Sunday, September 4, 2011

Los Angeles Times: Fresno School Official donates much of salary back

Fresno school official has a gift for giving

Supt. Larry Powell is retiring for one day, then going back to work for much lower pay so he can give his original salary and benefits back to the school district.

Larry Powell
Fresno County School Supt. Powell in his office. His wife is a retired principal. (Photo by Tracie Cone, Associated Press / September 4, 2011)
September 4, 2011
 
It was supposed to be a quiet thing; no fanfare, no press releases.

Fresno County School Supt. Larry Powell and his wife, Dot, a retired principal, had figured out a way to help imperiled programs in their struggling school district.

He would retire for one day. Then come back to work at a pittance compared with his former salary — putting more than $800,000 of his salary and benefits back in the district's coffers.

But in tough economic times, when public trust has been repeatedly battered, word of an elected official giving back money quickly made its way from a Board of Education meeting to national headlines. Powell spent his "retirement" giving television and magazine interviews.

"We were trying to not create a big stir," said Armen Bacon, spokeswoman for the Fresno County Office of Education. "But we're living in a time of despair and people are so hungry for stories about the impact one person can make."

Powell officially retired Wednesday. The district was contracted to pay him $235,000 plus benefits a year through 2014. He went back to work Friday, rehired at a salary of $31,020 with no benefits, to run 35 school districts with 195,000 students.
Powell said he will give his new salary to charity. His former, heftier salary will go into the district's discretionary fund.

He will have some control over where the money that could have gone into his pocket will be spent. His aim is to protect arts programs, an anti-bullying program that grew out of the Columbine High School massacre — and if things get even bleaker, fund teaching positions in the face of layoffs.

"We've become so focused on academics that we're losing the essentials: the arts, people who instill a love of learning," he said. "We're driving kids away from school."

The Powells decided over the course of several months that giving up his salary would be easy enough for them to do. They own a beautiful home. They have lifelong health insurance through Dot's retirement plan. Larry, 63, will receive $200,000 a year from his retirement pension built up over a 42-year career that took him from high school civics teacher to superintendent. He's reached the maximum pension allowed through California's teacher retirement system.

By any standard, they are comfortable. By the standards of a farming region with the nation's highest unemployment, they're wealthy.

They talked over how much money was enough money, and what they really wanted to do with the rest of their lives.

"We're at this point where we've had success," said Dot Powell, 64. "But there was a restless feeling. Like 'What happens now? What do we do next? How do we have an impact?' "

The couple met at a Fresno church baseball game in 1969 and were married nine months later.

Both came from poor, yet generous, families. Dot had escaped deepest Appalachia by becoming a flight attendant, even as she dreamed of one day being a teacher. Larry, an education major, grew up in Calwa, still one of the most destitute areas of Fresno County.

"I saw my dad giving away furniture and clothes even while we were adding a cup of water to the soup to make it go farther," he said. "Dot's dad delivered food house-to-house in the hills of Kentucky even when he was hungry too."

Larry Powell walks with a pronounced limp. He says polio is the best thing that ever happened to him.
 
When I tell a kid they can overcome anything, I show them my braces and they have to listen," he said with a laugh.

He has an extensive yo-yo collection and still goes into the classroom to teach physics lessons with his spinning toys. On the side, he is an ordained Baptist minister who visits the sick and officiates at funerals and weddings. He's a paid motivational speaker. He claims to have never had a bad day.

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