River Rouge - Pupils and Top Administration

[Shadowninja]

LADY BUDGETDOWN: THE RIVER ROUGE LEDGER GETS MORE INTERESTING

Lady Budgetdown opened River Rouge School District's employee compensation report expecting to add one more superintendent salary to the Wayne County ledger.

Instead, the first three lines stopped the quill. 🪶

River Rouge reports:

👑 Superintendent - $483,314.38 in W-2 Medicare wages
📜 Deputy Superintendent - $316,670.53
📜 Director/Supervisor - $291,788.36

And then?

The ledger falls off a cliff.

The next highest-paid position is a high school principal at $159,706.28.

That means the district reports its superintendent at more than THREE TIMES the Medicare wages of its highest-paid principal.

And the top three administrative positions alone account for:

$1,091,773.27 in Medicare wages.

That caught Lady Budgetdown's attention.

So I went backward through the receipts.

Derrick Coleman has served as River Rouge superintendent for years. In 2017, he became one of three finalists to lead Detroit Public Schools Community District.

River Rouge wanted to keep him.

And the contract used to do it was anything but ordinary.

It included an automatic 4% annual increase, a $10,000 annual retention bonus, additional performance/enrollment incentives, substantial tax-deferred retirement contributions, reimbursement of certain pension contributions, a vehicle stipend and other compensation provisions.

In other words, the compensation was stacked well beyond a simple salary.

That contract ran through June 30, 2024. I have searched for the agreement governing the period after that and have not located it publicly, so I am not going to pretend I know what the current contract says.

But I don't have to speculate about what River Rouge reports today.

The district's own 24-25 compensation report says:

$483,314.38 — Superintendent
$316,670.53 — Deputy Superintendent
$291,788.36 — Director/Supervisor
$159,706.28 — next highest position

Those aren't estimates.

Those aren't numbers Lady Budgetdown calculated.

Those are the district's reported W-2 Medicare wages.

And for a district serving approximately 2,755 pupils, I think taxpayers are perfectly entitled to look at those first three lines and ask:

Why?

Perhaps there is additional context.

Perhaps River Rouge has a perfectly reasonable explanation.

The ledger is always happy to make room for it.

But until then, the receipts say what they say.

And these particular receipts required a second look. 👑🪶

With receipts and respect.

Lady Budgetdown

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