Betty Sternberg Gets a Raise?!

Well, a "performance" bonus, at least. Yes, dear reader, incredible as it sounds, the Board of Ed voted Betty a salary bonus of $3,500 by a vote of 6-2. At least one of the negative votes came from someone who thought the bonus should have been larger.

At this point, Betty's salary and benefit package is reported to be in excess of $290,000 per year. That's almost $25,000 a month, dear reader. About $6,000 a week. Well more than a thousand dollars a day. And for this we get falling test scores, construction cost overruns, two homeless elementary schools, unprecedented dissatisfaction and unrest among teachers and townspeople, and no end in sight to any of it. What's wrong with this equation?

Your scribe will never understand why the Board of Ed doesn't bite the bullet and simply fire Betty. It would have saved the taxpayers of this Town well over half a million dollars and incalculable anguish if the Board had just left the position vacant for these past two years.

But now they have given her a bonus, and apparently plan to keep her around to wreak more havoc for a third year. What's the old phrase about putting the inmates in charge of the asylum? Sounds like a pretty good metaphor for what's going on in Greenwich these days....