Parallels, anyone? 

From the Union Leader, 7/31/06 (yeah, just playing catch up).

Check the big checks: Board keeps overpaying administrators

MANCHESTER’S SCHOOL BOARD continues to waste money on needlessly high administrator pay.

Last week the board replaced former Chief Financial Officer Bill Sanders with Karen DeFrancis, the district’s assistant business administrator. So far, so good. DeFrancis is widely respected, and it was nice to see the board promote a good candidate from within. However, there is the matter of her pay.

DeFrancis was making about $73,000 a year as assistant business administrator. With no justification whatsoever, the school board gave her a $12,000 a year raise along with her new job title.

Standard city practice is to give a 10 percent raise for a promotion to a higher position. That would have put DeFrancis at just under $81,000 a year. The board gave her $85,000. It did not have to, it just did.

This comes after the board twice approved needlessly expensive no-bid contracts for former Parkside principal Amanda Lecaroz that together cost the district $100,000.

And those contracts came after the board gave former CFO Sanders a $13,000 raise and Student Services Director Karen Burkush a $12,000 raise with another $2,500 upon completion of her doctorate degree — both unjustifiably large.

The majority on the board has yet to realize that it is not playing with Monopoly money. Each of these dollars was taxed away from Manchester residents, and the board has a duty to spend them efficiently.

Mayor Frank Guinta, a fan of new Business Administrator Karen DeFrancis, voted against her hire last week. He wanted her in the job, but the salary was too high, he said. Maybe one day he’ll have enough similarly frugal allies on the board to stop this kind of needless giveaway of taxpayer dollars.