GOA Education Dept. Led By Koularmanis & Stamkopoulos: Scandalous Multiple Salaries and Non-Existent Work Ethic…

PHOTO: The “Education Duo”, Koularmanis and Stamkopoulos, at the Pittsburgh Metropolis during their recent “Panamerican” tour…

===============

The “Education Duo”, Mr. Koularmanis and Fr. Stamkopoulos, are employed in several positions each and get multiple salaries, at the same time as their “performance” as Education “Directors” is non-existent… Not only that, but Fr.Stamkopoulos, lives free of charge at the GOA Cultural Center in Astoria!!! And Mr. Koularmanis “found the time” to start a “turf war” with the Office of the Greek Ministry of Education in NY!!

By Nick Stamatakis

The (Greek) Education Department of the Archdiocese was never what its name denoted – especially since (after AB Elpidophoros took office) it dropped the “Greek” from its title.  But the old-timers, esp. former teachers at weekly parish schools like myself, can remember when it was at least functioning at a respectable level and produced (or promoted) the few books and programs it was expected to produce.  A reasonable expectation in our “post-pandemic” times, when almost everything in academia works online, was that the GOA education department would take some common sense initiatives to merge the online language (and history and culture…) programs with activities in our daily and weekly schools…

The goal is always simple: to preserve a sense of identity for the youngsters of our community and play its role in their growth and development. Some basic knowledge of Greek is always an excellent addition, not simply as a “heritage” item but because Greek is a beautiful language for any youngster to learn. Should I remind all of you that it was a standard part of the curriculum in England, Germany, and France until the 1980s, and its abandonment resulted in the intellectual impoverishment of the European population? Take a look at today’s European leadership “dwarfs”… No comparison with Francois Mitterand and Giscard d’Estaing or Helmut Kohl of the 1970s and 1980s…  Recently, at least in England, the teaching of Greek is making a comeback…

Photo: Koularmanis and Fr. Stamkopoulos at an education conference behind their “Boss”…

But in GOA’s sleepy education department, led by Mr. A.Koularmanis as director and Fr. Gregorios Stamkopoulos as his assistant, thoughts like those above sound too “exquisite” and “dilettantish”…  First of all, why does the Education Dept. needs two “managers”? We would appreciate an answer from His Eminence… Maybe because Mr. Koularmanis’s knowledge of Greek is limited? Or, for other reasons, he needs to be under daily control?  For much of the last academic year, Mr. Koularmanis was nowhere to be found during the week, while he organized a few “online seminars” on Saturday mornings… And for all that “work,” he earned his over $110.000 annual salary (please don’t expect actual numbers – transparency is an unknown concept in GOA).  Mr. Koularmanis was also appointed (by the Archbishop) president of the Corona Parish (with the unheard-of power to pick his own parish council – so he installed all his family and friends!!) Let me remind you here that the “dying parish” of Corona, NY, has a substantial property with income that exceeds $1.3 million annually and serves as a “cash cow” for GOA… The parish Church was destroyed by fire a few years ago, and its renovation has recently finished, with Koularmanis “handling” all the repair contracts…  At the same time, he was also supervising the Cathedral School in Manhattan…

But apparently, the money and the opportunities were not enough for Mr.Koularmanis. And so we heard in November of 2021 that he was also hired as an English teacher (full-time or part-time?) by Passaic Public Schools in NJ, earning another salary there… Why doesn’t GOA clarify Mr. Koularmanis’ positions and duties? Is he a superhuman creature who can be in multiple places simultaneously?

An even worse situation is true for Fr. Gregory Stamkopoulos, who, in addition to being paid handsomely as an “assistant education director”, he is still on the payroll as an adjunct professor at the Social Theology and Christian Civilization Dept. at the University of Salonica, Greece. He previously served as an information technology specialist at the Ecclesiastical Academy.  In other words, his background is marginally relevant to his current position. He is not simply receiving a salary from Greece but, sources tell us, a very generous “bonus” as an “employee transferred abroad”.

At the same time, he has been appointed a priest at another very wealthy “dying parish”, Saint Spyridon of Manhattan, earning God knows how much (my best guess is at least $100,000)… In the recent celebration of Saint Spyridon, Fr. Stamkopoulos’s chanting skills were described to me as worse than those of the “pizza man,” Fr. Gedeon Varytimos!! (Is this a new policy? To import untrained friends from Greece or Istanbul and train them on the job?) His total earnings are in the hundreds of thousands annually. Yet, he cannot afford a meager 1-bedroom apartment somewhere, and he lives free of charge at the GOA Cultural Center in Astoria!!!  The top floor of the relatively small building has been turned into a small “commune” with 4-5 rooms – very much in the same principle as in the 79th Street headquarters…

PHOTO: Fr. Stamkopoulos at Saint Spyridon

For all this money, one would expect that the two “directors of education” would be able to sit down and produce at least “a plan of action.”  Instead, it was announced last September that the “Education Duo” will start a US tour at our Metropolises across the country to be informed about our community’s education problems… They spent a couple of weeks, all expenses paid and came back full of ideas – pure fresh air…

Neither one has offered assistance to the day or afternoon schools that need books to teach their students.  Our sources reveal that not a single seminar was conducted between the Education Department and teachers in the current academic year.  In the past, the former Education Director would visit the classrooms and interact with the teachers to observe the instruction of students and get feedback on the textbooks the GOA provided.  Not only has the GOA failed to publish more books for use by schools, but the GOA has utterly failed to publish new books on Greek history and religion, for years.  Are they using online sources instead, as we mentioned at the beginning of this article? Nobody has heard anything…

As to the $600,000 donated by the Niarchos Foundation to the Education Dept., we learned that at a recent conference at St. Nicholas Church in Flushing, NY, Mr. Koularmanis said that computers, tablets, and equipment were purchased with these funds.  Did A.Koularmanis inform the school principals and priests that they could apply for support from the Niarchos’s monies? Was there any formal application process implemented to help the schools?  There is no accountability or transparency, so no one knows.  Does Mr. Dracopoulos, Niarchos Foundation Co-President, know how the $600,000 was spent?  We hear that to cut costs, Mr. Koularmanis intends on getting Greek teachers (“transferred” from Greece) to come and teach in the schools so that teachers who live in the United States can be replaced and have the Greek government pay those salaries. In contrast, the local teachers who supported the Greek schools for decades get abandoned and unemployed.

Recently, Mr. Koularmanis had extra free time to start a “turf war” with the Office of the Greek Ministry of Education, housed in the Greek Consulate on 79th Sreet, right across from GOA headquarters.  Mr. Koularmanis learned that this Office promoted an Ancient Greek Culture program in our parochial and parish weekly schools – a program that the Archbishop had approved in an Education Conference. Mr.Koularmanis got offended and let everyone know with an email!! And I mean everyone!! Not only did he get offended, but he managed to cancel the presentation of this program at the Saint Demetrios School of Astoria!! And diverted this program to the parishes of his choice!! He wanted to show who is the real “boss”…

Let me close by insisting that it is about time for transparency and accountability rules to be established by GOA.  The education office is only the tip of the iceberg; if things are left in the current state, it will not take long for the “Titanic” to sink…

December 17, 2022, n.stamatakis@aol.com   www.helleniscope.com

DISCLAIMER: The views and statements expressed in this article constitute constitutionally protected opinions of this author.