A Feature, Not a Bug

I am not at all surprised that the head of a charter school network in Texas serving fewer than 1,000 students is making more than the Chancellor of New York City Public Schools, which have an enrollment of nearly 1,000,000 students.

Looting is at the core of the charter school initiatives around the country:

Over the last three years, the head of a small charter school network that serves fewer than 1,000 students has taken home up to $870,000 annually, a startling amount that appears to be the highest for any public school superintendent in the state and among the top in the nation.

Valere Public Schools Superintendent Salvador Cavazos’ compensation to run three campuses in Austin, Corpus Christi and Brownsville exceeds the less than $450,000 that New York City’s chancellor makes to run the largest school system in the country.

But Cavazos’ salary looks far more modest in publicly posted records that are supposed to provide transparency to taxpayers. That’s because Valere excludes most of his bonuses from its reports to the state and on its own website, instead only sharing his base pay of about $300,000.

………

Details concerning Cavazos’ compensation, and that of two other superintendents identified by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, drew a sharp rebuke from the association that advocates for charter schools across the state.

Yes, I’m sure that the charter school advocates are very upset that they got exposed.