Five months before he is due to retire, Española School District Superintendent David Cockerham has started making arrangements — often on the clock and on a District-owned computer — to start a business with the owner of the same firm that has recruited from abroad almost 10 percent of the District’s teachers.
E-mail correspondence, some of which was sent on weekdays and during business hours, shows consultant Jeff Baskin offered to set up meetings with Cockerham and a Colorado-based accountant to “assist (Cockerham) with setting up a company legally.”
“Here’s our name and our new logo, what do you think?” Cockerham asks in another separate message.
Baskin is the head of Professional and Educational Resources, a firm that recruits foreign teachers to work in school districts across the United States. Since 2006, the firm has brought from the Philippines 32 teachers to work in District schools, according to human resources records.
Cockerham and Baskin plan to start a similar company that recruits foreign psychologists and therapists to work in school districts here, they said. Both emphasized the company is still in the works, and they will not start recruiting until after Cockerham retires June 30.
But in one memo dated Jan. 8, Cockerham tells Baskin he is enclosing $10,000 for his share of the company they plan to start together. A separate e-mail late last year from Baskin lists plans to produce a web site, brochures and proposals to send to potential clients, and states “we have already stated recruiting people in these fields.”
Their business relationship took off when Cockerham was superintendent at the Zuni School District, he said. Emails suggest they have since become fast friends.
“I would like to thank you for sending us the tickets to the Rockies!!” Baskin writes in one e-mail.
In another, he invites Cockerham to stay at his home, outside Denver, Colo., the weekend they met with the accountant.
“That’s a conflict of interest,” School Board member Leonard Valerio said. “As a matter of fact, I told (Cockerham) I didn’t feel comfortable about it.”
Cockerham and Baskin argue there is no conflict in their relationship, first of all, because the District does not pay Baskin’s company anything. The company charges the foreign teachers a fee — ranging from $7,000 to $8,500, the teachers said — to find them a work visa and a job in a U.S. school district, but the District doesn’t pay a dime, according to an agreement between the District and the company.
“We’re not getting any sort of money from the school district, we’re not getting any sort of favors from them,” Baskin said Tuesday. “If anything, the District benefits from our services, because they’re free. You can imagine how much they’ve saved in recruitment costs.”
The District has so far hired 32 Filipino teachers from Baskin’s company. That amounts to $240,000 in revenue for Baskin’s company, provided each teacher paid an average $7,500 in fees. As Human Resources director and superintendent, Cockerham controls all hiring and firing of teachers in the District including Baskin’s clients.
Baskin said he asks teachers for a roughly $1,200 down payment and collects the rest in installments over their first 12 or 14 months of employment in the United States. Teachers said the total cost amounts to roughly three years of a teacher’s annual salary in the Philippines. Baskin argued that’s still lower than other, similar agents’ fees.
The foreign teachers recently helped fill long-standing teaching vacancies, particularly in the District’s Special Education Department, according to District documents. The District currently employs about 270 teachers, according to Business Manager Charlene Sanchez. About 9 percent are from the Philippines.
By sending the e-mails from his office computer, Cockerham likely violated the state constitution’s anti-donation clause, according to attorney Alan Hall, who specializes in anti-donation cases. The clause prohibits gifts or donations, of any shape or size, to a private enterprise or individual.
“Somebody using public property for their own purposes, it seems to me that would violate the clause,” Hall said.
Cockerham argued he works an average of 120 hours in a two-week period, which entitles him to a some personal time during his long workdays.
“After working my 80 hours in the two-week period and I want to take a break and send an e-mail to set up a company on my own time, what’s wrong with that?” he asked. “I’m never at home. When else am I going to do it?”
Board Secretary Joann Salazar said she plans to refer the e-mails to the Board’s lawyers.