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7 Eanes school board members were all smiles as they accepted a check from the Eanes Education Foundation last week for $835,000. The money will fund 16 plus teacher and staff positions in the district during the 2009-2010 school year. Part of the grant, $30,000, will go to fund the Partnership for Teacher Excellence Program that helps teachers pursue master’s degrees.
EEF President Myra Bull and other foundation staff and supporters handed over the check to Jim Strickland, president of the Eanes school board, during a public meeting on Aug. 26.
“We are very fortunate to have a community that helps us,” Bull said. “We thank (them) for their continued support, especially during this challenging economic year. When dollars are tighter, parents have to make hard decisions. We are glad that our community continues to choose to support their students’ educational excellence, which makes this grant possible.”
EEF plans to provide even more funding to the district next year, said Wally Moore, EEF executive director.
Since 2005, EEF has donated approximately $4 million to the local school district. Last year, the foundation granted the district $925,000.
“The estimate is crucial to our early efforts to budget for the 2009-2010 school year,” district Superintendent Nola Wellman said in a recent press release. “We know that outstanding teachers are of the utmost importance to maintaining and growing the excellence of our schools and the district as a whole.”
Apparently Nola Wellman actually believes that administrators are more valuable than teachers. Since she began as superintendent five years ago, she has added many administrators and central administrative salaries have risen a whopping 50% while teacher salaries are only up by 12%. Even worse, that 12% includes athletic staff salaries that have risen by 25-30% in the last five years. As district class sizes rise, do EEF donations really fund teachers? Or do they instead fund raises for highly paid administrators and coaches? Review the public information here:
http://www.keepeanesinformed.com/why_can‘t_we_fund_teachers.htm
http://www.keepeanesinformed.com/eanes_isd_athletic_salary_increases.htm
I sure hope the EEF donations go directly to teachers and classrooms. I will not donate again this year unless promises are made to correcting what I witnessed last year with growing class sizes and some extremely stressed teachers at one particular elementary school. I have no control over where my property taxes go but I must pay the whopping increases in those each year regardless. Funny that so many in my neighborhood toot the horn of EEF while they know that their appraisals are not showing their big remodels or additions that double their house size. This is cheating and keeps their property taxes lower so they are not paying their fair share. That makes it much easier for them to write the EEF a big check and play the good citizen (???). If I could get by like so many do with an undervalued house appraisal then I would give the EEF a big check too.
Check this out:
Why didn’t the Eanes ISD superintendent pay her fair share of property taxes?
http://www.keepeanesinformed.com/wellman_-_property_taxes.htm
And … about those expanding class sizes:
http://www.keepeanesinformed.com/class_size.htm
I won’t donate again to EEF, and I won’t vote for the next bond proposal. I worked to get that last bond issue passed, and then the admin didn’t spend it on the things that we all thought that we were funding. I know that EEF has great intentions, and they work really hard. How do they guarantee that their contributions go directly to teacher salaries? How do they ensure that the admin doesn’t redirect their funds, as well? I understand about the graduate degree program, and it’s great. But it’s a small percentage of the dollars donated to the school district. Where is the accountability for the rest of our donated dollars?
Does EEF maintain an accounting of where the money they donate to Eanes ISD is actually spent and if so, where can the taxpayers review this information? In other words, how much is spent funding additional teaching positions, and what are specific positions? How much is spent on the graduate degree program.?How much of the donation is lost in the shuffle?
An accounting would be very helpful and would answer all questions about EEF dollars. I’m sure that they have a system in place for tracking their donations. Can anyone fill us in?
Is EEF willing to publish all information related to donations and expenditures in detail? Not just summaries or PR spin but the actual documentation so that donors can track the money. EEF and Eanes ISD tell donors that donations support teachers but the spending priorities … tell another story.