by ANDREW KIRALY

September 20, 2007

Las Vegas CityLife

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT: From September 2004 to August 2005, Clark County Education Association Executive Director John Jasonek picked up an extra $129,043 salary.

That's in addition to what he's already making in his official job as a top officer of the county teachers' union, for which Jasonek was paid $134,706 during the same period.

Jasonek's sweet little side gig is for the Clark County Education Association Community Foundation, a nonprofit charity run by the teachers' union. The foundation helps recruit minority teachers, tutors students in at-risk schools, doles out scholarships, and gives small grants to teachers to help out with everything from Elmer's Glue to buses for field trips. The foundation also operates a point-based, free classroom-supply store for teachers, who, with starting salaries of about $33,000, often find themselves dipping into their own wallets for classroom supplies. Need a new set of dry-erase markers, scissors or construction paper? The foundation is here.

"Some of these programs are nationally award-winning models," says Jasonek.

In the 2004 tax year, the latest for which information is available, the foundation spent more than $800,000 on these worthwhile endeavors. But the foundation has also proven to be a boon for people who run it. Also in the 2004 tax year, it spent more than $600,000 on overhead costs. Of that amount, about $400,000 went to salaries -- including Jasonek's -- which comprise about 28 percent of the foundation's expenses. It might make sense if those fat paychecks went for the long, grueling hours. The clincher is, it doesn't look like top brass is burning the midnight oil. On tax forms, Jasonek is listed as working 12 hours a week for the foundation.

"It's like working a part-time job at Subway," he explains.

But others can't help but wonder whether Jasonek -- and others -- are feasting on a foot-long greed sandwich. Indeed, Jasonek's not the only one who seems to be pulling down major bucks at the foundation these days. In the 2002 tax year, foundation Director Kevin Nielsen was paid about $58,000 from the charity coffers. Two years later, his salary from the foundation more than doubled; from 2004 to 2005 he pulled in nearly $125,000. Nielsen insists he's been earning roughly the same salary over the past few years, and says it's likely his salary was being split between the foundation and some other source -- which perhaps explains the puzzling language on many of the foundation's tax forms stating that "CCEA and the foundation reimburse each other for direct costs that each incur from time to time."

Rather than dredge up tawdry exposés of foundation salaries, Nielsen asks, why not focus on the programs? "I understand where people are coming from and how they might want to point fingers," he says, hinting at a mud-slinging campaign from the rival Teamster's union, which is currently vying to dislodge the teachers' union as the bargaining unit for the district's 18,000 teachers. "But the biggest secret out there is the Teacher's Aide Warehouse Store," the free classroom-supplies shop he runs for district teachers.

As the Teamsters ramp up its campaign, something else seems to be ramping up, too -- a tide of resentment against the teachers' union for netting classroom instructors little more in recent years than token raises. Teamsters organizers are hoping to tap into that resentment as they begin to wave around executive salaries -- and other numbers (see sidebar) -- to show the Clark County Education Association has lost sight of its core mission of representing teachers.

"When you've got pay increases that come out to that, you'd think they're doing a fantastic job for teachers, getting good contracts, and offering great representation," says Ron Taylor, a school district employee and teacher organizer for the Teamsters Local 14. "The truth is, they're not."

Jasonek balks at criticism of his side-job salary, explaining he's paid based on what money he raises. "What's dirty is that [the Teamsters] don't raise a legitimate issue," he says. "If it's about my salary, so be it. If they want to raise an issue about the programs, let them criticize us for funding minority students [to become teachers], or let them criticize us having a scholarship in the name of a lady who was in the plane that went into the Pentagon [on 9/11]."

The way Jasonek sees it, his extra $129,000 salary is an incentive to bring in money for the community foundation, and was a factor in its rapid growth since it began in September 2000 as a "little $25,000 grant program," he says. Compare that to its 2004 revenue of more than $1.6 million, thanks to help from top-drawer corporate donors such as Citigroup, Nevada Power and Advantage Financial.

"Am I supposed to be penalized for doing a good job?" Jasonek says. "If I go out and someone says, 'We'll donate $2 million,' am I supposed to say, 'We better not take that because it might report on my salary. Sorry, I'll have to let the kids do without'?"

It's a fair question, but there are at least a few indications the foundation is a bit top-heavy on the payroll side. According to a 2006 report on foundation salaries published by the Foundation Center, a New York-based organization that tracks and analyzes philanthropic groups, the median salary for executives heading up foundations with less than $10 million in assets was about $50,000.

The folks over at the Wall Street Journal are a bit more liberal in their estimation. If you plug the parameters into their Career Journal's "Salary Expert" website, you'll find that even by their lights, Jasonek's foundation could trim some fat. The site reports that a charitable organization director working in Nevada earns an average salary of $80,890. The high end of that? About $107,000.

Of course, it's assumed that's a full-time position, and not just, say, a dozen hours a week. Even Jasonek might agree: Part-time work is for sandwich shops.