A Trial, a Law, and a Travesty

     Let's start today with an international event. Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak and his two sons are set to face trial in Egypt (on a yet-to-be-announced day). They are charged with intentional murder, attempted murder of demonstrators, abuse of power, and unlawfully profiting from public funds. If they are found guilty on the murder charge, they could possibly face the death penalty.

     Many reporters and analysts say that this trial complicates the U.S. position in the Middle East and embarrasses the country because we can neither support nor oppose this trial. They say this because the U.S. had supported Mubarak until the revolution of this year. Also, Mubarak was a staunchly pro-U.S. Arab leader and supporting his trial would most likely anger our current Arab allies. Lastly, analysts say that putting Mubarak on trial after he "peacefully" stepped down may cause other Arab leaders facing uprisings to brutally crush them in order that they are not deposed.

     However, there are some problems with these points. Mubarak did not step down peacefully. After over two weeks of protests, Mubarak left around eight-hundred and forty people dead and over six thousand injured. Even by the loosest interpretations, that is not peaceful. In addition, the U.S. needs to break with its past history of supporting tyrants for our temporary gain (we fight a revolution to be free of one and now we seem to habitually put them in power). What better way to do that than by supporting the trial of one that we supported and admitting our wrong? As far as other Arab leaders go, here is some advice: if you do not want to be deposed and put on trial, do not oppress and kill your people! And lastly, what allies? Our Arab allies are countries like Yemen, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, who help train and/or harbor terrorists that attack the U.S. and other western countries...some allies.

     Turning to national news, Tennessee has just passed legislation that prohibits any local government in the state to have anti-discrimination laws that exceed the state ones and repeal all such laws on the books at the present time. This law has upset gay rights activists because, currently, sexual orientation is not in the state's anti-discrimination law. While activists have a right to be upset and outraged at this law's passage, their method of dealing with it is entirely wrong. As one might expect, gay rights organizations have said that they will fight this law with litigation. Instead of wasting your money and time on litigation to remove the law, it would be better to use that time and money towards getting sexual orientation added to the state's current anti-discrimination law.

     Finally, an article in the Wall Street Journal caught my attention today. It discusses a family, in Medina, Ohio, and how they are forced to pay $4,446.50 for their children to attend public school. This is not for any extravagance within the children's education, the families in the Medina school district must pay registration fees, technology fees, fees for required classes, such as Spanish I (for language requirement) and Geo Science, in addition to the $200 fee for band or the $660 fee for cross country participation. It highlights a growing problem in the country: school districts across the country are attempting to deal with financial cutbacks from state governments, and are, in many cases, thinking about it in the wrong way. Looking into charging fees for extra-curricular activities, such as football, lacrosse, and other sports could be a good idea, but many school districts are cutting needed programs (like spelling and physics), cutting teachers' salaries or teachers' jobs altogether, or even worse, such as the case in Medina (and many other school districts) charging already financially strapped parents fees to attend school and take required courses. The point of public schooling is that it is free for parents, if it isn't free, then stop collecting taxes for schools (as the taxes are there to ensure free schooling).

     All of these different methods are being implemented to cut costs and increase money flow, yet there are no stories about school districts attempting to cut school board positions, unnecessary administrative positions, ask higher paid administrators to take salary cuts, or ask the superintendent to take a salary or benefits cut. In these rough economic times, survival cannot be attained by just cutting more from the lower tiers, cuts must be made across the board.

     Because of the article I looked at the contracts of three superintendents in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The first is that of the superintendent of the school district in which I live. This school has just above one hundred students per high school class and just under that for many of the lower grades. This superintendent, according to her contract, makes $105,000 per year with a 3% increase every year that she achieves "satisfactory marks." There is also the possibility of a yearly bonus, termed "merit pay," which is voted on by the school board and can be up to 2% of her salary. In addition to her salary, she is granted twenty vacation days, medical, dental, and life insurance, reimbursement for "reasonable expenses," and she does not have to pay for any classes that she takes from an accredited university or college while she is the superintendent.

     Philadelphia City's (for a much larger school district in comparison) superintendent has a salary of $186,000 per year with a yearly increase in pay that was not disclosed in the contract in any specific terms. He also receives up to $10,000 for moving expenses (since he must live inside the school district), up to $5,000 for temporary living expenses, twenty-two vacation days, medical, dental, optical, and prescription insurance at no cost to the superintendent, and a $400,000 life insurance policy.

     Pittsburgh City's superintendent probably gets the most lucrative deal. The previous superintendent, Mark Roosevelt (not the current one, Dr. Linda Lane), was paid $180,000 for the first year, with a pay raise of $15,000 per year if he met "the agreed upon performance priorities." If he did not meet those priorities, he still received a $5,000 pay increase. His benefits included health and dental insurance, forty total days of leave (comprised of vacation days, sick days, personal days, etc.) and $1,000 for every day not used by the end of the year, a $400,000 life insurance policy, a district vehicle (with the option of a security person to accompany him), reimbursement for job-related cellular phone use, and free set up and use of the Internet and a fax machine (and all accompanying devices, fees, and expenses), as long as they are job-related in their use.

     With all of these "sweet deals" for superintendents, how can they be immune to any type of cuts? It seems as though the only intelligent cuts that school districts are doing is trying to make public school teachers pay a slightly larger percentage of their health care. Currently, the average PA public school teacher pays for between 1-5% of their health care, whereas the average person pays about 24% of their health care. Some school districts are asking teacher to pay between 5-10% of their health care (depending on what they paid before), and over this, many school districts' teachers have gone on strike in the past year.