POSTED: Monday, August 8, 2011 - 5:54pm
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - 5:20pm
EL PASO- Last week, the El Paso School District superintendent was suspended without pay while he fights corruption charges.
What you may not know, is that EPISD is still handing Lorenzo Garcia a sizeable paycheck.
$300,000 a month, that's what the El Paso Iindependent School District is required to pay for Superintendent Lorenzo Garcia’s retirement plan, health insurance for him and his children and his $1,000 a month communication allowance. All of this despite being on "leave without pay."
Garcia was put on unpaid administrative leave last week after he was arrested by the FBI on the suspicion of fraud and theft of district funds. In addition to those perks, Garcia has up to 150 paid vacation and sick days that the district will have to pay him for, which cost them almost $1,200 a day.
EPISD's school board president Isela Castañon-Williams says legally the district has to pay.
“The days that we are paying him are for days that he has earned in the past and I think that's what people need to focus on,” says Castañon-Williams.
If Garcia has earned 150 leave days the district will have to pay him $177,300, and Garcia may have a lot of vacation coming to him.
"He rarely took vacation, rarely took sick days. He has quite a bit of leave time accumulated," says Castañon-Williams.
We asked the board exactly how much leave Garcia has earned and they say they don’t know yet. The district's still calculating the number because it may include time earned from other districts where Garcia’s worked in the past.