There have been a lot of letters pro and con on the subject of the accrued vacation of HCDE 12-month employees. Most of the letters supporting Rhonda Thurman made great points. The letters trying to justify this stupefying policy were weak at best. I won’t repeat these arguments here, but in order to analyze why the school board allows this crazy stuff to happen, a little perspective needs to be given.

First of all, who are the individual school board members and what is their background? As stated in one of my other letters, six out of nine are either public employees or ex-public employees. Janice Boydston, Everett Fairchild, and Chester Bankston all were direct employees of the school system. Debra Matthews worked for the city, Jeffrey Wilson works for the court system. You don’t think his bosses can influence his vote? Yeah, right. Chip Baker works for the non-profit Riverbend Festival, but his job is just like a public employee. Joe Conner is a lawyer whose law firm works closely with some of the Public Education Foundation members and power brokers in his practice. He will not make them mad for any reason. Kenny Smith is a union official. Unions stick together and the HCEA is the educational equivalent of a union. So the only member with no conflicts of interest is the lone ranger, Rhonda Thurman. It is not wonder the public employees get these sweetheart deals.

The problem with the latest debacle is not only the obvious financial liability of this crazy vacation policy, but how it came about. The contract was “negotiated” by administrators at the central office and HCEA representatives. Almost all of the administrators are ex-teachers and principals that are past or present HCEA members who hold teaching certificates. Although some of the administrators are in another organization specifically for administrators, whatever benefits “negotiated” with the HCEA are also bestowed on the administrators who are supposedly representing the tax payer. So, everyone from Jim Scales, Rick Smith, etc gets the same percent raise and is under the same policy. Not only that, since the administrators daily pay rate is much higher than everyone else’s, they benefit to a much greater degree than the standard HCEA member. In other words, these people are negotiating with themselves. They then present the contract to the school board who obviously signs it without much debate.

Furthermore, not only do all of these 12-month employees accrue vacation forever (A policy, by the way, I can’t find anywhere else in government or business) they are paid at their current daily rate. So if someone was a teacher in 1985 making $25 a day and now they are an administrator in 2007, they are paid their current pay rate for vacation days accrued in 1985! For example, if for arguments sake, Rick Smith’s daily rate is $350 now versus $25 in 1985, he would realize a “raise” of $325 for that day. This could be called a stealth pay raise as it were.

Talk about a taxpayer rip-off. Unbelievable! Our lazy, conflicted school board has shirked their responsibility due to horrendous conflicts of interest and basic incompetence.

Not too long ago I spoke with an ex-chairman of a past school board when it was appointed versus elected. He said the appointed county school board was basically made up of businessmen, professional people, etc. with no one that worked for local government because that was a conflict of interest. (Duh…). He even said that they had very few ex-public employees, retired teachers or principals. The school system during those times was run much more efficiently without these constant problems, tax increases, and increases in personnel.

Since the school board has become an elected body, the 7,000-strong employees of the school system who along with retired teachers and principals and their immediate families have dominated local elections. It is well documented that public employees vote at an extraordinarily high level. As said before, in a low turnout election they are THE power and they vote their pocketbooks.

To give this county a much-needed enema we need only look north to Knoxville. Although you haven’t heard a word about this from our biased newspaper here, Knox County passed term limits a few years ago. The lifetime politicians holding on for dear life tried to sue to get this law set aside to try and hang on to their gravy train. The court finally ruled that the law was valid and in favor of the people. They are now having a special election to replace these political hacks. We need to follow their lead.

It is obvious from this self-serving vacation policy that this “for the children” stuff they roll out every time they get greedy for more money for themselves is a cynical ploy used to get a little further into the taxpayers' pocketbook. On the other hand, when the school system employees’ pocketbook is on the line, obviously “the children” can fend for themselves. What hypocrites.

Tim Price
jat-55@msn.com