But What About Jobs For My Friends?
Position Titles – Administrative Directive 5.60.014-AD
(1) Systematic procedures in personnel management require that there be consistency in assigning titles for classes of positions in which the work and responsibility are reasonably comparable.
In order to avoid the confusion resulting from the proliferation of different titles:
(a) It is essential that we carefully control the addition of the new titles to those in general use in the district;
(b) Titles must not be informally adopted or misused.
(2) In order to respond to these two considerations, no titles for positions may be designated without the approval of the assistant superintendent for Personnel. In reviewing proposals for titles to be used, the assistant superintendent will give consideration to the level and scope of responsibility and the existing relationship of such titles to present positions. Departments should avoid using unofficial and/or informal titles, which result in confusion; i.e., it is inappropriate to call someone directing a project a “director” when that person’s level of responsibility and salary schedule has been set in the “specialist” classification.
(3) It is equally inappropriate for stationery or business cards to be printed with other than an individual’s officially assigned title.
Policy Implemented: History: Adpt. 5/76
How many times has the PPS Central Office been reorganized in the last five years? You can’t even find anything in the PPS Directory because department names have changed. People have consistently picked up new titles and Human Resources hasn’t kept up with the changes. None of the titles listed below can be found in the PPS Job Description database yet they’re all filled Central Office positions.
- Federal/State/Strategic Grant Program Director
- Special Projects Director (Special is always suspect)
- Strategic Partnership Director
- Special Assistant Broad Fellow
- High School Reform Broad Fellow
- Human Resources Regional Director
- Partnership Development Manager
- Funded Programs Director
- Family Involvement Manager
- Advisor to the Superintendent
- Executive Director of Systems
Not surprisingly all of the jobs listed above pay over $80,000 per year.
7 comments
There was a time that the assistant superintendent knew what was going on in each school. Such and such school is having trouble with their third grade teachers, such and such principal needs to work on improving this in their school, etc. Real educational improvement is done in the classroom and the overall organization of the school. It must be directed at the problems in that school. PPS keeps bringing in people who think the way to improve schools is to bring in some national trendy programs supposedly verified by research and then apply it across the board. Nothing could be further from the truth. (See the fabulous article in today’s paper by Diane Ravitch stating the failure of the NCLB system she helped set up and push. She has done a 180 degree turn. Something PPS must do if they are to recover their schools and not end up like Kansas City who just closed half of theirs.) Do you think Zeke can tell you what is happening in each school? What about Botano? So who can? So who is minding the shop? I am afraid the answer is Arne Duncan way off in Washington D.C.
It changed when Ben Canada arrived. He fired Donald McElroy, not for any wrongdoing, but because he wanted to bring in his “own team.” PPS had to settle with McElroy for a pretty tidy sum, too, because he was wrongfully terminated. Canada started hiring his friends, and, well, the rest is history.
where can I find the salaries of all the top BESC brass?
One project I never got around to with PPS Equity was a searchable database of PPS administrator salaries. As far as I know, the only way to get these is to request them from PPS on an ad hoc basis, or do a public records request. By the time you get them, they’ll probably be out of date. Where I grew up, the home town daily published (and continues to publish, in searchable, sortable form) salaries for all public employees in the local area. The Oregonian did something close to this way back, but not for the schools. It would be nice if somebody like Willy Week would do this, but don’t hold your breath.
I have a copy of some BESC administrator salaries from December 2009. I noticed that there was an almost $10,000 desceprancy between what it shows Zeke to be making and what’s reported in the proposed budget. I haven’t had a chance to look into it but it makes me wonder if Zeke wasn’t held to the salary freeze pledged by the superintendent.
Give me a break. There has not been a salary freeze with the upper echelon. There has not been a hiring freeze with the senior management team. I can tell you so many people got their raises since Carole made her pledge to freeze hiring and salaries. The saddest part was that a few of the ESL bilingual staff who got their raises had to use OCR as leverage to get their raises and promotion promised to OCR and to them in 2004 during Vicki Phillips’ tenure. In one of the letters from her to OCR in 2004, she promised to build a career ladder and look at how she could matriculate bilingual staff into other district department in a five-year plan. As soon as OCR turned the other way, it was business as usual. It took 10 years to settle the last OCR grievance in 1994. Will see how many years it will take to resolve this most recent one.
Look at Joanne Mabbott she went from being paid as a director to area director pay. She changed her assistant directors salary from assistant director pay to director pay. Also, someone look into her family members who are being paid out of the special ed. budget. Look into her friends who were hired and protected even when they couldn’t do the job. Those rules you mention don’t seem to apply to her.
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