O’Donnell still getting tech pay: WACTC covering retiree’s life insurance. He held school’s top post for 16 years. [The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, Pa.]

Jan. 15--PLAINS TWP. -- Thomas O'Donnell may have retired as administrative director last February, but the Wilkes-Barre Area Career and Technical Center is still writing checks for him, a source said, including one worth more than $25,000 and another for $45,000 this month.

The school also is covering O'Donnell's life insurance through the 2013-14 school year.

O'Donnell got the center's top post in 1993 and officially retired Feb. 9, 2009. Before that, he had been on medical leave since September 2007. His retirement was accepted at a Dec. 23, 2008, special meeting of the Joint Operating Committee that runs the school for five member districts, and at the time JOC members declined comment, citing personnel concerns.

One of the unannounced aspects of O'Donnell's departure was a retirement-incentive package that included the following, according to the source:

--A retirement incentive including payment of approximately $25,980 upon retirement, and the same amount on Jan. 2 of this year and again on Jan 2 of 2011, for a total of $77,940.

Any unused personal and/or vacation days paid at $428.24 per day. It could not be determined late Thursday how much, if anything, that amounted to.

Life insurance for O'Donnell through the 2013-14 school year.

Two separate lump payments to O'Donnell, or to his estate, each totaling $45,000. The first payment was made upon retirement, the second on Jan 2 of this year, for a total of $90,000.

During O'Donnell's medical leave, he received full salary, which was $111,343 in the 2007-08 school year, according to state records. As with nearly all local public school administrator contracts, O'Donnell had been allowed to accumulate sick days from year to year during his 16 years in the post, building up a substantial account he essentially tapped. During his leave, the JOC made Peter Halesey acting administrative director but did not increase the $85,000 salary he was earning as supervisor of vocational education. Halesey had left the post of administrative director at West Side Career and Technical Center to take that job.

O'Donnell's 2009 retirement came less than two months before federal agents took records from the Wilkes-Barre Area Career Center and Wilkes-Barre Area School District as part of what became a sweeping investigation that nabbed several members of the center's JOC, though all were charged with actions that occurred in relation to their home district.

The JOC is made of representatives from the school boards of the five member districts. Among those who pleaded guilty to corruption charges was Wilkes-Barre Area Board President James Height, who was also president of the JOC when O'Donnell's retirement was accepted.

At the time, Height said "Dr. O'Donnell was dedicated to seeing that the vo-tech had a future in Wilkes-Barre," and that "he always had the best interests of the students at heart."

So far, charges against former attendance coordinator Jeff Piazza are the only ones levied for actions done at the center. Piazza, originally hired as technology coordinator, pleaded guilty to accepting kickbacks in exchange for helping a contractor land lucrative deals at the center.

O'Donnell has never been charged or implicated in the FBI probe, and while he never explained his medical leave in public, health issues in his final years on the job were occasionally mentioned among some who worked with him regularly.

It could not be determined late Thursday if the payments to O'Donnell were part of a retirement incentive available to other administrators or exclusive to him.

Attempts to reach attorney John Dean, who handles public information requests for the center, failed. O'Donnell's home number was not listed in the phone book, and he could not be reached for comment.

Mark Guydish, a Times Leader staff writer, can be reached at 829-7161

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