ST. LOUIS – Millions of dollars in salary packages were recently awarded to just 11 out-of-towners for St. Louis schools.
FOX 2 gathered the numbers from 11 job offer letters, acquired under Missouri’s Sunshine Law. The hires involve people not from Missouri or even the Midwest, most with salaries that exceed the maximum pay under the previous administration. We also found that only one of the candidates appears to have met a key requirement listed on the offer letter.
Phoenix Jackson from Texas is the most well-known example, with an offer for a salary of $200,000 a year in March 2024 to be the SLPS communications director.
Records show Matthias Greywoode, from Michigan, was offered $200,000 annually in May 2024 to be the district’s chief financial officer.
Zithri Saleem from Washington state was offered $200k annually in March 2024 to be chief information officer.
All 11 offer letters include a requirement—underlined—saying, “You are required to hold a valid Missouri substitute teaching certificate.” We found only one of the 11 candidates who appeared to have obtained that certification.
The district did not answer our email and phone call for a response. We went in person to get answers. Security escorted us out and said no one from communications was in the district office, and they were not expected back.
No one from the school board would talk on camera either. One representative did tell us that no one on the board was aware of the offer letters or the salary amounts, which is part of what their audit is looking into now.
That rep also told us no salary exceeded $170,000 a year under previous Superintendent Dr. Kelvin Adams.
From the offer letters we obtained since his departure, eight of the 11 administrators were offered salaries exceeding $170,000, for a total of $2,005,474.28.
Those offers followed the selection of Keisha Scarlett from Seattle as superintendent. Scarlett is now on a temporary leave of absence following questions about her hires. Many of those hires have already left, but we can’t get the district to answer which ones remain.
Preliminary audit results are expected any day now. FOX 2 also has more financial records coming into our newsroom this week. We’ll share those records once we get them.
