You Owe This Man

by: Thurman Hart

Wed May 10, 2006 at 06:50:03 PM EDT

Take a long hard look at the face shown above.  He is the poster-child for why your property taxes are so high.  And - hold onto your heart, Fred Sanford - he says you owe it to him.

That's right.  You own him.  So dig deep in your pocket, forget your own kid, and send your money to Charles Epps, Superintendent of Jersey City School District and State Assemblyman.  As the JC Super, Mr. Epps steals accepts $225,038 in salary.  Here's the kicker - the JC schools are actually run by the state.  So why the hell is this guy getting this much pay?

"In fact, it's probably less than superintendents make across the country," he said. "There are districts that are a lot smaller than mine that make a lot more than me."

Really?  Let's investigate this lie claim a little bit.  Just because his salary doesn't agree with nationwide statistics doesn't mean he's talking out his ass, does it?

Jersey City School District has about 30,200 students that attend 48 schools from Pre-K to grade 12. That's roughly $7.45 per child.  What a freaking bargain!

The Superintendent of Milwaukee Public Skills, William Andrekopoulos receives a salary of $160,000.  That school district has more than 97,000 students.  Milwaukee pays their guy a paltry $1.65 per child.

In Western PA Superintendents can expect to make somewhere around $107,731.  The pay for very large districts across the country are, of course, much higher:

Miami-Dade, for example, recently lured former New York City school Chancellor Rudy Crew for a package worth as much as $475,000 a year. The Houston Independent School District, where Thompson interviewed, hired a new superintendent for a base salary of $270,000; with benefits and bonuses, the package is worth $384,000.

So wait - the people who get more than Epps are the people who run NYC schools, Miami-Dade schools, Houston schools - all of which are magnitudes larger than Jersey City schools.

But there are two differences between Mr. Epps and everyone else to which he has been compared.

1) THE STATE RUNS JERSEY CITY SCHOOLS!!!!!!!

2) Mr. Epps works at JC schools PART-TIME!!!!!

If you can possibly justify Mr. Epps salary - and I defy anyone to show me an hour-by-hour schedule that would indicate he earns half of what he gets - then there is no way you can justify the fact that he continues to get that pay while playing with himself tossing off taking a siesta pretending to be a part of the State Assembly in Trenton.  If he earned the money when he was in his office in JC, then he isn't earning it when he leaves his office.

Governor Corzine, I have a suggestion for saving money - throw Charles Epps out on his rear end and let the state continue to run JC schools without enriching dead weight in the process.