ST. JOSEPH, Mo. – Superintendent Fred Czerwonka has earned a reputation as “The Candy Man” in the St. Joseph school district.

“I think he was buying loyalty,” local school board member Chris Danford told freelance reporter Sam Zeff for a news story on Ballotpedia.org. “What’s a quick way to come into a town where you know nothing, you know no one?”

Fred “Candy Man” Czerwonka

“What’s the quickest way you can make everyone happy? Give them more money,” she said.

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Danford unwittingly opened a can of worms recently after learning Czerwonka passed out unauthorized $5,000 bonuses for local school administrators shortly after taking over the district as superintendent last summer.

What’s most egregious, however, is the freebies came a few short months after the district cut $3 million from its budget to make ends meet. The $270,000 candy man bonuses, split up between 54 administrators, were funded by a rebate the district received from its insurance company, although school board members were not informed of the spending until after the money was already gone, according to Ballotpedia.

“I thought it was a big problem, but it turns out it’s like an iceberg,” Danford said. “It just keeps going, and going, and going. And it’s discouraging.”

Czerwonka apologized to the school board for his Candy Man stipends, but defended the payout in an April school board meeting because he believed the money was necessary to keep top administrators in the district, and to boost their morale.

Regardless, the incident “brought to light a raft of other stipends the board neither approved nor even knew about,” the web site reports.

“The board and the public discovered there were lots of extra ways administrators got stipends,” Ballotpedia reports. “They were paid thousands extra for night duty and local travel. If you were on something called the Superintendent’s Council, you got an extra $9,000 per year. There was a different group called the Superintendent’s Cabinet where members received an extra $2,800 per year.

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“Associate superintendents got an extra 15 percent of their salary.”

Charges of nepotism and alleged retaliation against the district’s chief financial officer, who raised issues with the unauthorized spending, also surfaced. So far, the superintendent’s free spending ways have spawned numerous investigations by the Missouri State Auditor, the U.S. Department of Education, the Office of Inspector General, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to the web site.

In the midst of the investigations, the St. Joseph News-Press reported that local furniture suppliers are raising issues with the district’s bidding process, and allege contracts to furnish two new schools in the district were unfairly steered toward an out-of-town firm that employs a former elementary principal as its sales representative.

The irony of the district’s scandals is that school officials are working to increase a tax levy that’s set to expire next year if voters don’t reauthorize the funding.

“The rage is palpable in the community and they’re not going to pass this levy with the current administration,” local union president Todd Brockett said.

While the problems in St. Joseph are especially bad, they’re not uncommon in public schools. Too often, taxpayers and the board members they elect to oversee schools are left in the dark about unnecessary employee perks and union payouts that drain district budgets.

Meanwhile, school officials often cry poverty and blame state lawmakers for shortchanging students. The reality is most public school districts could save substantial cash, and avoid painful employee layoffs, by simply trimming back these types of needless and expensive employee perks.

But the worst part of the shady spending is the example it sets for students, Danford said.

“I’ve been in conferences as a school counselor where we reamed kids, where we expelled kids from school for less,” the whistleblower told Zeff. “We have higher expectations of our students than we do for our leadership. That drives me crazy.”

Here’s to you, superintendent Czerwonka: