As first reported by Julie Ann Marra of South Milwaukee NOW, the South Milwaukee school district is going to spend $30,000 in federal stimulus money for an early childhood curriculum consultant to assist in better aligning the 4-year-old curriculum with the rest of the grades. At face value, that sounds like a reasonable way to spend $30,000, but what I’m wondering is why the South Milwaukee school district would spend tens of thousands of dollars to hire a curriculum consultant when the district currently pays $102,459 for a full-time Director of Instruction, Rita Olson, who if I recall also possesses a PhD. So here’s the question: why does the South Milwaukee school district need to spend $30,000 on a curriculum consultant if they’ve got a full-time staff member (and a well-paid one at that) whose job responsibilities include all issues related to the curriculum used throughout the district? Is Rita Olson incapable of aligning the 4-year-old curriculum with the rest of the grades on her own? If so, then why is she being paid over one hundred thousand dollars a year to handle the district’s curriculum?
It’s a shame the school district has to spend $30,000 in federal stimulus money – money that could have been spent in any number of ways to better benefit the school district – to hire a curriculum consultant to do a job that the district’s Director of Instruction should be able to handle on her own. Seems like money not well spent to me…
If I lived in SM, I’d wanna know who her boss was and where to send an email that asked exactly the same question that you just asked.
Go Zach!
Rich, her boss is Superintendent David Ewald, and I’m willing to bet he’s the one who made the recommendation.
Ewald.David@sdsm.k12.wi.us
I’ll likely be emailing him to find out why there’s a need to spend that kind of money on a consultant.
And thus we see the problem with much of the money included in the stimulus package. This is money that South Milwaukee School District saw and figured they would simply need to spend it on…something. The Journal Sentinal has done a very good job of reporting much of the waste present with the stimulus money going toward MPS (who apparently needs to spend $500,000 to find a new superintendent)
Who is overseeing this to make sure that stimulus funds are not being misused? Joe Biden. Obviously this has been further delegated to those closer to the recipients of the stimulus money.
Many of the questions you raised regarding why they need to spend $30,000 on a consultant to the district’s early childhood education are similar to ones I have also raised on monetary waste present within many public school districts.
South Milwaukee residents need to remember this waste of money next time the district is begging for another referendum. Perhaps this money could have been used toward facilities maintenance so South Milwaukee residents are not expected sustain another propery tax hike.