 years ago. Food for staff, not for kids. The district hasn’t had a balanced budget since 2006 (consistently deficit). In this time of budget crisis, this district’s strategy is to wait and see.
Week 7 Winner – Northside ISD
Northside ISD: Northside ISD gave out 704 pink slips but failed to point out that the District has 12,589 employees of which 6,668 are NOT teachers. (And the Superintendent is making a base salary of over $270,000).
Week 8 Winner – Fort Worth ISD
Fort Worth ISD: On base salary alone, the Fort Worth ISD Superintendent is paid $328,950 annually. That is $178,950 more than the Texas Governor! Click here to read more about this school district.
Week 9 Winner – Dallas ISD
Dallas ISD: While deciding to layoff 270 teachers and more than 300 Pre-K assistants because of this year’s budget shortfall,Dallas ISD has spent more than $1.1 Million on travel within the first three months of this year. This school district definitely needs a reality check in education spending priorities.
Week 10 Winner – Texhoma ISD
Texhoma ISD: This school district issued a $1.05 million debt to build homes in hopes of attracting students. Click here to read more.
Week 11 Winner – Irving ISD
Irving ISD: According to this Dallas Morning News article that Representative Jim Pitts mentioned on the House floor last week, Irving ISD has added 3 new administrative positions all with well over $100,000 yearly salaries, and created a new bureaucratic layer below the Superintendent.
Week 12 Winner – Dallas ISD
Dallas ISD: Dallas ISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa is going to Georgia to take a new job – and plans on dipping into his six-figure annual Texas pension at the same time.The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Hinojosa will earn a base salary of $237,000 and $28,000 in annual perks to become the new superintendent of Cobb County School District outside Atlanta and its 106,000 students. That’s a drop from the $328,000 base salary Hinojosa was earning in Dallas, but Hinojosa said he will use his $200,000 annual pension to help make up the pay cut. Texas taxpayers: did you et a “thank you” note for your generosity? Click here to read the full story.
Week 13 Winner – Cypress-Fairbanks ISD
Cypress Fairbanks ISD: This ISD used school e-mails to illegally lobby against HB 33 (a school choice bill).
Week 14 Winner – Rockwall ISD
Rockwall ISD: Teachers were laid off, even though the district spends $9000.00 a month on catered food. The checkbook register, which you can see by clicking here, gives many more examples of waste including stays in luxury hotels and trips to resorts in New York and New Mexico.
Week 15 Winner – Keller ISD
Keller ISD: After a tax increase election failed, district officials plan to get their hands on more of the taxpayers’ dollars by instituting a $187 per year fee for children to ride the bus to school.