Three of the state’s four highest-paid teachers are now under investigation by the Chicago Board of Education, after they took home from $63,000 to $88,000 each in overtime pay last year.
The teachers have been removed from the curriculum projects that generated the overtime, school officials said, and their supervisors are also under investigation by the board’s inspector general.
In the calendar year 2001, one teacher who worked out of the Chicago Public Schools’ central office made $73,549 in overtime on top of her $80,355 salary, for a total of $153,904, according to system records obtained by the Tribune. Another teacher doing similar work made $63,036 in overtime on top of $80,355 in salary for a total of $143,391.
The third teacher, who works in Morse Elementary School on the West Side, took home $88,428 in overtime pay on top of a regular salary of $55,277, for a total pay of $143,705.
It remains unclear whether the three teachers did anything wrong. One said Wednesday that she did only what she was asked to do, while another said extensive overtime is common as the system works to institute new reforms. Repeated efforts to reach the third teacher were unsuccessful.
But in response to the Tribune’s findings, Chicago school officials said they are initiating reforms to prevent “excessive” overtime payments.
“This kind of practice will not be tolerated,” said schools chief Arne Duncan, who said his own annual salary is in the $170,000 range. “It’s unacceptable. The [inspector general] is doing a thorough investigation, and I’ll be able to make further comments once it is completed.”
“We have put in place reforms to ensure that this kind of money-making doesn’t happen again, that nobody makes this much money,” said schools spokesman Peter Cunningham. “We have put in place a monitoring mechanism that automatically alerts us when people begin earning excessive amounts of overtime.
“The second thing is, in the future, when projects like these have to be done, they will not be done by hiring people and paying overtime. They will be done by assigning existing staff on regular time,” he said.
The three teachers were ranked first, third and fourth among best-paid public school teachers in Illinois during the 2001-2002 school year, according to data released to the Tribune Wednesday by the State Board of Education.
The state’s highest paid teacher last school year was Judith C. Branch-Boyd, who made $164,421 in salary, overtime and retirement contributions, state records showed.
Branch-Boyd is a 20-year Chicago Public Schools employee who works as a “citywide elementary teacher” in the Schools and Regions Office, records show. She received $73,549 in overtime according to her W2 forms for 2001, Chicago records show.
A spokesman Wednesday was uncertain what Branch-Boyd’s duties are, but officials said the overtime work was part of a voluntary project writing curriculum for after-school and summer school programs.
Debbey L. Thomas, the state’s third highest paid teacher last year, made a total of $152,117 doing the same sort of work as Branch-Boyd, records show. A board employee since 1975, Thomas received overtime payments of $63,036 in 2001. She made $74,931 in overtime during 2000, for a total of $160,160.
Reached by phone Wednesday evening, Thomas denied any wrongdoing. She confirmed the ongoing investigation by the Chicago board’s inspector general.
“I am reluctant to go into details right now, but you should know I was not abusing overtime. I was only working hours that I was asked to work. I have been with CPS for more than 20 years,” Thomas said. “I haven’t done anything wrong. Once I see what the findings (of the investigation) are, I will talk more about it then.”
The women’s supervisor, William McGowan, chief of schools and regions, couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.
McGowan’s predecessor, Blondean Davis, who left the Chicago system in summer 2001 and is now a superintendent in the south suburbs, said she was unaware of the overtime payments to the two curriculum writers, who didn’t report directly to her.
“That surprises me. How could they earn that kind of money?” Davis said.
The fourth-highest paid teacher in Illinois last school year was Demetrie W. Smith, a schoolwide resource coordinator at Morse Elementary School on the West Side and a system employee since 1972, according to records and the school’s principal.
Smith said Wednesday that her $88,000 in overtime is not evidence of wrongdoing, but a reward for hard work she has volunteered to do regularly for five years.
“All of that added salary came from writing [curriculum] or staff development, and they had to pay us at our regular rate,” she said. “Teachers work extended days all the time.”
Principal Leon Hudnall Jr. said Smith usually works at Morse from 7 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., teaching reading to pupils as well as providing support to teachers, including coordination of supplies and lesson plans.
After her time at Morse, Smith said she typically goes downtown to the central office, where she reports to Branch-Boyd, working on the after-school and summer school programs. She also works full-time teaching summer school, she said.
In the last seven years, the school system has relied on teachers willing to make extra money to work additional shifts to write new systemwide exams or to teach after-school and summer school classes as Mayor Richard Daley’s schools team imposed reforms at a breakneck pace.
“We have thousands and thousands of teachers who end up getting extra money through some activity in which they volunteer to do. That’s why we have to put in this mechanism so that when people start clocking a lot of overtime, we can check it and make sure it’s legitimate,” Cunningham said.
The Chicago board’s investigation will also look at a custodian-engineer who made $138,815 in overtime in 2000, bringing his total income that year to $194,393; and a teacher in the vocational training office who made $70,835 in overtime in 2000, bringing total pay to $150,083, records show.
In Wednesday’s report on highest salaries, the state revealed that 1,411 Illinois public school teachers took home more than $100,000 during the 2001-2002 school year. Of those, 99 percent work in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs; 51 percent of the total work in the Chicago Public Schools system.
A separate report shows that the highest-paid administrator last school year was Blondean Davis, the former Chicago official.
Davis took home more than $356,000 in salary, pay for roughly 300 accumulated sick and vacation days and retirement benefits as she finished a 31-year career in the Chicago system, state records showed.
