Wow, this is impressive. School Superintendent gives back $800k.

Borla · Aug 28, 2011

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — Some people give back to their community. Then there's Fresno County School Superintendent Larry Powell, who's really giving back. As in $800,000 — what would have been his compensation for the next three years.
Until his term expires in 2015, Powell will run 325 schools and 35 school districts with 195,000 students, all for less than a starting California teacher earns.
"How much do we need to keep accumulating?" asks Powell, 63. "There's no reason for me to keep stockpiling money."
Powell's generosity is more than just a gesture in a region with some of the nation's highest rates of unemployment. As he prepares for retirement, he wants to ensure that his pet projects survive California budget cuts. And the man who started his career as a high school civics teacher, who has made anti-bullying his mission, hopes his act of generosity will help restore faith in the government he once taught students to respect.
"A part of me has chaffed at what they did in Bell," Powell said, recalling the corrupt Southern California city officials who secretly boosted their salaries by hundreds of thousands of dollars. "It's hard to believe that someone in the public trust would do that to the public. My wife and I asked ourselves 'What can we do that might restore confidence in government?'"
Powell's answer? Ask his board to allow him to return $288,241 in salary and benefits for the next three and a half years of his term. He technically retired, then agreed to be hired back to work for $31,000 a year — $10,000 less than a first-year teacher — and with no benefits.
"I thought it was so very generous on his part," said school board member Sally Tannenbaum. "We get to keep him, but at a much lower rate."
His move was so low-key, his manner so unassuming, that it took four days after the school board meeting for word of his act to get out to the community. There were no press releases or self-congratulatory pats on the back.
"Things like this are what America is all about," said friend Alan Autry, Fresno's former celebrity mayor who played Capt. Bubba Skinner on the TV series "In the Heat of The Night."
"America is as much about overcoming obstacles in difficult times as it is opulence," Autry said. "This reminds me of the great sacrifices made throughout our history, especially the Great Depression."
No one has been more surprised about the positive reaction than Powell, a lifelong educator who didn't realize that what he did was newsworthy. He chuckles at his desk when yet another e-mail arrives from a colleague blown away by his generosity. Two days after word got out he had received 200 messages on his Facebook page.
"When you make good choices, good things happen to you," said Powell, who tends to talk in the kind of uplifting phrases that also make him a sought-after motivational speaker.
He even sees as an asset his childhood contraction of polio, which left him with a limp and a brace, and now a lingering post-polio syndrome.
"It's the most spectacular thing that has happened to me in all my life," he said. "People stepped up to help me be successful."
Powell might credit others, but others say Powell's drive always has come from within. Despite the right leg brace and experimental operations to stop the growth of his healthy leg, he became a champion high school wrestler in Fresno and set a record for one of the most dreaded of all gym class drills — the 20-foot rope climb, which he completed in 1.8 seconds. Today he carries a six handicap in golf.
After moving into school administration he became deputy superintendent, and was appointed to his current job before running for the office in 2006.
The ordained Baptist minister, who serves on the board of a national anti-bullying group that sprang from the Columbine shootings, is so popular he even counts among his friends his contract bargaining nemesis, the former head of the employees' union.
"For a leader to step up to help the budget is phenomenal," said Mike Lepore. "It gives you hope. It gives you the feeling that everything is being done to try to make education work. It's Larry. It really is."
Powell will still earn a six-figure retirement, especially hefty by the standards of California's farming heartland. But because his salary comes out of the district's discretionary budget, for the next three years he'll be able to steer the money he is giving up where he wants: to programs for kindergarten and preschool, the arts and a pet project that steers B and C students into college by teaching them how to take notes and develop strategy skills.
"Our goal has never been to have things," Powell said of himself and his wife, Dot. "We want to give back."
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http://news.yahoo.com/school-superintendent-gives-800k-pay-150206667.html

Talk about putting your money where your mouth is! Sure he gets to use some of that money to help projects he prefers, but how many people in that position would do the same thing? Even with a healthy retirement, $800k is a LOT of money. He deserves a massive amount of praise by his community. Great story to read.

Zen · Aug 28, 2011

Agreed

streak_56 · Aug 28, 2011

good karma, maybe more executives/CEOs, people making too much more for their lifestyle should do the same..... you'd think that would make world a better place.... but then again, people are inherently greedy....

spindles · Aug 28, 2011

The biggest reason this is making news is that is so out of the ordinary. Good on him!

inBOIL · Aug 29, 2011

Good for him. I've been to Fresno. That shithole needs all the help it can get.

Cayvmann · Aug 30, 2011

Maybe if all the overpaid administrators just took a permanent pay cut, then the schools would operate within reasonable budgets. The fact that this guy is confident he can live without his exorbitant salary really says something to me about how overpaid these people are. Especially compared to the people who do the actual work of educating our chilluns.

chinese crested · Aug 31, 2011

Not everyone can afford to follow his example I suspect, but small kindnesses on your road in life make the world a better place, one hopes. We can all aford to be a little bit kindly cant we?

Seer666 · Sep 4, 2011

That is mind blowing. I'm not sure I would be able to do that. Not so much because I would want the money for me, though I can't help thinking about how many awesome guns that could buy, but because I want to leave as much as possible for my boys when I pass on. 800k would go a long way to make sure my boys are taken care of.

snowy · Sep 4, 2011

Well, technically he's a retire-rehire--the state will still be paying him money in the form of a pension.

Cayvmann · Sep 5, 2011

Let me backtrack a little, as I sounded more of an ass than I intended. It is a very nice thing that he is doing. It does seem that the pay of school administration is way out of proportion. The drive to pay the people at the top, commensurate with private industry, hasn't worked out in a positive way. IMO

snowy · Sep 5, 2011

Cayvmann said: ↑

Let me backtrack a little, as I sounded more of an ass than I intended. It is a very nice thing that he is doing. It does seem that the pay of school administration is way out of proportion. The drive to pay the people at the top, commensurate with private industry, hasn't worked out in a positive way. IMO
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It depends on the school district. First off, he's the guy at the top. He's essentially a CEO, running an organization with thousands of employees and thousands of customers. His pay isn't even close to what a CEO of a similarly sized company would be making.

As for administration costs: Part of the problem is that regulations such as No Child Left Behind and other standards-based education laws at the state level have led to the development of administration at the district level that wasn't there before. The requirements enacted by these laws mean that there has to be someone at that level overseeing curriculum and instruction, and ensuring that the district's curriculum and instruction meets standards. Larger districts have more administrators. Whether or not they actually need them is a point that could be argued. Personally, I think having all of those administrators at the district level takes power away from principals to run effective schools. It means that principals also have to spend more time playing politics. I should note that my father is a retired high school principal and worked as a curriculum and instruction administrator in science and math education for a handful of years, so I've seen how this all plays out in real life. As for pay--my father earned every one of those dollars he brought home, and compared to other fields, he was being paid far less for his Master's degree and experience.

Cayvmann · Sep 5, 2011

I, too, think that principals are more important to the job of education than the top-heavy administrative structure. A good principal can make a good school.

No Child Left Behind, should be left behind. It has done nothing but spend money badly, and mucked things up, taking money away from where it will be most effective, at the teaching level.

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Wow, this is impressive. School Superintendent gives back $800k.

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Wow, this is impressive. School Superintendent gives back $800k.

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