Insider Four Walls: more fallout from superintendent firing

So a few weeks ago I talked about how our superintendent was fired a week before school started. Then I talked about how we were not only paying our new guy, but also paying her for the next 18 months.

Well today the local newspaper ran an article about the firing and it led off with the great title of "Superintendent change to cost Walnut Valley Unified hundreds of thousands". Talk about an eye catcher. So I read it and now if the teachers weren't upset before, we are now.

Our district will pay Dr. Simms $295,500 over 18 months, while the interim receives $14,842 a month plus an extra $1000 for travel and housing. Are you kidding me? That's over $30,000 a month for these two. So in less than two months the district is paying for one teacher's full yearly salary!!

And yet, we don't have enough money in our district to fund detention? What is wrong with this place? We can't pay our class advisers or any extra duty, but we can pay out this much a month? Oh yeah, we are facing a 3 million dollar budget shortfall too. Nice.

Here's the kicker that isn't in the article though, we have heard that she is getting or has already got a lawyer to go after the district for all of the money on the contract. So now on top of paying this amount for 18 months, it might be more, PLUS our district now has to pay lawyers to go to court on this.

I love education.

Inside Four Walls: wanna know why districts go broke?

So last week I told you our superintendent was fired because the district wanted to move in a "different direction", well today we had our back to school district meeting and it was somewhat entertaining.

The first thing was that our board has already replaced Dr. Simms with some guy who has been an interim superintendent 13 times. So for most of us, it seems like they had some guy lined up before they pulled the trigger.

Second of all, the new guy talked about how he was there to work and that he will make some of the tough decisions that haven't been made before...that didn't get a good reaction from anyone in the room by the way.

The funny thing was that I was thinking, "what if no one read the email Dr. Simms sent out or doesn't get the Tribune, they have no clue she was fired." And about that time, 2 people sitting next to me asked where/what happened to Dr. Simms. So that was funny.

Most people didn't like the fact that the board didn't send an email or letter to the staff to explain anything...we were all in the dark.

So back to the title...why districts go broke. Well we found out today (through the grapevine) that Dr. Simms signed an extension of her contract in June of this year...yeah less than 3 months ago. So we also heard she will be getting her salary for 18 months. On yeah on top of that we are now paying an interim guy to "make some hard decisions". So for a district that is already in the red, we are now more in the red because on paper it looks like we have 2 sups.

So, why did we sign her extension? Was everything good and then she pissed someone off? No one knows. I doubt we ever will, but it's moves like this that cause mistrust between the board and the teachers.

Inside Four Walls: Our superintendent just got fired

Don't know what this means for us. It's strange because our sups kind of stick around until they want to leave, so to have one fired is big. Add in the fact it was a special board meeting and that we start meetings next Tuesday...just too strange.

So what worries me as a teacher, this quote;

"We decided that we wanted to go in a different direction with leadership. We talked to Dr. Simms about it and agreed that it would be in our mutual best interests for her to move on and for us to move on," said board member Nancy Lyons.

Why a different direction? WVUSD is one of the top performing districts in the state. The only thing I can think of is how they want to handle all of the budget shortfalls. There was a committee report that suggested closing down 2 schools and reconfiguring one more. At the same time, board members have said they will not close any schools at this time. Maybe that was it?

Most of the teachers I talked to thought she was nice and approachable and actually had that "old Walnut" feel to her. This is big though. What a way to start the year off.