| Utterback parents pleaded with the Board to provide educational materials for their kids and keep them safe on Tuesday |
Tucson Unified School District Superintendent H.T. Sanchez has regularly used District resources to create optics intended to bolster the campaigns of Board members Kristel Foster and Cam Juarez. From enrollment numbers – to the number of teacher vacancies, Sanchez’s figures have changed to suit his immediate needs.
One set of numbers is indisputable – Sanchez’s extraordinarily high salary and those of his “cabinet” members. Yet, it appears Sanchez’s crew has still been able to manipulate those numbers to maximize their take.
Cases in point:
● Superintendent Sanchez and his cabinet are supposed to be paid their daily salary for unused vacation days. According to their contracts, their daily salaries are their base pay/260 days.
● Instead, of using their base pay for the calculation of their daily pay, their (base pay + stipends)/260 days were used to calculate their daily pay.
● Sanchez should have gotten $1,000/day, because his base pay is $260,000/260 days = $1,000.
● Instead the number used was ($260,000 + $25,000)/260 days = $285,000/260 days = $1,096/day.
● So, he collected almost $100/day extra.
● The difference between $1,000/day and $1,096/day meant that Sanchez collected $32,633 or $2,633 more than he was entitled to.
● The cabinet collected nearly $80,000 for unused vacation days in addition to their very lucrative salaries.
● Cabinet members are automatically paid for their unused vacation days each year.
● Each cabinet member has an $8,000 stipend in addition to their $10,000 performance bonuses.
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● Only the $8,000 stipend was added to their salaries, but that still means they got an additional $31/day for each day of unused vacation.
● All together, the cabinet members collected $5,115 they weren’t entitled to.
● Cabinet members get 25 vacation days, 6 personal days and 5 sick leave days a year, in addition to 22 holidays a year.
● Teachers can get paid for unused sick leave, only when they leave TUSD, only if they have worked for TUSD for 10 or more years, leave at the end of a semester and give two months’ notice.
● Teachers are not paid at their daily pay, they are paid at their daily rate for a short term sub.
● TUSD hasn’t funded its school libraries in years, but has no limits on the amount of unused vacation days the superintendent and his cabinet can make turning in unused vacation days.
● The following is the definition of daily rate of pay from Sanchez’s current contract:
With the exception of Juarez and Foster all TUSD Governing Board candidates have questioned the numbers.