Waste of the Day: Title I Movie Night
Topline: A night at the movies turned into a national scandal in 2012 when Dallas Independent School District spent $57,000 on a boys-only trip to see Red Tails, a World War II film directed by George Lucas of Star Wars fame.
Female students were forced to stay at school and watch a movie about a spelling bee, prompting a federal Title IX investigation for gender-based discrimination.
Ironically, no one made out better than the administrator who planned the field trip. She resigned with a $142,000 payout and became a private consultant.
The field trip is catalogued in the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses.
Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname "Dr. No" by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn't stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.
Coburn's Wastebook 2012 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth more than $18 billion, including the Dallas field trip. The film screening would cost $83,000 in today’s money.
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Key facts: Dallas sent 4,400 fifth-grade boys to see the movie, but they probably would have been better off with a documentary. Red Tails is based on the true story of the Tuskegee Airmen — the first Black pilots in the Air Force — but it’s filled with historical inaccuracies and dramatized action scenes. Other critics felt the violent film, rated PG-13, was not appropriate for elementary school students.
The trip was paid for with federal Title I funds meant to educate underprivileged students.
The Department of Education launched an investigation, but it ended after the district “promised to never exclude students based on gender again,” according to the Dallas Morning News.
The trip was planned by administrator Shirley Ison-Newsome. Bizarrely, she was promoted to assistant superintendent just months later, with a $23,000 raise before leaving the district.
She was a tabloid punchline the entire summer. The Dallas Morning News said Superintendent Mike Miles was putting his credibility at stake by employing her. D Magazine labeled her the city’s “most inept administrator” after she approved a $1,500 staff bowling trip.
Ison-Newsome got the message and resigned in October 2012 — but changed her mind four days later. Her resignation then became a retirement, allowing her to stay on the payroll until August 2013.
“At her current $170,000 salary, her compensation for doing exactly nothing comes to just about $142,000. A lot of money, to be sure, but there’s a strong argument to be made that Ison-Newsome is more valuable doing nothing than she was doing something, especially when that something included field trips,” wrote Eric Nicholson of the Dallas Observer.
Summary: It’s important for educators to keep students engaged, but certain history lessons are best taught using textbooks.
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