Scooping big bucks the Old School way

Is it too late for Billy Bulger to become the headmaster of a New England prep school?

Didn’t you always think of these headmasters, if you thought of them at all, as old, musty, crusty Yankee types, in bow ties and cuffed pants, prattling on about “honor” at the Somerset Club?

No mas, baby. Running a prep school is a big-money job, and it’s not just for guys anymore either.

Last weekend the Wall Street Journal ran a story about the skyrocketing salaries. And one of the top “earners,” to use the mob terminology so familiar to the Bulgerites who muscled into the local higher-ed racket, is none other than Barbara Landis Chase of Phillips Academy in Andover.

“Just over $500,000,” the Journal reported, “in salary, benefits and expenses for 2004-05.”

Of course, Andover is a veddy, veddy exclusive prep school. Its graduates include both George Bushes, as well as Scooter Libby ’65, whose perjury trial is just getting under way in D.C. And Andover can afford the big money - its endowment is $706 million.

As in so much of American life, compensation for prep school headmasters seems wholly unrelated to success - or failure. Consider the second highest-paid headmaster, er, headmistress, Robin Robertson of Milton Academy. You probably know her from reading her pathetic missives during the “Mustang Sally” debacle of a couple of years back, when the school briefly considered changing the name of its athletic teams from the Mustangs to the “Lewinskys.”

Ms. Robertson’s pay: $370,850. Not bad for hiding under your desk for months at a time, waiting for the scandal to blow over.

Then there’s Phillips Exeter, where the head-whatever made $371,154, although the school told the Journal $154,000 came from “deferred compensation.” Its alumni include homewrecker Suzy Welch ’77, Gore Vidal ’43 and the late John Heinz ’56 who set up Mama T so that she could someday marry again.

America’s Gigolo, John Forbes Kerry of St. Paul’s School, which was the exclusive school that first let the cat of the bag about this big-money trend a couple of years ago, when it was discovered that the previous headmaster was grabbing a $524,000 “package.”

The new St. Paul’s headmaster (for he is indeed a man) is down to a mere $275,000 a year, which in the world of Sen. Kerry (Class of ’62) is lower middle class.

OK, I admit it, I went to prep school, too, Deerfield Academy. The headmaster was Frank L. Boyden, who had the job from 1902 to 1968 and parlayed it into two blue serge double-breasted suits and a horse-drawn buggy that he traded in for a golf cart around 1963.

His nickname was “the Quid.” The Quid’s successor in 2004-05 made a lot more quids than the Quid ever did, $310,000. And I’ll bet he does even better now that he’s retired and is setting up a new prep school in Jordan for King Abdullah (Deerfield ’79, before which he went to Eaglebrook, where Scooter Libby also boarded, but enough of the prep trivia).

You want more pols and their schools? Mitt Romney’s sons went to Belmont Hill - $255,458. JFK was a Choate man. He stole the line about “Ask not what your country can do for you” from his headmaster, who said “Choate” instead of “country.”

What would Endicott Peabody (the headmaster, not the governor) make of the fact that his successor at the Groton School now makes $232,875.

Poor Quid. He was born too soon (in 1879). If he were headmaster today, I’ll bet he’d own three suits.

Joe Magno update: how dare he die before his trial gets underway!

http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=178856

>>Sexual assault victims reportedly tormented by a Maynard teacher say the “monster” has tricked them again after he suffered a heart attack and died days before his trial.

Joseph Magno, 66, who reportedly raped boys for decades, died Monday from a heart attack, Middlesex District Attorney Gerard Leone confirmed yesterday.

His trial was expected to start next week.

“I’m somewhat frustrated,” said a Maynard High graduate who alleges Magno molested him throughout middle school. “In a sense, it’s like he escaped again.”

To his defense team and supporters, death robbed “Mags” of a opportunity to clear his name.

Magno faced charges related to one male student, now 18. At least 14 other former students whom Magno taught over his 42-year career, however, wanted to testify against Magno. Judge Diane Kottmyer was expected to decide yesterday whether to allow such evidence.

“For some students, Joe Magno was a helpful teacher,” said Maynard Superintendent Mark Masterson, who has previously refused to comment on the case. “Having no more information than the press, for some students, he was an abuser.”

Masterson suspended Magno without pay several weeks after Magno’s Jan. 6, 2006, arrest.

Maynard Police Chief James Corcoran said he spoke with some of Magno’s accusers Monday night.

“A lot of them wanted their stories to finally be told, and that opportunity is gone now,” Corcoran said.

“We don’t need a judge to tell us that he was guilty,” added Maria Terris, a friend of some of the teacher’s alleged victims. “We knew it and he knew it, and that’s what did this monster in.”

more on Magno from Metrowest Daily News:

>According to court documents, the boy said he was raped in Magno's home and car and on school grounds. Magno took the boy to Florida and bought him gifts, including a Ford Mustang, records show.

Magno said the boy had never been in his home. The boy drew a detailed map of the house, which Hudson Police searched and confirmed matched the boy's description. Police also found 11 photos of partially clothed, blond, blue-eyed boys between 10 and 13 years old.

Assistant District Attorney Michael Chinman had said Magno "operates with deceit and lies," while Magno's lawyers had contended the teacher never had a problem with anyone during the 42 years he taught in Maynard.

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