Sugar Creek Charter salaries posted

We've updated the charter school salary database to include employees of Sugar Creek Charter School, leaving Lincoln Charter School as the only school that hasn't provided names  (Chief Administrator Dave Machado has said his school is working on that list).

The Observer requested salary information from 22 Charlotte-area charter schools in March,  sparking a prolonged debate over disclosure that continues to work its way through the General Assembly.

Sugar Creek students at school choice rally with Gov. McCrory

I don't think the Sugar Creek names are  "stop the press"  news.  The school had already provided details for its top administrators,  withholding names of lower-ranking employees.

But I do think full disclosure is important.  As Rep. Charles Jeter learned when he introduced an amendment designed to block the Observer and other media from publishing salary lists for charter schools  --  the same kind of lists that have been published for employees of school districts and other public bodies for years  --  when you start trying to pull some information from public scrutiny you can create more problems than you solve.

If a broader discussion of salary discussion loops around in the coming year,  as Jeter has suggested,  I hope the people who want to limit public access to personnel data will be challenged to provide specific,  first-hand information on the harm that disclosure causes.  We heard dire predictions when we first posted Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools salaries in 2008.  I'm well aware that many individuals don't like seeing their salaries posted,  but I have gotten no reports that it disrupted public education.

Likewise,  some charter school officials and advocates said disclosure of merit-based salaries would lead to such turmoil on the faculty that students would suffer.  But since we posted the salaries in May,  along with articles analyzing teacher pay and administrator salaries in charters and CMS,  no one has contacted me or Observer editors to say their school fell apart.  Some charter directors have told me the articles helped dispel public myths about extravagant pay at their schools.

I hope any discussion will be precise about terms, too.  During debate over Jeter's amendment,  which the House approved,  he referred to the need to prevent disclosure of merit pay.  As I've noted before,  merit pay,  which is used in some charter and traditional public schools,  should make sense,  even if there's room to debate the results.  Market pay can be random. As one of my professors used to say,  the market is amoral.  The teacher in the next classroom may earn significantly more for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with fairness or ability.  That may be disturbing for teachers to discover,  but I suspect the real discomfort falls on the administrators who have to explain it.

Educator salaries: Charter schools and new CMS data

Salaries for Charlotte-area educators are finally ready.  It took a bit longer this year because we are publishing charter school salaries for the first time,  and got more extensive information from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

The charter list was challenging,  and not only because of the state's misfire in initially saying charter schools weren't required to provide the data.  Each charter school is essentially its own district,  which meant that even after that mistake was corrected and schools provided the data,  it came from different sources in different formats,  often with different job titles and abbreviations.  That can make it difficult to sort and compare,  but it's a good start toward giving the public a look at payrolls in a form of public education that has extra flexibility and plays a growing role in our region.

In past years,  I've requested salaries and bonuses from CMS.  This year,  after working on an article about pay at community colleges,  I realized there are additional sources of income,  including state longevity pay.  So I requested all of those sources.  The result:  The CMS information is more complete,  but it's not comparable to prior years.

CMS provided total compensation from salaries,  bonuses,  longevity pay,  overtime,  stipends for extra duties,  allowances and fringe benefits that are reported as income to the IRS.  That means some people's pay looks bigger,  even if they got no raise in salary.  Meanwhile,  some listings will look unusually low because the district provided actual earnings from April 1,  2013,  to March 31,  2014,  rather than listing an annual salary as they have in the past.  That means someone who started after April 1 won't have a full year's pay listed.

Even the total number of employees  --  18,515 this year,  compared with 18,665 in 2013  --  isn't comparable.  As you might recall,  CMS changed the way it accounts for people who are not actually being paid but have the option to return to district jobs.  That happened after people raised questions about a Providence High teacher who had been appearing on the salary listings and the school website year after year,  despite the fact that he hadn't set foot in school for a decade  (turned out he was getting worker's comp,  not a district paycheck).  After that flap,  about 200 people on leave or other inactive status were removed from the CMS roster.

Which brings us to the perennial question:  Why name names?

Most agree that salaries for the folks at the top should be public,  but over the years many have questioned why we would list individual information for teachers,  assistants,  bus drivers and others who are public employees but not public figures.

The answer:  It lets people see if something is amiss in public spending.

Are relatives of those who influence spending holding public jobs,  and if so,  are their salaries reasonable?  Remember First Lady Mary Easley and her lucrative job at N.C. State?  Or, conversely,  the false rumors that Superintendent Peter Gorman had his wife on the CMS payroll?  How about this year's revelation that an administrator at StudentFirst Academy,  a new charter school, had family members on the payroll,  with other staffers raising questions about whether they were qualified or showing up for work?

Lawyer Richard Vinroot,  who represented the StudentFirst board when that administrator contested her firing in court,  is now representing Sugar Creek and Lincoln charter schools in fighting the Observer's request to disclose salaries by name.  Lawyers, legislators and maybe judges will sort out the legality of that position.

The schools have provided names and salaries of a few top administrators,  and salaries with names redacted for the rest.  Vinroot says if there are specific questions about lower-paid staff  --  for instance,  are charter employees related to board members or administrators?  --  the schools can answer without having to reveal everyone's names.

But you don't know what you don't know.  It might be obvious  (at least in hindsight)  to check on the governor's wife.  But without seeing the individual teacher's name,  no one would have thought to ask if Providence High had a  "phantom teacher"  on the payroll.  It turned out that he wasn't being paid for work he wasn't doing,  but isn't that exactly the kind of thing the public ought to question?

And while schools that are trying to do the right thing might answer questions honestly and completely,  can we trust those who have something to hide to do the same?  Providing details on those paid with public money lets us all do our own checking,  without having to guess or trust.

Finally,  to answer the questions that are sure to follow release of these salaries:  We're working on 2014 updates for regional school districts,  the city of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.  Stay tuned.

Charter pay disclosure: Resistance continues

The state's education leaders now say charter schools,  like other public schools,  must disclose what they pay their employees.  But some leaders of the charter movement say they disagree.

Vinroot

Richard Vinroot,  a lawyer and charter pioneer who works with Sugar Creek and Lincoln charter schools,  says those schools will provide salaries to the Observer but will withhold the names of all but the highest-paid employees.  He says that's because the charter schools,  which aren't bound by the state teacher salary schedule,  pay teachers based on performance.

"I don't want Sally to know what Jimmy got paid,"  Vinroot said.  "It would create disruption within our school."

As Superintendent Heath Morrison noted when I mentioned that argument,  Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools also has a number of teachers who receive merit-based bonuses,  which we've reported every year.  It may or may not create tension among colleagues,  but it tells the public more about how those pilot systems are playing out,  at a time when performance pay is one of the biggest public policy issues in education.

Terrill

Chris Terrill, head of Pine Lake Preparatory School,  sent a salary list with all names and even specific job titles withheld.

"I believe that the data shows a high level of fiscal responsibility and a stewardship of public tax dollars.  We have tried to provide salaries that are high enough to recruit and retain an excellent faculty and staff,"  wrote Terrill, who is presumably the administrator listed at $115,360 a year.  "Pine Lake is a model for openness and transparency," he added,  citing the school's compliance with the state's Open Meetings Law.

Baker Mitchell,  a Wilmington charter school operator who serves on the N.C. Charter School Advisory Board,  has been blogging against disclosure since I raised the issue in March.

Mitchell

"Although charter schools are subjected to the same accounting standards and annual auditing that govern traditional schools, they are not required to invade the privacy of their employees by publishing their salaries,"  Mitchell wrote in March.  He contends that the tax forms filed by nonprofits provide enough information,  and noted that many other nonprofits receive public grants or subsidies without being required to disclose salaries.

This week he suggested that test scores should provide what taxpayers need to know about their investment in charter schools.

"We frequently measure costs in terms such as dollars per gallon of milk, or dollars per foot of fence,"  Mitchell writes.  "We don’t need to how much the farmer pays his helpers or how much the fence contractor pays his carpenters – we want to know the final cost of the product.  Similarly, we should ask,  'How much are we paying for each test passed by the students of a school or district?'  What is the taxpayer’s cost per successful test?  Individual salaries give no information whatsoever about how well students are being taught."

And in a comment on an Observer charter-salary story,  Mitchell noted that private vendors get public money from traditional public schools:  "Pearson, Inc. receives hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for their student testing software.  Thomas Bus Company received hundreds of millions for their school buses.  McGraw-Hill receives hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for textbooks.  Duke Power, Xerox, Apple, Microsoft, etc. all receive huge amounts of taxpayer money.  Why would invading the privacy of their workers' personal salary information help improve their products?"

Mitchell, Terrill and Vinroot are omitting a key point:  Charter schools agree to abide by the state's open meetings and public records laws when they accept the public money.  That law protects many parts of personnel files for employees of school districts,  the state,  cities and counties  --  there's no specific protection for employees of charter boards  --  but it says that names, salaries and many other specific items remain a public record.

It's possible that these folks told state officials when they accepted their charters that they'd only follow the parts of the law they agreed with,  but I doubt it.  The boom in charters means those schools are starting to get the kind of scrutiny other public schools receive,  and that can be uncomfortable.  (The Observer doesn't cover Mitchell's schools,  but his Roger Bacon Academy charter management company has faced public questions about enrollment,  personnel decisions and an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education.)