Worthington school board members heard a presentation this week on superintendent compensation from the search firm seeking a new leader for the district.

The board met Monday, April 11 at the Worthington Education Center.

Ralph Johnson of the Educational Service Center of Central Ohio, the firm conducting the search, presented a "compensation analysis" to come up with an average superintendent salary, based on Ohio school districts of similar size to Worthington.

"Our methodology was to go to the Ohio Department of Education, using district comparisons and contrasting those to regional private-sector CEO compensations," he said.

He said eight districts were compared: Hilliard, Dublin, Lakota, Westerville, Mason, Strongsville, Solon and Olentangy.

The average annual superintendent salary based on those districts was determined to be $158,125, with a $14,905 annuity, car allowance of $7,600, communication allowance of $1,800 and merit or bonus amount possible of $4,100.

Current Superintendent Melissa Conrath, who will retire in October, had a salary of $145,700 listed in her current, three-year contract, which began in 2008, with 2.75 percent scheduled annual raises, although Conrath opted not to accept her raise for the 2011-12 school year to save district funds.

The deadline for applications for a superintendent to replace Conrath is Friday, April 15.

Johnson added private-sector data as a comparison to the superintendent salary, saying, "We've had people ask us why we don't run schools like a private business, so we thought we'd include how a typical CEO of a business would be compensated."

The CEO's salary, if he or she headed a business with a $100 million budget and 1,200 employees, similar to the school district, would be $279,583 annually, with a total cash compensation of $353,490.

He said the source of the private-sector numbers was the Economic Resource Institute.

Board President Marc Schare said the timeline for the superintendent search includes a possible date of May 2 for the first round of interviews. The second round of interviews is scheduled May 9.

He said the school board hopes to have a superintendent hired by May 23.

In other board business, members approved the hiring of Colonial Hills Elementary School teacher Thomas Forsgren as new principal at Worthington Estates Elementary School, and Peter Scully, teacher and president of the Worthington Education Association, as principal of Kilbourne Middle School.

Jeffrey Maddox, current principal at Phoenix Middle School, was hired as district director of innovation and support to replace retiring administrator Jim McElligott.

Vicki Gnezda, communications director, said a new "director," not a principal, would be hired in the near future for Phoenix.