Dr. Holliday's True Legacy

There have been a number of comments about the contracts for some of the I-SS administrators in the Central Office. Although I do not have copies of the contracts for all of the administrators, I did ask for copies for some of them. The information below is from the copies of the contracts that I do have.

Individual	Starting Date	Ending Date	Starting Annual Salary
Brenda Clark	July 1, 2008	June 30, 2012	$124,500.00
Melanie Taylor	July 1, 2008	June 30, 2012	$120,000.00
Mathew Fail	July 1, 2008	June 30, 2012	$87,214.32
Dale Ellis	July 1, 2008	June 30, 2012	$110,970.00
Ron Hargrave	July 1, 2008	June 30, 2012	$118,000.08
Brady Johnson	July 1, 2008	June 30, 2012	$124,500.00
Pamela Schiffman	July 1, 2008	June 30, 2012	$121,758.72
Marty Moore	July 1, 2008	June 30, 2010	$105,000.00
Jed Stus	July 1, 2008	June 30, 2010	$92,000.04
Alicia Tate	Jan. 5, 2009	June 30, 2011	$101,000.04
Denise Holliday	July 1, 2007	June 30, 2009	$60,000.00

Melanie Taylor and Dale Ellis both had previous four-year contracts that were from 2007 to 2011 but were changed at the beginning of last school year to the current ones that go until June of 2012. Of course both these individuals received nice raises in salary to go along with these new contracts. There may have been others who had their contracts extended but I don’t have that information. Now, each of the Central Office administrators will receive a 2% furlough this year, but many of them will still be earning well over a hundred thousand dollars. Also, I wonder how many Central Office employees will have their contracts extended before Dr. Holliday leaves for Kentucky.

Letters To and From Mr. Ramee

As I mentioned in a previous post, I-SS administration has told me that if in the future, I would like additional information or have further questions, I am to contact Mr. Neal Ramee of Tharrington Smith, LLP, Attorneys at Law, whose office is in Raleigh. I mailed a letter to Neal Ramee yesterday morning. In my letter I outlined some of my previous requests for I-SS records, and I included a couple of new requests. As it turns out, I received a letter from Mr. Ramee yesterday afternoon. Obviously, someone at I-SS had contacted Mr. Ramee to ask about some of my requests for public records. In his letter to me, Mr. Ramee stated that the invoices from Shipley & Associates to I-SS between January 2002 and September 2007 have been compiled and are ready for me to inspect. I am to contact him to make an appointment to review them. In my letter to Mr. Ramee I stated that I had asked to see the invoices and the corresponding requisitions. So, I am going to wait until he gets my letter before I ask for an appointment. Mr. Ramee also stated that the school system is working diligently to compile the remaining consulting contracts that I had ask to inspect. Lastly, Mr. Ramee advised me that a comprehensive database index is in development. Apparently he told the school system they had to comply with my requests to see school records. This could have been much simpler for all, and cheaper for the school system, if they had just followed the public record laws and I-SS policy to begin with.

Viewing Documents

The I-SS administration is up to its same old tricks. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Janey Munday and I had made an appointment with Mrs. Wike, I-SS Financial Officer, to view a number of the School’s financial documents. Janey and I went to the Central Office yesterday (Thursday) to see the documents. The first item we saw was a note that was presumably from Mrs. Wike. The note was to inform us that not all of the requested documents would be available for viewing. The 2007-08 audit report and the invoices from Jim Shipley and Associates were provided. However, only some of the consulting contracts were made available. In the note it was relayed that the staff pulled all the contracts they could during the time they had to work on this task.

The database indexes that I have been requesting were unavailable. We were informed in the note that the index is currently incomplete and that after consulting with 25 other school districts and municipalities the Central Office could find no other entity that has the index completed and available. In addition it was stated that the district is currently working with legal council and NC Dept. of Cultural Resources, Archives and Records division to complete the work necessary to fulfill the legal requirements of the database index. I asked for a copy of the database indexes two months ago. State law and I-SS policy both state that the indexes are to be available to anyone requesting public records. Why is the administration just now starting to work on getting this information together?

In viewing the audit report I could find nothing out of the ordinary. Of course, I am not a CPA. I was hoping to find some indication as to how much I-SS spends on central office administrative costs but it seemed like that information was comingled with all the other budgetary data. I did request that they provide copies of some of the pages so I could look over the information again. The consulting contracts that were available were mostly architectural contracts. The few other contracts seemed relatively minor.

The most interesting information was what Janey found contained in the invoices from Jim Shipley and Associates (JSA). JSA is a big supplier of Baldrige information, supplies, and services. In the last two years I-SS has spent some $20,000.00 with JSA. Some of it was for supplies, but I-SS also arranged for JSA to have Brenda Clark provide consulting services for 2 days at $1000.00 per day and to have Marty Moore provide consulting service for several days at $1800.00 per day. I-SS also paid for their travel expenses. Since that time Brenda Clark and Marty Moore have been hired as I-SS Central Office administrators. Dr. Holliday does like to hire his Baldrige cronies even if he has to create a new administrative position to do so.

Janey and I plan to go back to the Central Office next Thursday to view the documents that were not available yesterday as well as some additional invoices from JSA. I wonder what excuses the administration will have at that time.

This post was written by Paul Klaene.