Greenwich Roundup: 10/11/08 Greenwich Citizen News Links Or Betty Sternberg Repeatedly Screws Up And Repeatedly Gets More Money

Saturday, October 11, 2008

10/11/08 Greenwich Citizen News Links Or Betty Sternberg Repeatedly Screws Up And Repeatedly Gets More Money

Betty Sternberg is the town's highest paid failed administrator.

Sternberg's Salary Cap

Dr. Betty Sternberg, superintendent of schools, will receive far less than an optimum salary bonus from the Board of Education for her supervision of the Greenwich School District for the 2007-08 academic year.

The Board of Education, in a 6-2 vote last Thursday, decided to give her less than a quarter of her maximum bonus, or $3,500 of a possible $15,000.

The amount equals less than half of what she received for the 2006-07 school year, the second year in her three-year contract. Sternberg earns a salary totaling more than $290,000 with housing and transportation expenses included.

On Oct. 23, at the next regular board meeting, members will vote on whether to renew Sternberg's contract beyond September of next year.

"The Board voted the motion, with Marianna Ponns Cohen and Jonathan Cohen opposing," said board chair Nancy Weissler, "to approve a bonus payment of $3,500."....

....Sternberg has presided over a district rocked by declining academic scores and performance, and by displaced elementary school students with the controversial and long construction delays of the Hamilton Avenue School. Added to this was the highly publicized suspension of Marc D'Amico, principal of Glenville School.

She has also been served a civil suit for racial discrimination, and faced issues of mold discovered in temporary school housing for Hamilton Avenue School students.

Overall, public satisfaction with her administration's management of the district has brought a sharp decline, as shown in the district's newly released Success System report.

PLEASE SEE:

Greenwich Gossip

Betty Sternberg Gets a Raise?!

By Bill "The Scribe Of Greenwich" Clark

Well, a "performance" bonus, at least. Yes, dear reader, incredible as it sounds, the Board of Ed voted Betty a salary bonus of $3,500 by a vote of 6-2. At least one of the negative votes came from someone who thought the bonus should have been larger.

At this point, Betty's salary and benefit package is reported to be in excess of $290,000 per year. That's almost $25,000 a month, dear reader. About $6,000 a week. Well more than a thousand dollars a day. And for this we get falling test scores, construction cost overruns, two homeless elementary schools, unprecedented dissatisfaction and unrest among teachers and townspeople, and no end in sight to any of it. What's wrong with this equation?

Your scribe will never understand why the Board of Ed doesn't bite the bullet and simply fire Betty. It would have saved the taxpayers of this Town well over half a million dollars and incalculable anguish if the Board had just left the position vacant for these past two years.

But now they have given her a bonus, and apparently plan to keep her around to wreak more havoc for a third year. What's the old phrase about putting the inmates in charge of the asylum? Sounds like a pretty good metaphor for what's going on in Greenwich these days....

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