A sign your school district is in trouble...

When budget cuts may lead to your superintendent of schools having to give up one of her armed guards...

As hundreds of teachers, social workers and support staff are getting layoff notices from the Detroit Public Schools district, some board members are requesting that the superintendent cut her office's budget, starting with the armed police who escort her around Detroit and throughout the state.
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The DPS superintendent's security unit was cut from a 24-hour detail after the end of the state takeover in 2005, but it still appears to be the most extensive in the country. It exceeds that of school leaders in districts four to eleven times larger than DPS such as Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, officials in those cities said.

Currently, DPS provides Calloway two officers who -- according to documents obtained by the Free Press -- receive about $95,000 a year combined in base pay. Those officers also incurred more than 400 hours of overtime, totaling $13,803 during a period of about two months, from July 1 to Sept. 5, records show.

The two DPS police officers initially assigned to protect Calloway also protected three previous leaders: interim Superintendent Lamont Satchel, Superintendent William F. Coleman III and Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Burnley.

However, those officers were reassigned about two months after Calloway's arrival in July 2007. The transfers were due to personality conflicts and because the cops refused to carry Calloway's handbag, according to district sources who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to talk about her security.

I assume she has armed guards because the schools she visits are so dangerous. Who is guarding the kids who go there once they leave the school grounds?

I love that she wanted the armed guards to carry her purse, after all someone so important that they warrant a $280,000 to oversee a shrinking, violent and failing school system certainly should not be expected to carry her own purse!