It’s official. The Dallas School Board hired Mike Miles last night as DISD’s new Superintendent. KERA’s Bill Zeeble reports Miles will tackle his duties even sooner than the scheduled July 1st start date.
Trustee Nancy Bingham says it makes sense to bring in Mike Miles sooner than later. With nearly 160,000 students here, Dallas is a much larger district than his 11,000-student Colorado Springs district.
Bingham: He does want to come in and start planning and getting ready. So it would be like him as a consultant and you would pay him on a per-day basis.
Board members approved a contract that not only pays Miles $300,000 for the next 3 years, but $1,000 a day to work up to 15 days before July. He already knows about working under separate contracts. While Superintendent in Colorado, he consulted on the side, advising districts on curriculum alignment, organizational effectiveness, and acting as a motivational speaker. Trustee Bingham and some others had no problem with Miles continuing his outside consulting, and saw possible benefits. But trustee Mike Morath says not everyone agreed with Bingham.
Miles' Contract With Dallas ISD / Administrative Services Agreement
Morath: I recognize it’s a potential point of friction and a potential point of distraction. So if I were completely confident that we could avoid it as a distraction then I wouldn’t have much concern. But there’s an easy way to eliminate it as a point of distraction and that’s to ban it outright.
And that’s what the Board has done. Except for four days in July, when Miles won’t be paid by the district, he will no longer consult. Currently, at least one other North Texas district has that policy. In 2004, when then-DISD Superintendent Mike Moses consulted for a firm that worked for the district, he was forced to stop consulting with that firm.
