'Outrageous’ To Pay $232K To Former BCPS Superintendent: Governor

BALTIMORE COUNTY, MD — When incoming superintendent Darryl Williams takes the reins at Baltimore County Public Schools, Interim Superintendent Verletta White will start her new job. The Baltimore County Board of Education reportedly voted to pay her more than $232,000 to work for the next year as a consultant, starting July 1, through the transition.

Gov. Larry Hogan bashed the move, recalling that White was the subject of a recent ethics probe.

Hogan called it an "exorbitant contract for former interim Superintendent Verletta White, who was unable to become the permanent superintendent because of serious ethical lapses" and said that "instead of getting fired — she is rewarded."

White proposed staying on as a consultant as part of a separation agreement, according to board member John Offerman, who put forward a motion to accept her resignation effective June 30 as interim superintendent and accept her agreement to serve as a consultant.

The motion was for White to serve "in a consultive capacity to the superintendent," Offerman said at the school board's June 18 meeting.

There was no discussion of what that meant.

The motion passed unanimously. The contract and specifics of the proposal were not available on Board Docs, the online portal where agenda items and supporting documents are traditionally stored, and Baltimore County Public Schools has not provided them to Patch.

After the contract was approved, Baltimore County Public Schools issued a news release about the agreement with comments from White as well as the board chair.

White's proposal calls for her to study teacher recruitment and retention, according to the release. She will focus on high-need areas like special education, math, science and English for speakers of other languages.

"My plan is to examine the school system’s current recruitment/retention strategy and propose changes that I hope will serve as a win-win for the organization and for our students," White said.

BCPS has hired 900 teachers each year for the past two years, according to the statement from the school system. Currently, it employs more than 9,800 teachers and more than 18,200 staff and serves almost 114,000 students. Nationally and statewide, school districts are facing teacher shortages, as well.

White plans to meet "with teachers, staff, university partners, and school system officials in BCPS and across the nation," according to the statement, which said she will report quarterly on her findings and make recommendations to the superintendent.

Board of Education Chair Kathleen Causey issued a statement in support of White as a consultant.

"In this capacity, Ms. White will be able to use her knowledge of the school system to examine an area of critical importance to the Board," Causey said in the statement. "We appreciate Ms. White’s willingness to support Dr. Williams in this area and as he transitions into the school system as the incoming superintendent."

Board member Julie Henn posted on Facebook afterward that she and Causey both opposed the contract that White proposed, where they were the only two who voted against it at the board's meeting July 10, 2018; it was that contract which guaranteed White continued employment with BCPS at a salary reportedly greater than $208,000.

When she took on role of interim superintendent, part of White's contract contained a clause stating that if she did not become superintendent, she would be "returned to her previous position of chief academic officer, or a similar position in the school system" with a salary that "will not be less than the salary and benefits she would have received as chief academic officer for the 2017–2018 school year."

Her salary while chief academic officer was $208,800, according to The Baltimore Sun, which reported her new salary in the role of consultant is $232,700 plus $8,770 for a car and $2,000 for her phone. The paper also noted that she will be called a consultant — a term usually reserved for independent contractors — although she is officially a BCPS employee with benefits and a pension commensurate with administrators.

White will serve as a consultant to the superintendent from July 1, 2019, until June 30, 2020.

She is a graduate of BCPS and has worked there for 23 years, as chief academic officer from 2013 to July 2017 and in roles previously from teacher to assistant superintendent. She has a master's degree in leadership and teaching from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, a bachelor's in education from Towson University and is a doctoral candidate in urban educational leadership at Morgan State University.

White has been the BCPS interim superintendent since her predecessor Dallas Dance abruptly resigned in 2017. He was convicted of perjury over ethics violations that occurred while he was superintendent. He said he had not received pay other than from the school system; however, he owned a consulting company and received thousands of dollars from companies that did business with BCPS. He served four months of his six-month jail sentence, The Baltimore Sun reported, and was released in August 2018.

White, too, was scrutinized for ethics violations.

The school board conducted an ethics probe of White, who also failed to disclose that she had received consulting fees from outside the school system from 2014 to 2017.

The governor — who created an Office of Educational Accountability in 2018 due to what he called "repeated allegations of wrongdoing and mismanagement" in Maryland school systems — did not hold back in responding to the decision to keep her on as a consultant.

"In an outrageous display of arrogance and waste, the Baltimore County Board of Education approved an exorbitant contract for former interim Superintendent Verletta White, who was unable to become the permanent superintendent because of serious ethical lapses and — instead of getting fired — she is rewarded with a consultant compensation and expenses package of more than $240,000 a year. Simply outrageous," Hogan said in a statement June 26 after The Baltimore Sun obtained a copy of the contract through the Freedom of Information Act.

"The students of Baltimore County would be far better served if these funds were used for educational purposes in classrooms instead of consulting services and costly stipends for a car and cell phone," Hogan said.

The state of Maryland, under Hogan, passed the Teacher Induction, Retention and Advancement Act of 2016 to address the labor shortage in a profession where an estimated 40 to 50 percent of first-year teachers leave by the end of their fifth year of teaching. The act offers state funding for each county to conduct a pilot program focused on retention of new teachers through stipends and additional support systems as they enter their careers. Plans must be submitted by June 30, 2019, and the program runs through 2022.

Also mandated by the act, the Maryland State Department of Education oversaw a work group that reported its findings and recommendations for teacher retention, induction and advancement in late 2017. It was not clear how or if White's project incorporates this, as the contract outlining White's role was not provided to Patch.

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