FREE WHITEWATER

Dr. Steinhaus’s Glass House

District Administrators in glass houses…

On Monday, I posted a letter from a student who felt that staff cuts should not have been made without reductions in administrative compensation.

Dr. Steinhaus now complains that the administration has not received a pay increase, as the student suggested.

She’s foolish to highlight the issue.

Too funny, really, and diversion more than anything else – she knows very well that it was a student letter, and that its point was the need for – note well – reductions in the administration’s compensation.

Before staff reductions…

Those reductions in the compensation — of whatever form — of this administrator should have taken place long ago.

There have been no meaningful reductions, to my knowledge, in that compensation.

On the contrary, this administrator is paid exceedingly well for a post in a district with above-average poverty.

Paid well for a leader in a district that now scrambles to address serious social problems too long ignored. (Might someone please explain to this administrator that pointing to good news does not remove the cause of bad news?)

Paid well for a leader in a district that now cuts staff, a practice rare for us (but perhaps not so rare for the full measure of Dr. Steinhaus’s career).

Paid well, but not for the substantive improvement and accomplishments of her students in academic, athletic, or artistic work.

This is the very end of this administrator’s tenure, and more can and should be said of it.

I am willing and confident to debate her legacy with anyone – or everyone – in this district.

Soon enough, I wouldn’t wonder.

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