Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested Des Moines Public Faculties Superintendent Ian Roberts after allegedly fleeing when brokers arrived to implement a deportation order.
Roberts, originally from Guyana, has been underneath a ultimate deportation order since Might 2024. Regardless of that order, he continued to steer Iowa’s largest college district till his arrest this week.
What makes this case much more alarming shouldn’t be solely that Roberts remained in workplace unlawfully, however that he was paid handsomely for doing so.
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His present base wage exceeded $180,000 per yr, and district officers had been getting ready to lift his base pay to $270,000. Over the course of his tenure, which means Roberts may have earned thousands and thousands of {dollars} in taxpayer cash whereas residing within the nation illegally.
The district launched a brief assertion claiming they’d “no data” concerning the circumstances of his arrest. That rationalization doesn’t change the information.
Federal information clarify that Roberts was underneath orders of removing. But the college board allowed him to stay in cost, accountable for practically 30,000 college students and one of many state’s largest budgets.
This isn’t the primary controversy involving Roberts. He was beforehand detained in reference to carrying a firearm, although authorities by no means offered full particulars. That earlier incident was first famous in studies months in the past, however new details about his contract and wage has raised the extent of concern.
Dad and mom and taxpayers now need to ask: how was a person under deportation orders allowed not solely to maintain his job however to obtain a six-figure wage funded by public cash?
The political response has been predictable. Protests are already being organized to defend Roberts, portraying him because the sufferer reasonably than the perpetrator. That narrative ignores a primary reality.
A superintendent going through deportation shouldn’t be rewarded with a wage approaching $200,000, nor ought to a college board put together to offer him an excellent bigger elevate.
Households deserve higher than a system that treats lawbreaking as a minor administrative element.
In the meantime, neighboring Iowa college districts are going through scandals of their very own. A number of academics had been fired in current weeks after making grotesque feedback celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
These incidents revealed an absence of professionalism within the classroom.
Roberts’ case reveals one thing even worse: a failure on the very high of the system, the place the individual accountable for tens of hundreds of scholars was not legally permitted to stay in america.
This episode highlights why training reform is pressing. Faculties can’t be led by people who disregard the regulation. Taxpayers can’t be compelled to finance six-figure salaries for officers who’re within the nation illegally.
Dad and mom can’t be requested to belief a system that tolerates misconduct from the classroom to the superintendent’s workplace.
Roberts’ arrest is a warning that public training has overlooked accountability.
