The superintendent's budget

EDITORIAL

Symbolism is a big part of running any institution, and when it's a public institution, the way things look really matters. So even if the $84,000 that top school officials in San Francisco spent on travel and meals in 2005 is just a small fraction of the district's budget, it looks terrible for the superintendent of a district that's closing schools for budget reasons to be eating meals at fancy restaurants and staying in $350-a-night hotel rooms on the public dime.

The mayor of San Francisco doesn't do that: When Gavin Newsom travels, he abides by the city's rules, which limit reimbursable hotel and food expenses to about $200 a day. He doesn't have a city credit card, as Ackerman does (in fact, as Tali Woodward reported last week, nobody in city government gets a credit card). For the last fiscal year, he spent a grand total of $2,265.69 on official travel.

Supt. Arlene Ackerman got her Diners Club card as a part of her lucrative contract, which also includes a car and a $2,000-a-month housing allowance. The School Board is beginning the process of looking for a new superintendent, and while top-flight school administrators don't come cheap, the board needs to be a lot more careful about these sorts of extras.

More important, the board should immediately adopt the same sort of limits on travel and dining expenses that the city has. It's valuable for school administrators and board members to go to professional meetings and conferences, and the district should pick up the tab. But it should be reasonable: When teachers who make less than one-fifth the pay of the superintendent haven't gotten a raise in four years and have to dip into their own pockets to buy classroom supplies, the people who run the schools have to operate under a budget too. *