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So my thoughts drift toward other job possibilities, mostly ones having to do with kids.
I adore kids!
I bet it would be great to be a juvenile public defender, for example, or a pediatric nurse. But most of those jobs require that you learn law or medicine first, which would be a pain.
That's why I've been daydreaming lately about being a charter-school CEO.
I used to think that a position of such awesome responsibility required some kind of degree in education. Now I know it doesn't require formal training in pedagogy at all.
And, my, does it pay!
Take the CEO position at Philadelphia Academy Charter School, which occupies a couple of buildings in the Northeast. Until last week, the job was filled by a former cop named Kevin O'Shea.
His academic background? A high-school diploma.
His salary last year? A very generous $206,137 - plus another $34,000 as vice president of a nonprofit that served the school. That's almost as much as former school district CEO Paul Vallas used to make - and he ran the whole $2 billion shebang!
So it's quite an appealing job possibility for me.
Sadly for O'Shea, he was demoted following an Inquirer expose about allegations of financial mismanagement and nepotism at his school. (O'Shea's wife, sister and daughter also have nice jobs related to the charter and nonprofit. Sweet!)
The School Reform Commission is scrutinizing the school's finances and contracts; O'Shea has been suspended, with pay, pending its outcome.
I sure hope it clears him of anything funny, because I, like O'Shea, have no formal background in education, and I think I'd make a great charter-school CEO one day.
Because I love kids - and I love working with my family!
Not to keep whining about my job, but I'm getting fed up with the nit-picky expense-account system here. Anytime I take someone to lunch or grab a cab to an interview, I'm expected to produce a receipt in order to get reimbursed.
Why can't my bosses just trust me?
So I feel for Martha Russell, founder and former head of Raising Horizons Quest Charter School, and her sister, Viola Bush, its former chief financial officer.
A federal grand jury indicted the sisters this month for allegedly using school money for personal purchases and then, once the feds got wind of what the gals were up to, for altering credit-card statements to obstruct the feds' investigation.
For heaven's sake - why was an investigation necessary in the first place? If the federal government trusted the women enough to fork over $100,000 in grants to the school each year, why would that trust not extend to the sisters' spending practices?
It's insulting.
When I become a charter-school administrator, I will give trust - and I will demand it in return.
But if my charter-school CEO job still doesn't get me where I want to go - i.e., into a comfier bank account - I will transition into the lucrative world of grown-up school.
That's where Delores Weaver made her money. The former head of adult education at Community College of Philadelphia was convicted two weeks ago of fraud in a scam in which CCP paid for adult literacy classes at the Sister Clara Muhammad School in West Philly.
The classes never took place.
Weaver was the last of a handful of enterprising "educators" to be found guilty of collecting money from 1999 to 2001 in the scam.
The feds called it a crime. I call it a creative way of keeping expenses down: If a class is nonexistent, then there's no classroom to light or heat, right?
I'm telling you, I cannot wait to run my own school. With mentors like the ones who've been in the news this last month - and whose innocent gaffes I will learn from - I can't fail.
Especially if I keep my head low, and my expectations for my school even lower. *
E-mail polaner@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2217. For recent columns:
http://go.philly.com/polaneczky
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