Musk earns $ 770 million in stock options, Tesla confirms
DETROIT — Tesla confirmed last week that CEO Elon Musk will get the first tranche worth nearly $ 770 million of a stock- based compensation package triggered by the company meeting several financial metrics.
The electric car and solar panel maker’s board certified that Musk earned the big payout, according to a filing with the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing Thursday said Musk can buy 1.69 million shares of Tesla stock for $ 350.02 each, but it wasn’t clear whether he had exercised the stock options. His payout is based on the difference between the option price and Thursday’s closing share price of $ 805.81.
Musk earned the options as part of an audacious compensation package approved by the board in 2018.
According to the filing, the board certified that Tesla had reached the milestones by hitting $ 20 billion in total revenue for four previous quarters and a total market value of $ 100 billion. The company also reached $ 1.5 billion in adjusted pretax earnings, but that must still be certified by the board, the filing said.
Musk has to hold the stock for a minimum of five years, under the terms of the compensation package.
Musk can afford to wait before cashing in on his latest windfall, given his wealth is estimated at $ 39 billion by Forbes magazine.
All told, the incentives approved by Tesla’s board in 2018 consist of 20.3 million stock options that will be doled out in 12 different bundles if the company is able to reach progressively more difficult financial goals. It’s one of the biggest corporate pay packages in U. S. history.
In order for Musk to receive all 20.3 million stock options, Tesla will have to generate adjusted annual earnings of $ 14 billion on annual revenue of $ 175 billion coupled with a market value of $ 650 billion. In the past four quarters, Tesla, which is based in Palo Alto, California, has reported adjusted earnings totaling $ 3.6 billion on revenue totaling $ 26 billion.
When Illinois schools switched to online learning in March because of COVID- 19, plenty of experts predicted the worst.
They warned that remote learning — an entirely new approach to teaching adopted on the fly — would be a poor substitute for in- person classroom instruction.
Now we know: They sure were right.
Data released by the Chicago Public Schools last week reveals that online learning has been a woeful disappointment. The findings are a huge red flag for summer school, which will be online this year for thousands of students who do not complete all their remote lessons this spring.
CPS has attached no policy recommendations to the new findings, but the message is obvious: Every effort must be made, as we first wrote four weeks ago, to safely reopen brick- and- mortar schools in the fall.
Not only in Chicago, but across the state.
If remote learning is falling short of acceptable minimums in Chicago, it’s fair to assume it’s falling far short in other school districts, too.
Kids are no- shows
Just 59% of CPS students, according to the data, are logging in consistently — at least three days a week — to the school district’s online remote learning platform. About a quarter of students, some 58,000, aren’t logging in at all.
Homeless students, and students of color, are less likely than their peers to log in even once a week.
Some students have essentially gone missing. More than 2,000 children have not been reached at all, by anyone at their school, since schools were shuttered by Gov. J. B. Pritzker in mid- March.
One bright spot: 93% of students now have a laptop and WiFi.
With summer school fast approaching, CPS of course has a duty to try to reach the remaining 7%, to the extent possible. Otherwise, “the summer may be wasted,” as School Board President Miguel del Valle said at Wednesday’s Chicago Board of Education meeting,
But let’s face it: The district is up against a problem with no clear solution.
What, realistically, can CPS do to engage tens of thousands of students who have the equipment and means to log on remotely — but are not doing do? As Chief Education Officer LaTanya McDade said, the problem “may not be solely based on technology access.”
Maybe a high school student who is missing in action from online learning is working a job to help a newly unemployed parent pay the bills. Maybe a student has parents who are working and unable to supervise his or her athome schooling. Maybe the parents are simply failing to do their part to make remote learning work.
All the more reason to get students safely back in school, if at all possible, this fall.
We know it will be a daunting task to reopen Illinois schools in
September. And we know the first priority of Chicago and the state must be the safety of children, teachers, all other school employees and parents. Nobody can say how great a threat the coronavirus will be in the fall.
But what a price our schoolchildren are paying in the meantime.
Teachers frustrated too
Teachers say they’re also in a real bind. Remote instruction makes it tough for them to do their best job. And as parents themselves in many cases, they’ve got their own kids’ school lessons to monitor at home.
“We’re stressed out too,” one third grade teacher told us. “It’s
LET’S FACE IT: THE DISTRICT IS UP AGAINST A PROBLEM WITH NO CLEAR SOLUTION.
not just the kids who are in these situations.”
At last week’s school board meeting, CEO Janice Jackson said a task force soon will unveil a plan for reopening the schools.
“No one wants to see students back in school more than I do,” Jackson said.
Of this, we have no doubt. Nobody is happy — certainly not professional educators — when real schooling barely limps along.