FAIRHOPE, Ala.——Since last October, a local high school principal has earned approximately $55,000 without having to show up for work.

Eight months after Donald L. Johnson was placed on paid administrative leave last year, the school board approved his termination June 18 as principal of the Fairhope-based Baldwin County Alternative School.

Although the termination was effective June 19, he will continue to draw his $82,605 annual salary during a statutorily required appeal period, said Terry Wilhite, spokesman for the Baldwin County School System.

The school system cannot recover the employee’s salary paid while he was on administrative leave, or during the appeal period if he fails to contest it, or loses on appeal if he does, Wilhite said.

“Everybody in the education business is exasperated with how that procedure works,” Wilhite said. “We’ve had employees that we’ve terminated that we’ve had to continue to pay, and that just didn’t compute to me, coming from the corporate world.”

Johnson had been principal since 1997 at the Alternative School on Twin Beech Road in Fairhope, which served approximately 80 students with disciplinary and related problems throughout the county school system.

 He was hired by the school system on July 19, 1993, and was assistant principal at Daphne Middle School and Daphne High School before moving to the Alternative School.

The Alternative School was closed by the Baldwin County Board of Education at the end of this school year as one of several budget-cutting measures. Most of its tenured employees have been moved to other schools in the system.

Efforts to reach Johnson have been unsuccessful.

Johnson was placed on paid administrative leave Oct. 20 last year, and Wilhite said on March 2 that a report from an investigator was expected in a few days, and would be reviewed by the school system’s human resources department, which would make a recommendation to the school superintendent.

“I’m personally not privy to why that delay happened or what was the reason for the length of time involved other than the fact that our (human resources) department spares no effort in making sure that the review process is thorough,” Wilhite said this week.

Wilhite said the board’s law firm, Stone Granade and Crosby, through an investigator hired by the law firm, conducted a review of operations at the Alternative School and Johnson’s activities and responsibilities there.

Wilhite said he could not comment on the nature of the charges against Johnson until his appeal period had expired. As of press time, Johnson had not filed an appeal, Wilhite said.  The former principal has 15 days from when he received notice of the school board’s June 18 decision to file an appeal, according to Alabama law.

That statute states that the contract of a “continuing service” employee cannot be canceled until that appeal period has run if he does not contest it, or until a hearing officer has issued an opinion, if he does.

The law states that cancellation of such a tenured status employee “may be made for incompetency, insubordination, neglect of duty, immorality, failure to perform duties in a satisfactory manner, justifiable decrease in the number of teaching positions or other good and just cause, but cancellation may not be made for political or personal reasons.”