by David Safier
I'm going to take you on a tour of some facts and figures about Challenge Charter School in Glendale, following the Goldwater Institute/Brewer/Horne connections to the school and showing a guy whose family is doing "Very well, thank you," by paying themselves very attractive salaries.
This exploration began when it was pointed out to me that Challenge School Inc. was a financial sponsor of the Goldwater Institute in 2006, giving $1,000 or more (I couldn't find the exact figure) to G.I.
Pardon me? Challenge School Inc. runs one school, Challenge Charter School, which is publicly funded. Unless I'm missing something here, tax dollars are being funneled to Goldwater Institute through the school.
The public school's generosity to an Institute which complains about state and school spending made me curious about the school itself, so I decided to do some digging into Challenge Charter School.
The charter has a little over 600 students. Its CEO is Greg Miller. According to the school's 990 tax form, he's paid $141,000 a year. His wife, Pamela, the Executive Director, gets almost $142,000. Their daughter Wendy, the principal, makes $85,000 a year.
That's a whopping $368,000 for the three Millers.
How were their salaries set?
According to the 990, the salaries "were determined in part by comparison to the publically available compensation information from local districts."
Maybe someone can show me a comparable district in the area which has only one school with 600+ students and where the three top salaries total $368,000.
Who set the salaries? According to the 990,
"CEO pay is determined and voted on by the whole board which acts as the compensation committee. All other positions are determined by the CEO and do not have to be voted on by the board."
The board, in case you haven't figured this one out already, is comprised of the three Millers and one other person. I'll bet there weren't many dissenting votes in that crowd.
As close as I can tell, administrative costs make up 28% of the budget, and classroom costs -- teacher salaries and classroom supplies -- total 48%. I think conservatives would scream about that if this were a traditional public school.
The final piece in all this is that Jan Brewer appointed CEO Greg Miller to serve on the State Board of Education as the state's one charter school representative on the Board. That completes the circle, making the very well compensated Miller best buddies with Brewer, Horne and the Goldwater Institute.
NOTE: Challenge Charter is listed as an excelling school. However, with the school's demographics, that isn't terrible surprising. The students are 76% White and Asian (68% White, 8% Asian), 18% Hispanic, 5% African American and 1% Native American. 23% of the students are on Free or Reduced lunch. The school was able to bring in $63,000 by holding two fundraisers, which leaves me with the impression that many of the students come from families with high incomes. In other words, this sounds like a pretty select school with students who would be expected to perform well on state tests. To put this in context, all the schools in the Foothills School Districts are excelling schools.
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