A BLACK EYE ... ON TOP OF A BLACK EYE
Cross-posted on From Where I Blog
We can impeach a president ... but not a regional superintendent of schools?
A story that broke on Wednesday concerning yet another twist and turn in the continuing soap opera known as the Franklin-Williamson Regional Office of Education is troublesome at best and criminal at worst.
The story is about the move by the U.S. Department of Education to suspend Barry Kohl, who serves as superintendent of Franklin-Williamson ROE. The suspension will cost the ROE in excess of $700,000 in federal grants next year alone. And since the ROE receives 56 percent of its $5 million budget through federal funds, the suspension could result in a loss of millions and also put as many as 25 people on the unemployment line.
Kohl, as you are probably aware, is facing a 32-count indictment that he turned in bogus travel vouchers, lied to a grand jury and tried to coerce other to also give false info to the grand jury. The court proceedings have dragged on for nearly two years and bogged down to the point that no future court dates are set.
Kohl was defeated in the March primary election but does not leave office until July 2007. According to reports I've received he has been asked to resign and also asked to take a paid leave of absence and has refused both. It seems, that he is going to remain firmly attached to the government teet until the very last day of his term.
In short, what is taking place is a travesty and a slap in the face to taxpayers in both Franklin and Williamson counties. We can impeach a president but there is no mechanism in place to remove a superintendent of schools?
What a sad commentary that is on the condition of our political system. Mark this down as just another sad chapter in Southern Illinois politics.
Here's the troubling story.
3 comments:
The jobs are well-paying, low stress ones.
Why would anyone want to leave?
Jim,
This is simply more evidence of the power of the corrupt education establishment.
Is anyone individual more powerful than the President? No. But as an industry, Education is more protected (unassailable) than any individual political leader.
This isn't just Southern Illinois either. Though the degrees of individual mendacity and uselessness vary, the entire class of Superintendents (and most all "Edu-ma-cation Administration) are simply leeches on the system.
If every administrator disappeared tomorrow, (along with their insipid make-work bureaucracy) the excess $$ might actually be used to educate a child.
Abolish the ficticious "District" and "Regional" constructs. They are engines of waste, and nothing else.
Fund Children, not systems. Send the pigs home.
The only important things these folks do preside over school district boundary disputes and decide questions of district/non-district tuition. They are a joke.
That being said, one of the proposals has been for Kohl to receive a paid leave of absence through the end of his term, and apparently he won't even accept.
Kohl really must be a scumbag. It looks as though a lot of folks are going to lose their jobs.
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