News
The Española and Taos school districts are set to receive over $2 million in federal money this school year to fund a program that pays teachers bonuses based on professional development and student achievement.
The program, known as the Teacher Incentive Fund, offers principals, teachers and education assistants stipends if a certain percentage of their students meet testing goals and if the educators participate in a designated amount of professional development in a given school year.
However, a major chunk of the federal money allocated for the program may never make it to the schools if the Rio Rancho-based non-profit organization that distributes the federal grant spends public money as it has in the past.
The Northern New Mexico Network wrote and received the incentive fund grant, and has agreed to distribute the money to the two participating school districts. In recent years, nearly half of the grant money the Network has received, which includes other federal and state grants, has been spent on Network salaries and expenses, according to federal tax forms.
In Fiscal Year 2008, the Network spent about $648,000, or 43 percent, of a total $1.5 million in state and federal grant money it received on “management and general” expenses, according to federal tax forms. The year before that, the Network kept about $345,000, or 44 percent, of $792,000 in government grants for management expenses, tax forms state.
In fiscal year 2008, about $147,000 in grant money went into the pocket of Network Executive Director Carlos Atencio. Over $142,000 was for Atencio’s base salary, and more than $4,000 was to cover other expenses such as travel in fiscal year 2008, according to bank statements attached to the Network’s tax forms.
Atencio’s base salary was raised to $148,000 last fiscal year; the Network has yet to make public bank documents detailing other expenses. Atencio has received $54,000 in raises since he became executive director in 2004.
Atencio defended his salary, and several “perks” like travel and cell phone reimbursement, based on the increased number of federal grants he has overseen.
“With my salary, 'X' percent comes from the teacher incentive fund, but I manage three other federal grants,” Atencio said. “It’s important this is not seen as being taken away from the teacher incentive program. A portion of (my salary) comes from other major funds I manage.”
Those “other major funds” from which Atencio draws his salary include a federal teacher quality enhancement grant and a state grant to provide math and science training for teachers.
Atencio defended the salaries of his next highest-paid employees — including Financial Director Isaac Martinez, who made $105,000 last fiscal year, and Circuit Rider J. Rudy Montoya, who made $101,000 last fiscal year — on the basis that they work as independent contractors rather than employees. That means their salaries are inflated by about 36 percent to cover the costs of benefits and taxes normally covered in employee salaries, Atencio said.
“They’re worth every penny we pay them,” he said.
But Atencio offered little explanation for how his son-in-law, Carlos Pagan, became the Network’s fourth highest-paid employee in fiscal year 2007, at $83,000 a year, and the fifth highest-paid employee in fiscal year 2008, at $58,578 a year. Pagan was employed both years as a Network representative who travels to individual districts to assist with program implementation and training. The tax form for non-profits requires directors to identify and explain if a family member — defined by the IRS to include “spouses of children” — is one of the non-profit’s top five highest-paid employees, which was not indicated on the Network’s form either year.
“I’ll have to take a look at that and see,” Atencio said. “But he’s not working that much for me any more.”
As a basis for comparison, New Leaders for New Schools, a non-profit group based in New York, oversaw about $42 million in public contributions in fiscal year 2008, including $10 million in federal grants, and helped distribute teacher incentive money to several districts across the country. New Leaders spent just short of 8 percent of its overall budget on management expenses that fiscal year, tax records show. The Network, during the same fiscal year, spent over 38 percent of its total revenue on management expenses.
Also, the New Schools organization’s highest-paid employee, President Laverne Srinivasan, made $381,000 in fiscal year 2008, less than 1 percent of the group’s total revenue that year — significantly more than Atencio made dollar-wise, but a much smaller percentage than the 8 percent of total revenue Atencio’s salary swallowed up.
Salaries aside, in fiscal year 2008, the Network also spent $90,000 on unspecified “indirect costs” for management, $23,000 on management travel and $13,000 on accounting services.
Those expenses include one $11,200 check to the Seascape Resort in Monterey Bay, Calif.
“I took a group of teachers and principals and one or two Network staff to the New Teachers Center,” Atencio said. “(The Network) is charged with developing a site where we can send teachers to be coached, and these were all master teachers.”
Espanola Valley High School social studies teacher Laurel Fain said she was well aware of the imbalance in the Network’s spending. She said the Network recently changed the way it reported staff salaries to make it look like staff salaries were part of direct program costs.
“They were paying a bunch of people’s salaries to do ‘teacher development,’ and then started classifying (those expenses) as (direct) ‘teacher spending,’” Fain said.
Fain’s claim appears to be true. In fiscal year 2009, the most recent year for which tax data is available, the Network raked in $3.4 million in public grant money and reported zero dollars went to management expenses.
The difference is that Atencio reported himself and all of his highest-paid employees as independent contractors rather than Network employees. The Network paid about $148,000 to Atencio, $105,000 to Martinez and $101,000 to Montoya in fiscal year 2009, but none of those showed up as management expenses or salaries.
Numbers Don't Match
On top of these spending practices, there is a discrepancy in the Network’s financial records between the amount of teacher incentive money Atencio reported receiving as compared with the amount the federal government claims it has awarded the Network.
For fiscal year 2008, the federal Education Department web site states the Department gave $1.656 million to the Network through the incentive fund.
Yet, the Network reported just short of $900,000 in the bank account designated for the incentive fund for the same fiscal year on its tax forms.
Martinez explained the discrepancy by saying the Network only draws down federal funds for reimbursement once it has already spent money on teacher training or incentive pay-outs.
“These awards are over a five-year period, so we may not spend the money based on what they send us or award us,” Martinez said. “We can carry moneys forward. We can’t just spend this money willy-nilly.”
Atencio offered a different explanation. He said the federal fiscal year runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 of the ensuing calendar year, whereas the fiscal year used for the Network’s tax forms covers July 1 through June 30 of the ensuing year. The missing $700,000 was spent between July and September 2008, Atencio said.
However, through fiscal year 2009, the Department’s web site states the Department has awarded $3.9 million in teacher incentive money to the Network. On the other hand, the Network has reported receiving just $2.9 million in teacher incentive funds.
Jane Glickman, a spokeswoman for the Department, said she could not comment on the specifics of the Network’s case without further research, but that it might merit an investigation.
“Anything is possible,” she said. “We have this huge list, and maybe we made a mistake on it, maybe someone transposes a number, maybe some went for a program evaluation. We’ll look into it as much as we can because we certainly want to make sure federal taxpayer money is being spent correctly.”
As of Tuesday, the Department had not fulfilled a public records request to inspect all federal payments to the Network since fiscal year 2005.
Incentive Fund Helps
Several other school districts across the country receive grant money directly from the federal government for the incentive fund program. But the Española School District does not have the manpower to write the grants, according to Assistant Superintendent Dorothy Sanchez.
The Española District received $781,000 out of a total grant of $894,000 in fiscal year 2008 and just under $1.1 million out of a $2.1 million grant in fiscal year 2009 through the Network for its incentive fund program, according to District documents. The District is also set to receive over $2 million for the program over the current and next fiscal year, District documents state.
Regardless of the Network’s spending practices, Sanchez, who oversees the District’s incentive fund, said the incentive program has helped increase state standards-based test scores by prompting teachers to adapt their teaching methods based on data from short-cycle tests, the results of which are used to determine incentive rewards.
“We’ve seen some definite increases in certain content areas and more focused professional development,” Sanchez said.
No matter, half of the District’s schools, and the District as a whole, failed to meet state standards last year.
The District has not met state standards since the No Child Left Behind Act, which mandates the state tests, went into effect in 2002.
The program, known as the Teacher Incentive Fund, offers principals, teachers and education assistants stipends if a certain percentage of their students meet testing goals and if the educators participate in a designated amount of professional development in a given school year.
However, a major chunk of the federal money allocated for the program may never make it to the schools if the Rio Rancho-based non-profit organization that distributes the federal grant spends public money as it has in the past.
The Northern New Mexico Network wrote and received the incentive fund grant, and has agreed to distribute the money to the two participating school districts. In recent years, nearly half of the grant money the Network has received, which includes other federal and state grants, has been spent on Network salaries and expenses, according to federal tax forms.
In Fiscal Year 2008, the Network spent about $648,000, or 43 percent, of a total $1.5 million in state and federal grant money it received on “management and general” expenses, according to federal tax forms. The year before that, the Network kept about $345,000, or 44 percent, of $792,000 in government grants for management expenses, tax forms state.
In fiscal year 2008, about $147,000 in grant money went into the pocket of Network Executive Director Carlos Atencio. Over $142,000 was for Atencio’s base salary, and more than $4,000 was to cover other expenses such as travel in fiscal year 2008, according to bank statements attached to the Network’s tax forms.
Atencio’s base salary was raised to $148,000 last fiscal year; the Network has yet to make public bank documents detailing other expenses. Atencio has received $54,000 in raises since he became executive director in 2004.
Atencio defended his salary, and several “perks” like travel and cell phone reimbursement, based on the increased number of federal grants he has overseen.
“With my salary, 'X' percent comes from the teacher incentive fund, but I manage three other federal grants,” Atencio said. “It’s important this is not seen as being taken away from the teacher incentive program. A portion of (my salary) comes from other major funds I manage.”
Those “other major funds” from which Atencio draws his salary include a federal teacher quality enhancement grant and a state grant to provide math and science training for teachers.
Atencio defended the salaries of his next highest-paid employees — including Financial Director Isaac Martinez, who made $105,000 last fiscal year, and Circuit Rider J. Rudy Montoya, who made $101,000 last fiscal year — on the basis that they work as independent contractors rather than employees. That means their salaries are inflated by about 36 percent to cover the costs of benefits and taxes normally covered in employee salaries, Atencio said.
“They’re worth every penny we pay them,” he said.
But Atencio offered little explanation for how his son-in-law, Carlos Pagan, became the Network’s fourth highest-paid employee in fiscal year 2007, at $83,000 a year, and the fifth highest-paid employee in fiscal year 2008, at $58,578 a year. Pagan was employed both years as a Network representative who travels to individual districts to assist with program implementation and training. The tax form for non-profits requires directors to identify and explain if a family member — defined by the IRS to include “spouses of children” — is one of the non-profit’s top five highest-paid employees, which was not indicated on the Network’s form either year.
“I’ll have to take a look at that and see,” Atencio said. “But he’s not working that much for me any more.”
As a basis for comparison, New Leaders for New Schools, a non-profit group based in New York, oversaw about $42 million in public contributions in fiscal year 2008, including $10 million in federal grants, and helped distribute teacher incentive money to several districts across the country. New Leaders spent just short of 8 percent of its overall budget on management expenses that fiscal year, tax records show. The Network, during the same fiscal year, spent over 38 percent of its total revenue on management expenses.
Also, the New Schools organization’s highest-paid employee, President Laverne Srinivasan, made $381,000 in fiscal year 2008, less than 1 percent of the group’s total revenue that year — significantly more than Atencio made dollar-wise, but a much smaller percentage than the 8 percent of total revenue Atencio’s salary swallowed up.
Salaries aside, in fiscal year 2008, the Network also spent $90,000 on unspecified “indirect costs” for management, $23,000 on management travel and $13,000 on accounting services.
Those expenses include one $11,200 check to the Seascape Resort in Monterey Bay, Calif.
“I took a group of teachers and principals and one or two Network staff to the New Teachers Center,” Atencio said. “(The Network) is charged with developing a site where we can send teachers to be coached, and these were all master teachers.”
Espanola Valley High School social studies teacher Laurel Fain said she was well aware of the imbalance in the Network’s spending. She said the Network recently changed the way it reported staff salaries to make it look like staff salaries were part of direct program costs.
“They were paying a bunch of people’s salaries to do ‘teacher development,’ and then started classifying (those expenses) as (direct) ‘teacher spending,’” Fain said.
Fain’s claim appears to be true. In fiscal year 2009, the most recent year for which tax data is available, the Network raked in $3.4 million in public grant money and reported zero dollars went to management expenses.
The difference is that Atencio reported himself and all of his highest-paid employees as independent contractors rather than Network employees. The Network paid about $148,000 to Atencio, $105,000 to Martinez and $101,000 to Montoya in fiscal year 2009, but none of those showed up as management expenses or salaries.
Numbers Don't Match
On top of these spending practices, there is a discrepancy in the Network’s financial records between the amount of teacher incentive money Atencio reported receiving as compared with the amount the federal government claims it has awarded the Network.
For fiscal year 2008, the federal Education Department web site states the Department gave $1.656 million to the Network through the incentive fund.
Yet, the Network reported just short of $900,000 in the bank account designated for the incentive fund for the same fiscal year on its tax forms.
Martinez explained the discrepancy by saying the Network only draws down federal funds for reimbursement once it has already spent money on teacher training or incentive pay-outs.
“These awards are over a five-year period, so we may not spend the money based on what they send us or award us,” Martinez said. “We can carry moneys forward. We can’t just spend this money willy-nilly.”
Atencio offered a different explanation. He said the federal fiscal year runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 of the ensuing calendar year, whereas the fiscal year used for the Network’s tax forms covers July 1 through June 30 of the ensuing year. The missing $700,000 was spent between July and September 2008, Atencio said.
However, through fiscal year 2009, the Department’s web site states the Department has awarded $3.9 million in teacher incentive money to the Network. On the other hand, the Network has reported receiving just $2.9 million in teacher incentive funds.
Jane Glickman, a spokeswoman for the Department, said she could not comment on the specifics of the Network’s case without further research, but that it might merit an investigation.
“Anything is possible,” she said. “We have this huge list, and maybe we made a mistake on it, maybe someone transposes a number, maybe some went for a program evaluation. We’ll look into it as much as we can because we certainly want to make sure federal taxpayer money is being spent correctly.”
As of Tuesday, the Department had not fulfilled a public records request to inspect all federal payments to the Network since fiscal year 2005.
Incentive Fund Helps
Several other school districts across the country receive grant money directly from the federal government for the incentive fund program. But the Española School District does not have the manpower to write the grants, according to Assistant Superintendent Dorothy Sanchez.
The Española District received $781,000 out of a total grant of $894,000 in fiscal year 2008 and just under $1.1 million out of a $2.1 million grant in fiscal year 2009 through the Network for its incentive fund program, according to District documents. The District is also set to receive over $2 million for the program over the current and next fiscal year, District documents state.
Regardless of the Network’s spending practices, Sanchez, who oversees the District’s incentive fund, said the incentive program has helped increase state standards-based test scores by prompting teachers to adapt their teaching methods based on data from short-cycle tests, the results of which are used to determine incentive rewards.
“We’ve seen some definite increases in certain content areas and more focused professional development,” Sanchez said.
No matter, half of the District’s schools, and the District as a whole, failed to meet state standards last year.
The District has not met state standards since the No Child Left Behind Act, which mandates the state tests, went into effect in 2002.
