It must be the season for awarding handsome public contracts for less than lackluster performance.
We detailed Wednesday last the audacious – and hardly deserved — contract extension, raise and bonus for Allegheny County Airport Authority CEO Christina Cassotis.
In a pandemic era in which many are seeing no raises and/or losing their jobs, the authority doled out a totally inappropriate compensation package. Even without the pandemic, the deal was not warranted.
Now, Wednesday next, the Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) Board of Education is expected to reward Superintendent Anthony Hamlet with an equally unseemly pay package in his new contract.
The board voted 7-2 to extend Hamlet’s contract last summer with details to be worked out. They now have been.
That Hamlet was offered a new contract at all remains perplexing given the abysmal academic nonperformance – and nonattendance — of too many Pittsburgh students (detailed in, among others, Policy Brief Vol. 19, No. 40).
Yet the board stands ready to reward Hamlet’s abject failures with a shockingly sweet package. As the Post-Gazette reports it:
“The four-year contract extension includes annual pay increases, performance bonuses and five weeks’ vacation. …
“If approved, Mr. Hamlet will make $236,350 in 2021 — up from $229,372 in 2020. Then he’ll receive a salary of $241,083 in 2022, a 2 percent increase; $248,316 in 2023, a 3 percent increase; $255,765 in 2024, a 3 percent increase and $265,996 in 2025, a 4 percent increase.
“In 2016, his first year leading the district, Mr. Hamlet made a salary of $210,000.
“In addition to the salary increases, Mr. Hamlet will have an annual performance bonus of up to $15,000, 25 vacation days and 15 sick days.”
Incredibly, some school board members said Hamlet deserved a contract extension to promote stability in the district during the coronavirus pandemic.
But by many accounts, there’s been nothing “stable” about the district’s remote learning regimen.
And while some of those same board members cited supposedly modest gains in student performance and the graduation rate, other performance metrics have fallen during Hamlet’s tenure.
And, lest we forget, Hamlet brought to the job a number of storm clouds that dog him to this day – an inflated resume; an educational philosophy borrowed from a publication; questions about junkets and even more questions about how contracts have been awarded.
Based on his performance and based on the baggage that he brought to the job — and more baggage that he accumulated once on the job — Hamlet’s contract should not have been renewed.
That it was – and apparently at such a premium to boot – was not sound public policy. And it calls into serious question the leadership acumen of the educratic establishment that seeks to further enable failure.
Colin McNickle is the communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
