School district payout for Rollins excessive

I read with interest your story and picture on Page 1-B of the June 10 paper regarding paying Dr. Jim Rollins, outgoing superintendent of the Springdale School District. The picture showed a huge crowd sending off a wonderful administrator to his new job after 38 years as CEO of Springdale schools.

I am a retired superintendent from Colorado and Arizona and even though I have not met Dr. Rollins, I have been totally impressed with his servant leadership actions for all students and citizens of Springdale.

What I am not impressed with is paying an administrator $404, 750 for leaving a district job and going to a president position at Northwest Technical Institute where he will earn $147,200.

In fairness to the Board of Education and Dr. Rollins, your reporter stated that $108,858 of the huge amount comes from unpaid sick leave and personal leave. Do we really have to use school district tax money to pay the gentleman for time not worked until Dec. 31, 2021?

It seems that the University of Arkansas is still feeling the heat over paying two football coaches for unfulfilled contracts in the millions of dollars.

Page 5-B of your paper on the same day has a headline saying “Report: Teachers’ salaries lagging.”

How about giving each employee in the district a covid-19 bonus for keeping school operating for the last three months? If not that, how about buying an additional 800 or 900 tablet computers so that kids at home might use these while not attending school buildings on a “normal” schedule. Perhaps a donation could be made to the local food bank to help with thousands of lunches provided to needy students.

Good luck to Dr. Rollins and the Board of Education in future endeavors, but please honor your bill payers, i.e. taxpayers, by not entering into future contracts that pay thousands of dollars for days not worked.

KEN BROWN Holiday Island