Plus, Hansen donates her entire board stipend to school programs like athletics and music.

Eberhart, in 2010,took over $17,854 in health benefits along with $8802 in stipends, not to mention his Solar Certificate expenses, trips to San Diego, San Francisco, etc and other “perks”. This from a man who routinely whines that Sacramento doesn’t give schools enough money.

That’s a load of b-o-l-o-g-n-a.

They are instead, volunteers. Duly chosen representatives, working for the taxpayers, and charged with the duty of overseeing the actual “employees” of the district, on behalf of the Taxpayers.

In exchange for this “volunteer” position, so valiantly fought for in the polls, and whose time is freely given out of their (alleged) dedication to the welfare of ALL students, the taxpayers agreed to provide a small stipend sufficient to “cover their expenses”–period!

I am guessing that whoever is in charge isn’t reading the rules correctly – who would’ve thought!!!
They may be mixing up medical insurance with these other two options.

Well said!!

Combined, they pocket enough to pay for another desperately needed teacher at Mount D, or any other SIG/QEIA school, or to keep several part-time SpecEd Assistants on the clock.

The school board was never intended to be a cash cow for local ego-driven politicos.

As far as the administrators’ compensation, I regard the entire world of education as a parallel universe, where normal incentives are absent, or so distorted that we cannot trust them. There is no reason to expect sound “OB 101″ management practices in most public schools, because such practices are actually difficult to institute and maintain, and public school administrators have almost no incentive to embrace those challenges. As I’m sure you know, the “market” for ed administrators is not a very open one. Salaries often don’t correlate with competence. It is exceedingly difficult to find people who are familiar with all of the arcane knowledge of ed regulations and financing and who are also competent managers. I think we have the administrators we have because the board has not insisted on better candidates, at least since McHenry and probably before. And we have the board we have because most households do not have school-age children and have lost interest in school elections. Too many other people who might have retained an interest in public education have given up on our schools as being hopelessly resistant to improvement. This leaves the elections at the mercy of the unions, contractors, vendors, and others with narrow interests that may conflict with the needs of our children.

That, in a nutshell, is why I wouldn’t leave something as important as public education in the hands of an unaccountable monopoly like MDUSD. It didn’t work for producing shoes, cars, or virtually anything else in the Soviet Union, and it is not producing an educated citizenry here in the U.S. Unfortunately, most people do not yet agree with me. They wish to, somehow, make our education monopolies work better. So long as that is the dominant paradigm, I would like to see us have better school boards and not do anything to discourage better candidates.