By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Labor unions in Inglewood’s troubled school district are crying foul over a six-figure buyout given to a former state-appointed superintendent who worked only two months.

The teacher and staff unions in the Inglewood Unified School District are upset because of a contractual buyout for former Superintendent Kent Taylor, who was sent by the state to lead the district from financial ruin as a condition of an unprecedented $55 million state bailout, the Daily Breeze reports.

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The district was losing $16 million a year because of plummeting student enrollment, and Taylor was paid $16,670 per month (plus another $600 per month for expenses) to raise the district from the financial rubble.

Two months after assigning him to the district, the state allowed Taylor to resign from his position after he negotiated a deal with the teachers union without formal approval from the California Department of Education. That left Inglewood schools with a $100,000 tab to cover the buyout clause in Taylor’s contract, according to the news site.

Now Inglewood’s new district leadership is working to secure massive concessions from the district’s labor unions, and union officials are rightly questioning Taylor’s buyout.

“If the state believes he made mistakes, why are they taking it out on us?” Pete Somberg, president of the Inglewood teachers union, asked the school board at a special meeting, according to the Daily Breeze.

“When our people do something wrong, they get fired,” said Chris Graeber, union representative for district support staff and custodians. “This guy walks away with 100 grand in his pocket after two months of work. We can’t figure out how this is all adding up.”

Neither can we.

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EAGnews is rarely in agreement with labor leaders, but the folks in Inglewood certainly have a good point. How can school employees be expected to sacrifice for the financial welfare of the district when the top brass get sweetheart deals for doing very little?

If state officials believe Taylor wasn’t performing up to expectations, why was he essentially given a huge bonus?

The Daily Breeze posed those questions to the California Department of Education and the response was “terse.”

“The payments he has received were pursuant to his contract,” a spokeswoman wrote in an email to the news site.

If that’s the case, then the contract was written in a foolish manner, with very little regard for taxpayer dollars.

The teachers union previously negotiated a deal with Taylor that would save the district $1 million a year, far short of its $16 million annual deficit, and union officials aren’t backing away from that agreement.

“They’re telling the teachers we need to take a 15 percent pay cut, and if we don’t, they’re holding the wrath of God over our heads,” Somberg said. “Even though we didn’t mess up – they did. In order to save the district, it’s going to have to come on the backs of the employees. That’s just not OK.”

While we believe union leaders should be willing to do a little more to help keep the district afloat, we understand why union leaders are upset. At the very least, state and district officials should never agree to buyout clauses that reward top officials for doing next to nothing.

Otherwise, they’re not exactly in a moral position to ask anyone to sacrifice.