Bibb County Georgia

Board of Education

Pay Scheme for the Superintendent

Of course I am seeing "Red" when every I read in the print media or view the electronic media the news that our Bibb County Georgia Board of Education is contemplating the pay scheme for the Candidate to lead our Bibb County School System.

The first concept that crosses my mind is why do we need to expend such a large sum of money for a leader of our School System?

"For example, the Commanding Officer of a Nuclear Powered Aircraft Carrier in our U. S. Navy is a full Captain who must also be an Aviator."

"Base Pay for a Captain with over 30 Years Service is about $11,000.00 per month. That would compute to about $133,000.00 per year. Of course Allowances for Housing would depend on the Commanding Officers Family Status. I state this figure of 133 thousand to give everyone a standard for what our Military Heroes draw in pay."

 

As you can all appreciate the Commanding Officer of a Carrier have the lives of over 5000 Sailors, the value of 80 to 90 high tech aircraft and the safety of the Ship as his major responsibilities.  Compare that to a School Superintendent in any County in Georgia.

Of course we all know that our Nations Heroes serve, not for the pay, but for the opportunity to insure our way of life and to also protect and uphold our Standards and Values and to promote those standards and values throughout the World."

 

Admittedly running a County School System is quite different from Commanding any Ship in our U. S. Navy; but I do find it very interesting that School Boards in Georgia think that they can purchase good educations for their Scholars by paying great sums of money to the Superintendent.

We all know  that it is not what a Superintendent makes that sets the achievements a County School System attains. For instance Houston County appears to perform much better than Bibb with more Scholars than Bibb for less of a Salary for their Leader.

I know that working in Macon and Bibb County may be considered dangerous by some, but let me also quickly point out that Military Service is often considered dangerous. It just depends where our Commander in Chief sends the various units on deployment.

While I certainly can appreciate the fact that Georgia has no standard pay table for Superintendents; one could quickly get the impression that "high pay" will guarantee great performance of the Scholars. You and I know, and I am also confident that most taxpayers also realize that this concept is totally incorrect.

I know for a fact that the cost of living in Macon, Georgia is much less than in Rochester, MN. You do not need a snow shovel down here. I also conducted some research on the internet and learned that the cost of living calulator revealed this information:

If you have an income of $175,000.00 in Macon, Georgia it would cost you over $231,000.00 in Rochester, MN to have comparable housing and the same standard of living.

Therefore if our School Board sees fit to give the current candidate from Rochester $200,000.00 it would be like receiving $264,000.00 in Rochester, MN dollars.

So, lets look at this closely. If the current candidate in Rochester currently has an income of $171,000.00 he would in effect be receiving a $83,000.00 raise it he took a job here in Bibb County.

I realize that it may be too late to actually point this out to our Bibb County School Board but we all know that tax revenue in Georgia, just as in most of our United States, is not generating the funds necessary to maintain the standard of living we all enjoyed just a few years ago.

Most every Governmental organization, except for the Federal Government, is facing budget shortfalls. Yet we have a School Board that appears to think that by throwing enough money at a potential leader will solve our education problems in Bibb County, Georgia.

I will go back to the example I printed in "Navy" ink in the early portion of this Blog We need a Servant leader to bring Bibb's education out of the pit we now find ourselves in.

I would suggest that we also need "Common Sense" among our duly elected leaders.