News Headlines
Source: WHAS-TV, Louisville, Nov. 3, 2009
Are Dr. Sheldon Berman’s travels raising funds and prominence excessive?
By Adam Walser
Using an Open Records request, WHAS11 discovered that Dr. Sheldon Berman took 40 days of professional leave during a 13 month period.
Berman says he’s raising JCPS’s stature, but local education leaders say they want him home more often.
During a time of tight budgets and layoffs, most school districts are cutting down on travel. In Jefferson County Public Schools, teachers and administrators are limited to one district-funded trip per year for professional development.
But we’ve learned that Superintendent Dr. Sheldon Berman is on the road a lot more than that.
WHAS11 filed open records requests to see how many days Sheldon Berman has taken Professional Leave and to find out where he’s going.
We determined that between June 30th, 2008 and July 31th of this year, Berman spent 40 work days, or two full months, on the road.
While Berman says much of that time was spent seeking new sources of funding and raising the district’s profile, some local education leaders believe he’s spending too much time away from the office.
The destinations reach across thousands of miles to Austin, Boston, Orlando, Washington, California, Canada, and even Cape Town, South Africa.
These are not the travels of a pilot or a movie star, but of Jefferson County Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Sheldon Berman. He sits on several organizations’ boards and often attends national and international educator meetings.
“The vast majority of any travel I’ve had has been paid for by other organizations or grants,” said Berman. “We’ve had some outstanding grants.”
Berman says part of his job as Superintendent of the nearly 100,000 student Jefferson County Public Schools district is to meet with foundations, businesses and government leaders.
“If the travel is related to a grant that brings a great deal of money into the district and benefits the district and the students, then that travel’s probably worthwhile,” said Brent McKim, President of the Jefferson County Teachers Association.
But McKim says all trips are not worth Berman’s $1,000 a day salary.
“Certainly at that salary the superintendent makes, it’s appropriate for him to look at that. It’s appropriate for the school board to look at that,” McKim said.
Some school board members are taking a closer look than ever.
“If I’m on the fence on go here or not go there, I’d like the superintendent to be here in Louisville, Kentucky,” said School Board Member Stephen Imhoff.
Imhoff says Berman’s main job is overseeing children’s education.
This year, only 33 of the system’s 133 schools met “No Child Left Behind” goals, representing a 13% drop from last year.
In August, Berman received a “C” from the majority of respondents to a teacher’s survey.
Teacher’s used the words “hypocrite”, “arrogant”, and “self serving” to describe him.
Former JCTA Executive Director Steve Neal, who sat on the selection committee that brought Berman from a small district in Massachusetts in 2007, is now critical of Berman.
“Dr. Berman is way out of the norm in the amount of travel,” said Neal. “He’s hired at almost 300-thousand dollars a year to run a billion dollar business and he has no place being gone so much.”
Neal says some of Berman’s trips were not necessary, including a visit to Manitoba, Canada to see polar bears with the director of the Louisville Zoo last October.
Neal says at that time, he was trying to address important school-related issues with Berman.
“I think it was a poor judgment of timing to go look at polar bears,” said Neal.
Berman says the trip was important.
“I think it drew attention to one, the endangered species and two, the work that the Louisville Zoo is doing,” Berman said.
Berman was appointed to the Zoo Board after the trip, but that isn’t why he said he took it.
“I did a broadcast back to four schools here while I was on that trip,” he said.
School board member Imhoff questions its impact.
“I even looked up the North Pole on the Internet, so that was a little bit of a benefit to me,” Imhoff said.
In late May, Berman left the United States again, attending the World Congress on Civic Education Conference, in Cape Town, South Africa, where he was a presenter.
Since wind and ice storms pushed back the end of school, the trip ended up corresponding with the last week of classes.
“We did hear from a number of our teacher members who were concerned about the superintendent being away during the last week of school,” said Brent McKim.
“And they point out that they’re not allowed to take personal days or take off during the last week of school, even though they have a daughter or a son getting married.”
“They only work a 187 day year and I work a 260 day year. That’s a much different context,” said Berman.
Berman missed every single graduation.
“Not attending graduations is symbolic in a negative way,” said Steve Neal. “It sends a wrong signal to the staff, the teachers, the parents and the students.”
“I Think the only thing I really missed was the graduations. I really didn’t miss the end of school. In fact, I was in touch with the district all the way through that by both cell phone and e-mail,” Berman said.
That’s not acceptable to school board member Imhoff.
“we would not like for that to happen again,” Imhoff said. “The last few weeks of school are very important.”
Berman says there was another reason he didn’t alter his plans.
“At the end of that, which was after school ended here, I planned a vacation attached to that,” Berman said. “So that was one period of time when I actually was gonna take a little bit of a break.”
Despite criticism of his travels, Berman says it’s vital to bringing JCPS more national prominence.
“There’s a fine balance between restricting funding and preserving resources and saying we have to be out there and hustle for more resources. And at a time like this, we need to pursue as many competitive grants as we possibly can.
Most of the costs of Dr. Berman’s trips were paid by outside sources.
In most cases, the money didn’t come directly from the school district’s budget.