Education - page 3

Well that pretty well tells us where there priorities are. Steve Sarkisian, football coach at the UW was paid $1.98 million last year (gross pay).  The second highest paid state worker was the UW Basketball coach, Lorenzo Romar at $1.14 million. Think about that for a minute. These were numbers published in the Times which were obtained from the Office of Financial Management . I am going to just stop with those two to get the point across that I am trying to make. The webs of lies, and twists and turns and bass-ackwards talk when talking budgets or expenses just makes your heads roll. I have to ask some questions here. Who signs those two bozo’s pay checks? If they are classed as state workers, then they must work for the state. If the state signs their paycheck how can they say they are not paid by the taxpayers or tuition? If the athletic program generates its own money it should not even be a part of the University. They should have a sports university, completely separate. They should build their own buildings, purchase land for their stadiums and sports fields. They will screw this up somehow by saying they are giving free tuition to the sports players. But look at the reputation the sports players have. The UW recruits these so called jocks, they do not care if they can read or write. They help them cheat to get in and when the recruits feel so important they drive drunk or rape underage girls or even go on to be a pimp Romar would try to cover it up. It’s plain sick.

I know you might not agree with me, but I think sports have gone completely haywire. It is not the most important profession in the world. It pays the best, and ruins more young lives than it helps. The kids are so intent on a sports scholarship they don’t bother to learn how to make any other living. When they fail to get to be a player they don’t know how to do anything. You would think a public university where parents pay high tuition so their children can be doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers would be rewarded more than a kid that can kick a ball or do hoops. It is not fair to taxpayers or hard working parents paying tuition to be paying so much overhead. Geez it’s bad enough to pay the UW President Young an obscene salary and furnish him a mansion but his pay is peanuts compared to the Coach’s.

Hope this article generates enough interest or anger to make others ask some questions about the expenses at the UW. Do they say out of one side of their mouth their pay does not come from taxes or tuitions but still factor it in when the Office of Financial Management figures their costs? Sports figures have ruined the lives of so many. They get more money than they will ever need and just go crazy. There are not many Jim Zorns and Steve Largents who can actually handle money. Now on a different spin that is not about money. If you look at the necessities of life. What sort of people do we need? I will list a few in the order of what I call importance. First and foremost you need a farmer to grow your food. You need a man that can dig wells or figure out how to get water to you. You need engineers and architects to build houses and bridges etc. I could go on and fill pages of what kind of people we really need to make our life even livable but you know what, a football or basketball coach is the least needed thing in the scheme of things. They can generate a lot of money and maybe feel important but when push comes to shove I would have to make this comparison. In the garden of life everything has a purpose. Honey bees might sting but they need to pollinate the blossoms where as I cannot figure out in the scheme of things the slug contributes anything to make our lives better. I put the sports and their obscene money making schemes right with the slugs. I think sports are great if they really are sports and entertainment, but these are just money making schemes for billionaire sports owners. I don’t think anyone that is called a state employee should be making more than $200,000 a year tops. This article will not agree with a lot of peoples thinking but hope that if their house falls down in a flood or earthquake they have a coach’s phone number handy to call and not call 911 for police or fireman. LLL

There is so much talk of the financial situations at schools and colleges that a person cannot find out where there tax dollars are going. Silly me, I thought the Family and Education Levy was the same (or nearly the same) as a regular run of the mill School Levy. Mayor McGinn was backing the Family and Education Levy so I decided to ask him. Below is his explanation. If you can figure it out please feel free to list your comments on this website or send in a submission for possible publication.

Thank you for writing me about the Families and Education Levy and Seattle Public Schools administration. I want to clarify that this is a Levy for city managed services that support students, and not a school levy for the Seattle Public Schools. The City uses outcome based budgeting to get results for kids. This means we track how we spend our levy funds, to make sure they are meeting our outcomes, instead of being wasted on salaries.

As you know, I do not have jurisdiction over the school district administration. I appreciate your concern about Seattle Public Schools’ difficult financial situation.

Sincerely,

Mike McGinn
Mayor of Seattle

I think we need clarification on what exactly does city managed services do. How does it help the students? The money from this levy goes to the city not directly to the schools to pay their salaries. It must pay some city employee salaries to disburse these funds. He is trying to distance himself from the school district administration and their bloated salaries and how they skim off the major portion of levy money.

The school administration is run about as poorly as the State Welfare dept.  One small example is the unequal treatment kids get. At Garfield kids THAT WANT to take Spanish classes can’t because the classes are full but they were able to come up with a special Spanish class for Tony Wroten so he can cheat his way to play ball at the UW. His enabler Jim Valiere was fired for giving him and Valentino Coleman a “C” grade on his course he never took. Tony Wroten tweeted “we get a three person Spanish Class, #Niceeeee.” Wroten already showed he was trouble when he started at Garfield and had to hire a lawyer (I imagine taxpayers paid for that too) to prove he was eligible to go there. They are cutting Spanish classes, laying off teachers but can still have a special teacher brought in to help a “liar and a cheat” get into the UW. Wroten lied on his application so he should not be able to go to the UW at all, especially on a scholarship. Do you feel this is a good way to spend your tax dollars?

Where is our new Superintendent when we need her? Maybe she is ticked that she is only paid $224,000 where the old one that got fired was paid $294,000. For sure Levy money comes out of our pockets, not thin air like they want you to believe.

I wrote this letter/email to our Seattle Mayor McGinn in response to a recent program created by Washington State that guarantees a free scholarship to any students getting free lunches (or reduced lunch programs).  It’s called the “College Bound Scholarship Program”.  Here is the program summary from Seattle Mayor McGinn’s office here.

Dear Mayor McGinn:

I was so surprised to get this notice about guaranteed tuition to any student on the federal free and reduced lunch program. WOW. This sure beats the toy in the Cracker Jack Box or the Happy Meal at McDonald’s.  It is so STUPID (you know it and you know we people know it) it is hard to know where to start. Up until you sent this notice I have been reading about how our LOCAL kids who have a 4.0 grade average, valedictorian of their class are denied entry to the University. Hundreds of kids were turned down because the University pays their management all 6 figure salaries. Just out of whack completely the waste in upper management but they wont listen at all. They cant afford local students because they can sell the spots to foreign students who will pay 3 times more. NOW, with your hair brained scheme of offering free tuition with a free lunch should really be challenged. You know nothing is free. You have to take it from a worker to give it to someone who does not want to work. I am sure there are some families that need help but any one I know on the free dole sure does not deserve it. You do not have POOR people. You have alcoholics, dopers and people who have never worked and never intend to work that know how to work the system. If the people who are getting welfare checks had to show up every day and pee in a bottle and pass the drug and booze test to get help it would cut the welfare rolls by 90%. Why do you think taxpayers should contribute money for these people. Low paid workers know they cant sent their kids to college. I could not send mine to college. I was a single mother working at Boeing. (For the record, I was married when I had them, all had the same father, but he died of cancer). We were poor. I would write a check for food and hoped that check did not clear before my Boeing check did. I was the youngest of 12 children during the depression. but want to add here that I did get a scholarship to go to any college in Montana. I got it because I had a 4.0 grade average and was the valedictorian of my class in 1941, Victor, Montana. We didn’t get free school lunches, and you could not be poorer than we were. No electricity, running water, but I did not get into any trouble. What you are offering is that if people can somehow stay on welfare, til their kids are old enough to go to college they can go free. 2.0 is actually flunking. What is a college going to do with those kids? Maybe put them to work handing out free welfare debit cards, no questions asked like they do at DHSH. These kids can get a felony plea bargained down because they will have free lawyers. Hope this is the thing that tips the ice burg. Shame on you for thinking this is right. It encourages people to stay on welfare and it does not even require the kids to get a 4.0 grade. I know you don’t read a thing I send, and I will get a copy of a website page from some staff member but needed to write it down and have a paper trail.

Lilly – Seattle

Finally a story in the paper got peoples attention about the University of Washington.  By now most everyone has heard of Brandon Stover. It is hard to believe that a local boy who graduated from high school with a 4.0 grade average was turned down at the University. He was valedictorian of his class. He needs to go to the University of Washington because he cannot afford to go unless he lives at home and keeps his job. You would think the University would be ashamed to turn him down. Hope this back fires big time. They have ran the wheels right off their bus. The House Dems’ say they have to raise tuition. NO THEY DON’T. Politicians blame the taxpayers for the severe cutbacks. The University says the UW budget cuts are because voters passed anti-tax measures. The University is not making any budget cuts and any taxpayer money to that place should end right now.

The House says a quarter of their budget (about $831.9), is dedicated to renovation projects at public agencies. The University is slated for a big remodel job. They should do it with their profits and their own cuts in salaries and expenses.

We taxpayers cannot afford to be screwed over by a bunch of greedy money grubbers. I will name a few, but for every one I name there are hundreds that have helped get them to that position and pay offs, favors, bloated salaries would break any business. UW President Mark Emmert would have been making $900,000 if he had stayed, but he has left for a better job. He was here a long time and his salary would have paid the tuition for $100 local students at $9,000 each. If taxpayers were given a choice which would they choose?  He was replaced by Phyllis M. Wise. Her salary is $535,000 plus deferred compensation. But she had to get a second job on the board of Nike to help her make it in these hard times. It gets worse. The football coach, Steve Sarkisian salary is $1.7 million. This morning in the Times 4-6-11 was the news that the UW hired a new womens basketball coach. His name is Kevin McGuff with a starting salary of $474,000.

Pieces started to fall in place when Governor Gregoire made a trace trip to China during the time she was slashing, cutting, losing sleep over the budget crisis. She took 80 people with her. It had to cost a bundle. She said it was for trade and higher education. I could not understand what that meat. It means she is recruiting foreign students willing to pay three times the amount to go to the UW. That is not the way to fix the budget. Her budget is trying to get all she can from the taxpayers. Someone has to rattle the cage and get the monkeys jumping around. If she was interested in getting the State of Washington back on track she would cap the salaries. Look at the fired Superintendent of school (Maria Goodloe Johnson), look at the Port of Seattle (Tay Yoshitani) Salary. These things are actually theft or embezzling from the students tuition and taxpayers. We were suckered into building two sports palaces for billionaires not we are making millionaires out of almost all the people running schools, city light, port etc. It has to stop.

We sure do not need a levy that doubles our property tax to give to these thief’s. Its pure and simple. Almost like in the third world countries where the dictator sits in a palace and takes money from the poor while they live in shacks and in the slums. We workers are sick of it. Its bad enough to take our money and hand it over to these people who do not want to work and prefer to stay drugged up or drunk, but this is worse to raise our taxes to give to the University of Washington who divides it around the top bracket of crooks. We should cut all ties with the University of Washington, let it run itself, and pay us back for the buildings we have paid for while they were  laughing all the way to the bank. It is sad that the University of Washington got so greedy.

Susan Enfield who took over immediately upon the firing of Maria Goodloe-Johnson says she has no big changes planned. What the heck did they appoint her for? They were paying Goodloe-Johnson $294,000 a year and will have to pay her for a whole year plus $9,800 in benefits for doing a rotten job. They also fired Don Kennedy, Goodloe’s handpicked chief financial officer. He will get half his salary, which will be $85,000 plus $4,900 in benefits. Susan Enfield will be paid a BASE salary of $225,000. When they say base they mean she can put about as many add on expenses she happens to feel like it. So lets see what we have gained in this shuffle. The Superintendant job for this year will cost taxpayers $618,700 (all the above added together). Two crooks get a year off with pay and benefits and we end up with a superintendant that will continue with the plan that Goodloe-Johnson created. The money squandered does not have to be paid back.

You would think the change should have been for someone to step in and stop the bloated, asinine, over inflated wages the management portion of the school is being paid. Why should they be paid such a salary? What is Susan Enfield doing to justify $225,000? Teachers start at about $54,000. Firefighters start at $62,856, Sheriff/Police vary between $85,564 and $106,883. It’s no surprise. She wants to keep her $225,000(more than our governor is paid) and has to keep peace with the peons in her administrative office.

Somebody has to step in and start completely over, first by setting a top salary that is realistic for what they are doing. If you fired every administrator making over $50,000 a year, I bet it would work a lot better. These managers are not royalty, they are totally self absorbed, they don’t deserve pay like that. They have proved they cannot manage school money, they divide it among themselves then ask for another levy. We can’t complain to the Governor, Representatives in Olympia, or the Seattle City Council. They do not read your complaints and you MIGHT get a form letter from their flunky directing you to their website, telling you to be sure to get in touch if you have any questions. They pretend to make a change, but things stay the same or get worse, but always cost more.