TALLAHASSEE - The size of the salaries at a Jacksonville charter school whose principal was compensated $131,407 last year has drawn the attention of Senate President Jim King.
The salaries and benefits paid last year to Genell Mills, principal of the School of Success Academy, far exceeded the $69,672 average for a principal in the Duval County public school system.
Charter schools are public schools sponsored by private groups and are exempt from many state regulations. They set their own pay.
"We have to address a charter school's power to pay its people more than public schools," said King, R-Jacksonville. "I don't know what the debate will yield, but it's now on the radar screen and people are talking about it."
Gov. Jeb Bush told reporters Tuesday that Mills' salary does "seem high." But that, he said, was "the business of the charter school and the school district."
Because the academy, which has 501 students, includes both a middle school and a high school, Mills actually receives two salaries. Nineteen other staff members also draw two paychecks, including Mills' husband and his son.
State oversight is not only limited, but spotty - although all charter schools are supposed to provide year-end audits to the Department of Education, a preliminary list of principals' salaries issued by the department last week included only 82 of the state's 259 charter schools.
King said many of the problems with oversight of charter schools, which were first allowed in 1996, may be attributed to growing pains.
"These are all relatively new entities to this date, and like many things in life, you don't expect some things that happen," he said. "But we will start closing the loopholes that exist."
Education Department spokeswoman Frances Marine said administrators are looking into the salaries at School of Success, although the school is not yet being investigated. Marine said the state has no oversight over salaries at charter or public schools.
"The state's role in this is that when there's an audit, if something raises eyebrows, we would do something," she said.
Marine didn't return a phone call for comment Tuesday.
Mills' 2003 salary of $109,272 is second-highest in Florida, among those schools whose information was available.
The top annual paycheck was $139,990 to Ruth Jefferson, principal of St. Peter's Academy in Vero Beach. Jefferson's husband, the Rev. Andrew Jefferson, is chairman of the school's corporation. The Jeffersons did not return calls for comment.
When the Florida Times-Union first reported the size of Mills' salary earlier this month, she said she had always been hesitant about the size of her salary and would volunteer to give it up if it was a problem.
