The Montgomery Township School District Superintendent Mary McLoughlin just got a sweet deal that is too bitter for my taste.
She had already been making $240,000 according to an article in nj.com, l but they report a new multi-year deal was just negotiated with the school board that will ultimately increase her salary to over $300,000 a year.
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A raise of this size is questionable enough, but outrageous salaries wouldn’t get a parent in trouble with the law. You know what would? Not living in a district but sending your child there because it’s a much better school.
People can face civil penalties in these cases, and if falsified documents were involved they can be arrested on criminal charges and face jail time.
But part of Mary Mcloughlin’s new sweet deal isn’t just the money. It’s that she’ll be allowed to let her child attend that better school district in which she works even though she doesn’t have residency there.
Wow.
There’s a difference between a school superintendent getting a bloated salary and a school superintendent getting a perk that could land an ordinary parent in hot water. One is an outrage. The other is an outrage with a side order of hypocrisy.
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Think about that for a minute.
New Jersey parents know school district boundaries aren’t suggestions. They’re rules. If you don’t live in a district, you generally don’t get to decide your kid should attend its schools simply because you think they’re better. Parents can face serious consequences for lying about residency to get their children into a district they don’t belong to.
Yet here we have an administrator apparently being handed that privilege as part of her employment package.
And yes, I understand that school boards negotiate contracts. They can offer raises, benefits and other incentives to attract or retain people. Being overpaid isn’t a crime.
But why should working as a superintendent entitle someone to a privilege that ordinary parents would be dragged into court over? What message does that send to families who pay property taxes, follow the rules and would love to send their children to a better school just a few towns away?
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Apparently, the rules are rules for you and me, but negotiable for the people in charge.
If the school where this superintendent works really is the better option for her children, that’s understandable. Every parent wants the best education possible for their kids. But that doesn’t make it right to carve out a special exception unavailable to everyone else.
Public education shouldn’t operate like an exclusive country club where the people running the place get perks the rest of us can only dream about.
A superintendent’s job comes with responsibility, not a royal exemption from the rules imposed on everybody else.
And if a regular parent could be punished for doing the same thing, putting that privilege in a contract makes it morally despicable.
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Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.
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