Since candidates Debbie Fort and Jeff Koch brought up the finances during the Monday night candidate forum (which the Globe barred the public from attending), the Globe felt it incumbent to explain away the criticism.
Most of the article offers Superintendent C. J. Huff's explanation about how all of the spending was part of a master plan. Of course, Huff blames everything on the tornado and building construction and says everything will be all right when FEMA kicks in and the district can start rebuilding its reserves.
While there have certainly been some questionable decisions when it comes to the building process, the out-of-control spending that has put the district in financial trouble has other root causes, which are barely touched upon in the Globe article.
In fact, the Globe article really only has one paragraph that touches on the district spending problems and that is toward the end. The number of upper-level administrators is mentioned in one sentence while the Globe offered one paragraph after another to C. J. Huff to explain finances, which as he told us during the Board of Education meeting Tuesday, is too complicated for us to understand.
Apparently, it was either too tough for Globe reporter Emily Younker to understand or the Globe has decided once again to play the kingmaker role in Joplin politics.
A little research, apparently something Globe reporters don't have to do when they have the quotes they already want, would have shown that the Central Administration office has 51 people listed with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in 2014, compared to 17 in 2008 when C. J. Huff, Jeff Flowers, and Randy Steele arrived.
Those 51 do not even include the non-certificated, undoubtedly highly paid people like chief operating officer Tina Smith, and director of the buildings project Mike Johnson, two highly paid employees who are not listed with the state since they are not educators.
The number also does not include the so-called teaching and learning and 21st Century coaches whose pay originally came from grants, which have long since expired, so their pay has now either been absorbed into the general budget or has somehow been covered by Title I funds.
Nor was there any mention of the nearly $100,000 that was spent for the thank-you tour C. J. Huff has taken across the United States, money which Jeff Flowers told the Joplin Globe had been approved by the Board of Education.
Or how about the cost of Career Pathways directors for Joplin High School? Five were hired as directors for each of the five pathways, while a sixth was hired as the overall director. Four of the six have no background in education.
How about the pay of C. J. Huff? While Joplin teacher pay ranked at 164th in the state in 2013, Huff's pay has been hiked to where it is 32nd in the state (and the teachers are not being asked to supplement their income with $8,000 speeches).
No mention is made of the district's Race to the Top application, which asked for approximately $10 million in additions. The application was soundly rejected, with a top criticism being the district's lack of transparency. Despite that rejection, C. J. Huff and the Board of Education found room in the budget for nearly everything that it wanted, with almost nothing being for the classroom.
The Race to the Top application also included a notation that the district would absorb the cost of all of the extra personnel called for in the request, but could not pay for another part of it- money for teachers to stay before and after school to work with children. For that, the application, which was sent to the U. S. Department of Education less than six months after district patrons, by a 45-vote margin, approved the largest bond issue in school history, the district would ask voters for a tax levy increase.
To this day, there have only been two places where you could read about C. J. Huff and the Joplin R-8 Board of Education's plan to soak the taxpayers- the U. S. Department of Education website and the Turner Report.
Huff and the board never saw fit to tell the public about their plan (Complete plan at this link)
In fact, as I noted in an earlier Turner Report, they asked Joplin's teacher organizations, MNEA and MSTA, to approve the application, which was more than 100 pages, but only let them see one page, the page on which they were supposed to sign their names, saying they had read the entire application and approved it. (The Globe has never written about the Race to the Top application.)
And Jeff Flowers and C. J. Huff have the nerve to talk about how transparent they are.
From the look of the story in today's Joplin Globe and the decision to keep the public away from the forum, the Globe would like for Flowers and Huff to continue their unique form of transparency well into the future.
Consider the conclusion of today's Globe story. It has been noted that the district's strategic plan calls for the reserve level to drop to eight percent before things start getting better.
The Globe feels the need to tell us that eight percent is not that bad. A note is added- "Missouri law identifies a school district as experiencing 'financial distress' if its reserves dip below three percent."
Now thanks to the Globe and C. J. Huff, we know that eight percent is perfectly reasonable.
That appears to be the only information that Emily Younker bothered to look up.
I despise these people. I work so stinking hard for my money, and they waste it without the slightest twinge of shame or regret. That the Board and the Globe have allowed that to go on tells me they also have no respect for the tax payin patrons of the district. They are all far more wrapped up in notoriety than they are in the truth or anything even approaching reality. I will not support the district as long as this is allowed to continue. A week from Tuesday I am voting for Fort, Koch, and Guilford.
ReplyDeleteIt would take such a small incident to send the district into bankruptcy. A downturn in funding could do it.
ReplyDeleteWhy are they not laying off the excess personnel, cutting out the incredible number of programs, and using some common sense? Since scores aren't exactly good in Joplin, common sense says all those programs aren't getting the job done and our kids were better off with books and happier teachers. I'd like books for my kids. I'm sick of the computers. Too much money has been wasted on frivolous ideas and not enough on basics.
These people have to go!!! One more week, I hope, and responsibility and ethical leadership will be restored.
The schools in your district are nice, but the kids in other districts, including where my children attend, are apparently learning at a much better rate. Perhaps your money would have been better spent on staff and materials instead of on flashy buildings and programs. We thought about moving to Joplin since we work there, but there is no way now.
ReplyDeleteIt is a deplorable, inexcusable shame, what has happened in Joplin since the tornado! All that momentum and good will that was shared from around the world has been lost to greed and dissent. I wonder what happened to my donation. Did it go where I wanted it to? Did the students really benefit from it? I am doubting that, at the moment, and wonder if I should follow up on it. Would that do any good? Can anyone in Joplin share with me, staying anonymous, of course, their experience with their donations? I feel sorry for the students and the staff. They are they ones who have truly been hurt, far more than I.
ReplyDeleteDear CJ Huff, Jeff Flowers, and Carol Stark,
ReplyDeleteWhat you are doing is completely unacceptable. You have fleeced the public and are arrogant enough to believe we are too stupid to understand what you have done. Well, I'm sorry to tell you this, but stupid we are not. Your expenditures are over the top, and any good leader would have curtailed the situation long ago. Your governing body, who is ultimately responsible, should have stopped him, if he didn't. And the paper of the area, above all, should have held them accountable. Instead there has been no accountability anywhere, and now our community has failing schools, undereducated children, and a price tag for it all that we cannot cover. I will no longer stand quietly by and watch. I will vote on April 8th for the candidates who strike me as having some common sense and decency, and those candidates will not be connected to Huff.
Sincerely,
John Q. Taxpayer
I think Turner knows more about what is going on in the district than the stupid school board. Thank you for keeping us informed! I read the documents you provided, and they are very enlightening. And enraging. Enough already! Down with Huff and the current board! Time for a change. Past time. I'll never spend a dime on the Globe again, either.
ReplyDeleteSo Joplin School Board, since there are no financial problems, I expect teachers and bus drivers to get a decent raise next time when due.
ReplyDeleteIf Huff is so unconcerned about the finances, then why spend the money to hire a "community outreach" person--complete with assistant--if the situation will take care of itself as soon as that big old FEMA check arrives? That makes no sense. Why sell off the classrooms, libraries, gyms, and potties to the highest bidder if that isn't a necessary endeavor? Randy Steele said the district had overspent, and he's a man of his word, as well as part of the problem. I'll believe him over CJ Huff or Jeff Flowers any day. I won't vote for him now, but I do believe him.
ReplyDeleteHere are some suggestions to tide the district over while they wait on that magical FEMA check to restore order (that is tax dollars, too, by the way, so wasting those is as deplorable as wasting local dollars):
ReplyDeleteThe art classes could make crafts for a rummage sale. Can't you just see the granny square afghans and egg carton lampshades now?
The PE classes could run around town and rummage for aluminum cans.
The AG classes could have an old fashioned egg-and-butter business.
The media classes could sell indie movies.
You get the idea. And, it's real world work, which is all Joplin is about these days, so hey, it's a two-fer.
This whole situation is as ridiculous as my dimwit suggestions. Time to kick the messmakers to the curb.
Joplin teachers are at 164th in the state for pay, but in students per teacher, particularly at the secondary level, they are at the top for the size of their schools.
ReplyDeleteIt's a bargain! Work those tax-paid sponges as hard as you can. Squeeze those dollars, CJ Huff, who cares what the teachers want or need. If they wanted more pay they should have picked a better profession. They are a dime a dozen. They are of no value.
I don't believe that, but it's the message being sent to Joplin teachers every single day under the current administration and building administrators. No one cares if they leave or stay. Another warm body will get plugged in and no one will know the difference. Until the data comes in, that is. Then the teachers will definitely feel the presence of administrators.
I was just told by a parent with a child in the district that Angie Besendorfer flew to Germany to purchase chairs for the teachers and the teachers don't even like them. Does anyone know if this is true?
ReplyDeleteI cannot say for a certainty that all teachers dislike the furniture, but the ones I have head from were not impressed by it. Of course, they didn't get to go to Germany and bounce on it either.
ReplyDeleteThis is 3:27. Thanks Randy. I should have been more clear in my comment that what I heard was Besendorfer flew to Germany and purchased the chairs all with taxpayer funds.
ReplyDeleteSo Randy---you know it is true?
The board approved a contract with the German company a few months back.
ReplyDeletewhy hasn't the Joplin Globe reported this? As a taxpayer I'm furious! if this is true (because Randy cleverly avoids my direct questions) it should be disclosed to the taxpayers.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Joplin should aim for fairness for all concerned, and everyone should get paid whatever the state average is for their job and have whatever the state average is for numbers of students. Start fresh that way. Sound fair, CJ? Oh wait...your teachers would be getting a major raise and you would get an even greater reduction. Sounds fair to me.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't trying to cleverly avoid the question. Bear forget did not buy furniture in Germany. She did, however recommend that the board buy furniture from the German company. The Board bought the furniture on her recommendation.
ReplyDeleteThe people from Germany came to Joplin to talk about the furniture. Several people spent the day listening to the man from Germany explain how the designs work and how they came up with them. They even brought samples. I think they did that before the trip to Germany.
ReplyDeleteThe Globe used to always print negative articles about the school district all the time. They seemed to love to twist the truth to make the district look bad and never seemed to want to find anything good that the district was doing. Now they can't find anything to print but excuses for all the mess. Why can't they just print the truth?
ReplyDeleteI don't understand why the new buildings had to be so over the top, from the German furniture on up. It isn't fair to the kids who are still in old buildings through no fault of their own. While they and their teachers go on every day in old buildings, sitting in old furniture (or belongings taken from teachers at East and Soaring Heights), while in the new buildings there is no limit at all to what those kids got.
ReplyDeleteHow can anyone in administration justify this disparity? Couldn't the buildings have been a little more simple and the blessings shared a little more equally? It's like at the high school, where the kids who take advanced classes get books, but the kids who could really use the support in the regular classes are denied that privilege.
Nothing is fair here. The teachers are overworked and overstressed and are leaving our children. Some children get far more than others, and the taxpayers have been stuck all the way around. Throw out the wasteful spenders and bring back some common sense before the state has to take the district over.
Teaching and learning coaches were originally paid from a combination of Title 1 funds and some other title funds. Some of the money came from rearranging how department heads and grade level representatives were paid. At least that's the story district employees were told.
ReplyDeleteTeachers in the new buildings aren't allowed to have any of their own things. It's all about the show.
ReplyDeleteI want a list of all the teachers who have left since Huff & Co. came in. I also want a list of all the people who have suddenly been moved into those administrative positions.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, teachers are losing jobs or running away before something happens to them. Money is being spent on all kinds of things that make for a good show but the kids are losing. They're losing instruction, teachers who know and care about them and teachers who are trained and experienced.
The TLCs were originally paid with TARP funds (Obama money, for slang). The original proposition was to close some job positions around the district and redistribute that money to create six TLC positions. As soon as the TARP funds hit Angie's hot little hands, the number of TLCs jumped to 13. Then they all flew all over the country to go to one workshop or another, while 13 teachers were laid off and staff had to give up all electronic things, down to pencil sharpeners, to save money. Few if any of those TLCs are still left in the district, and student progress has gone downhill steadily, so that was a waste of millions and millions of dollars. It's easy to see how the same administration could so easily spend millions and millions of dollars in donations, insurance, and bond money. It was easy to see this coming, for sure. Now the only question is how much longer it will all go on and who will be here to clean up the mess.
ReplyDelete6:13--
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean. At conferences, I saw almost none of the teachers my older kids had. They all retired or quit. It used to be I knew who my kids' teachers were, what they would expect, and how I could count on them to help my kids learn. I loved those people, especially the tough ones. Now I have no idea who the teachers are, and my daughter tells me most of her teachers are leaving because they are tired of the kids getting away with so much and all the pressure being on the teachers, not the kids, and because they're tired of not having anything to work with. I'm mad as heck about it and glad we are almost through here. If I had young kids, you would color me gone. They ruined what used to be one of the best high schools around trying to do so much for the media attention. It's a shame.
I want to encourage all parents who care about their kids's education to vote against Huff & Co on April 8th. I am voting for Koch, Fort, and Guilford. At the forum, only those three struck me as having any experience or true knowledge about schools, especially Fort and Guilford, but Koch struck me as having done his homework. After being on the board for several years, Flowers and Steele had no real answers, especially about funding, which tells me where the problem lies in Joplin. It's time to take back our schools and send the Huff people down the road.
ReplyDeleteIf teachers have to have plain rooms for the cameras, there should not be any decor in admin offices or on the hallway walls, either. If plain Jane is good enough for the teachers it's good enough for everyone. Anything else sets up a double standard, and goodness knows, R8 doesn't want it to appear like their administrators are treated better than the staff, no way...oh wait, there's that salary gap, isn't there.
ReplyDeleteThere better not be any personal touches at the administration building either. They blew over 400 grand decorating their office building. We don't want that messed up for the cameras. Plain walls for every room. Children uninspired and personal creativity squashed everywhere equally. That's only fair.
I don't know why anyone anywhere would be surprised that the R8 school district would diminish their teachers and not allow them any personal touches in their rooms. They place no importance on teachers and consider them a necessary evil. They can't deny it. When Anson Burlingame slammed teachers last week, did anyone see CJ or the high school administration defending the teachers of R8? Shoot no. Let little Bud be said to have been fired, though, and CJ is all over protecting that idiot incompetent fool. So, teachers must conclude that administration also considers them failures and therefore doesn't care if they leave or not.
ReplyDeleteI guess if the district is going to be flush with cash after the FEMA check arrives that I can expect my kids to bring home books. After all, we've been told that the district couldn't afford to replace all of those insured texts that were lost in the silver lined funnel cloud, but now they will be able to because FEMA will be fixing us right up.
ReplyDeleteThank you, CJ and the Globe, for bringing us this good news! Can't wait to see those new books coming home with my kids.
6:13--
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you can get that information with a Freedom of Information Act request or not, but I can promise you that CJ will make you pay big for it. The alternative is to comb through DESE data about staff for several years. It will take a while, but it is one way to find out who had what jobs in what years. You can also get their certification on DESE. DESE is a parent's best friend these days, because we can't count on local media to inform us, except for Mr. Turner, thank goodness.
I wonder what they could have gotten for the kids that they could really use if they hadn't wasted money on stairs to nowhere and a flock of career path people that have done us no favors. it's infuriating. I will not vote for Flowers, Steele, McGrew, or Banwart. It's time to make a change!!!!
ReplyDeleteWhat happened to all the trolls and apologists? Too busy on sign patrol to post here?
ReplyDeleteI've been going back and looking, and I can find no evidence that predicted such a precipitous fall in the district's reserve funds. In fact, there is evidence of the opposite. When the bond issue was being ramrodded down our throats (thanks, Lynda Banwart), Huff promised that any extra funds from the bond would be returned to the patrons. It was even proposed at one time that leftover funds would be used to build a grade school in areas not affected by the tornado in order to make education equitable across the district. So, somewhere between the passing of the bond and the completion of the projects, spending got way out of hand. Could it be the incredible number of new employees and all they needed to implement their programs? The trips? German furniture? Personal expenditures? Too many wasted days of professional development that required thousands of substitute days? We will never know WITHOUT AN AUDIT!!
ReplyDeleteI agree with 11:11. If all of the spending had helped our children make great gains, I think most of us who are able would be willing to pay. But the fact of the matter is that schools are here to educate children, and our children have lost a lot of ground. I resent that. I have to trust that when my kids get on the bus they will be safe ( last week disproved that hope), that they will be in the hands of people who care about them (hard to know with so many strangers in the schools), and that they will learn what they need to know in order to be successful. I can help my children at home, but many children to not have that luxury. On April 8, we have the opportunity to turn things around, and we can put in place a school board that will,hopefully, use common sense and cover the basics first, then add on as the kids learn. This board and administration is far more interested in having media attention than they are in true academic progress. So please, parents and patrons, join me on April 8 and vote for new board members. Our children need us to do our part.
ReplyDeleteThe current state of the district is a failed experiment. There are some new buildings but that is all that has been accomplished. Time to hold folks accountable on April 8.
ReplyDeleteTLCs salaries were paid with a combination of funds, including Title 1, and the TARP money was used for conferences. There are still original TLCs left in the district, but they're all in administrative positions now. Some teaching positions were eliminated so that a full time TLC could be in each building. Those were mostly Title 1 reading teachers.
ReplyDeleteI know that Besendorfer was very creative with funds. I wonder who the current creative strategist is that is messing with our money and our kids.
Thanks to today's Globe, I now know how long the candidates have lived in Joplin and where they work. I have no idea what they stand for, what they plan to do, or what they know. In other words, it's once again nothing better than bird cage lining. I will vote for those who worked in the schools first, then Koch. The rest are just part of the problem and no solutions are being offered, because they won't acknowledge there are problems.
ReplyDeleteThe Globe has no more shame than at least three, if not four, of the Board candidates. Blatantly bad reporting.
1:49--
ReplyDeleteIt the TLCs were paid with Title One, then the law was broken for any secondary TLCs. I believe this post has covered that before.
There's no point in listening to the current board and administration self-delusions - the numbers regarding student performance have been bad extending back beyond the tornado.
ReplyDeleteNearly every district in the immediate area is outperforming Joplin. If that is the case, why debate? Why not do what Carl Junction or Webb City does? We're not talking different cultures here; if they can do it we should be able to at least approximate their success.
Graduation rates are apparently the most easily massaged. Let's not actually bow to the expertise of educators, let's pretend that a big personality and bullying your way to the top in "business" can substitute for knowledge. Let's pretend that friendships between administrators somehow translates to effective education, stretching legality in the interest of mutual backscratching.
When you look at the way things are done, from being inside the building in the middle of the night when registering for the ballot, to bloating administration and cutting education, to wasting more time and energy on political enemies than on the practical concerns of teaching... how can anyone look at this and see success? Only resident ball-boy Anson Burlingame is capable of those kinds of mental gymnastics, kissing the balls as he flips.
It is not wrong that some among our voting public want to give our leaders the benefit of the doubt, to try and look at things from both sides. The truth is there, however, in the student performance, in the barely-there accreditation last year, in the rejected federal funds due to "lack of transparency", in the teacher and principal turnover rate which is readily apparent to any parent of district students, in the sweeping away of Besendorfer, in the lawsuits against the district, and in the mere fact that such heated debate is taking place at all.
Some will say that there are always critics and bitter people. That may be, but where the bitter are truly extreme they do not gain traction. They remain on the outskirts and are laughed at or hated, not unlike the Westboro Baptist Church --- even people who agree with some of the WBC's beliefs tend to distance themselves from that church because of how extreme they are perceived to be.
Southernwatch and The Turner Report gain traction because there is something real there. When the problems as MSSU seemed to resolve with the elimination of Speck, so too did the internet debate die down. There is a relationship between smoke and fire, and while this relationship may seem obvious to some it requires pointing out in our current climate. There are those who either wish to deny it for personal and professional reasons (Huff, Flowers, Stark, etc.) and there are those who deny it do to a peculiar and otherwise inexplicable brand of self-delusion (Burlingame).
This situation with R-VIII will not be over regardless of how the school board election turns out, but it may move closer to resolution if we can issue a clear referendum on the Huff / Besendorfer / Flowers administration via the election of Fort, Koch, and Guilford.
This is what we build towards, moments where we can actually do something. I understand it will not be easy, especially difficult due to the influx of candidates, money, political influence, and deceptive practices. The little guys don't always win, but we have to try and keep trying even if we get knocked down.
Let us hope that the arrogance of this administration will contribute to its undoing. Just as they lacked the foresight to see that firing Randy Turner at all costs only made his influence that much greater - to the point that he is the biggest thorn in the side of Huff, Stark, et al - so too let us hope they have placed too much faith in their own "righteous cause," a cause which is ultimately nothing more than the big-fish-in-the-small-pond who are used to bullying their way around and have mistaken those successes for knowing what they are doing.
Bless this feast we are about to receive.
Amen.
Dear 9:58,
ReplyDeleteI was so honored by the generous gifts that donors allocated directly to my classroom and activity that I was director of; I was given a check and was asked to submit receipts ASAP and to send thank you cards to the organizations and to specific donors. I was more than happy to do so. I was able to completely furnish my high school mall classroom with the supplies I needed. I had everything in place by the second week of school. I assumed I was set for the rest of the year.; however, I was totally mistaken. I came to work one day about a week after I had my room just the way I wanted and noticed three amazing bookshelves missing with the contents tossed on the floor, two classroom sets of literature missing, and a fireproof file cabinet. I was told that the donations were given to the district and not to a particular person or group and that the supplies I had purchased were being better utilized in a different area of the district. Three weeks later, I noticed I was about 800.00 short on my pay check. I immediately inquired with payroll and they stated they had an email from Kim Vann stating that I did not supply receipts for 800.00 of donation money given. I had not only provided receipts, but made a copy of each receipt, and the letter I sent via inter school mail. I was told that the receipts would have to be varified and after that, I would be issued a refund which came as part of a pay check so I ended up paying taxes, retirement etc out of a donation that was donated specifically for my classroom.
Are we sure that they did not get any money from FEMA yet? After all we only have their word they did not, and we know what that worth.
ReplyDelete