home | contact | faq

action items

As predicted on this site in a previously published article, the board of education has renegotiated the superintendent's employment contract early, thereby preventing any input by the new board members who will be elected soon.  The negotiations took place over the last two months behind closed doors, according to current board president Bill Weber.  Yet, motion E-11 on the final March 22 board agenda, a resolution to rehire the superintendent, only appeared in public on Sunday, March 20th.  Even that appeared under a revision of the original agenda published earlier.

Readers will recall that the old employment contract merely required the sitting board to notify the superintendent by May 15, 2005 if they did not intend to allow the automatic renewal of her previous contract for another four years.  Doing so would have allowed the newly elected board to make a different decision if desired.  Instead, the current sitting board has pre-empted that possibility.

When asked by a resident at the board meeting "Why now?", board president Bill Weber offered that the move wasn't unprecedented and that the new board members wouldn't have had much time to react.  Stakeholders in the audience could be seen shaking their heads in disbelief.

The new contract gives the superintendent a salary of $150,000 per year for three years, annual increases of over four percent, plus numerous other financial incentives.

[The article below appeared originally in this space on November 11, 2004]

A series of requests under the Open Public Records Act (OPRA) has brought to light some disturbing information concerning the Board's oversight of the Superintendent's office and concerning the contract itself. A letter has been sent to the Board members reviewing the information.

There are several aspects of the contract causing concern. First, the contract, which began in 2002, has an ending date of June 30, 2006. However, unless the Board members act to reappoint for a different term or they notify the Superintendent in writing before May 15, 2005 that there will be no reappointment, the contract will be automatically renewed for four years until July 1, 2010. Of course, relieving the Superintendent of her duties prior to the expiration of the contract will require the Board to make a full payout of salary and fringe benefits.

Second,  the contract states that the Superintendent will receive an increase in compensation of between 4.21% and 4.5% for each year following the first that "the Superintendent has received a satisfactory performance rating by the Board in its annual evaluation of the Superintendent." The evaluation is to be based on the Superintendent's job description and, further, the contract states that the

"…format and criteria for the Superintendent's initial evaluation shall be developed and approved jointly by the Board and the Superintendent within ninety (90) days from the commencement of employment. Said format shall be reduced to writing and shall constitute the basis on which the Superintendent is evaluated…" 

"…the parties will meet and establish the evaluation format and criteria for each succeeding school year"

Another OPRA request for the Superintendent's job description and the written evaluation criteria revealed an ugly truth. First, the job description is a generic document approved thirteen years ago in November 1991. Tellingly, the generic document does not even mention any responsibility for the Superintendent to consult, inform or even communicate with parents, taxpayers or other stakeholders in the district. 

In addition, the Board's written criteria for the Superintendent either do not exist or they were not released. A handwritten note on the request did mention the format of the evaluation, i.e., a "narrative performance assessment". However, the criteria by which this narrative is written remains a mystery.  Needless to say, there was no interest in voluntarily releasing the narrative evaluations of years past.

While some Board members were not a part of the negotiations of this contract with the Superintendent, all the current members do bear responsibility for it now.  At the very least, our Board members should re-write the Superintendent's job description and publish the criteria by which she is being evaluated for salary increases and continued employment.  At the top of the list of criteria should be the responsibility to consult, inform and communicate with parents, taxpayers and other stakeholders in the district before jumping headlong into new policy initiatives.

To put a finer point on the matter, the date of May 15, 2005 should be marked clearly on the calendars of our Board members.