Prepared Text for Board Meeting –
Marc A. Schare
Jennifer, I have a number of updates and comments this evening. They are in no particular order.
First, we had a discussion 2 weeks ago regarding the Superintendent’s contract and the size of the raise. I raised the issue because I believe we should strive to be as transparent as possible, and since I do believe in transparency, there were a few discrepancies that crept into the calculation. If you calculate value to vacation days and assume that the district will hit the benchmarks to provide the Superintendent with her 2% performance bonus, the total raise was 5.71% and not the “shade below 7%” that I calculated two weeks ago. If you do not include those two data elements, the size of the raise is 2.75% as President Best reported.
The message should not get lost in the details of the
calculation so let me repeat it explicitly. Dr. Conrath’s contract is
significantly lower in value than that of Superintendents in surrounding
districts, and I
have the data to prove it. Last week, I asked for and received the contracts
for the Superintendents in
My second update has to do with Pam Sturiano’s
invitation to shadow a classified worker last week. I chose the food services
department at TWHS and I want to thank both Pam and Sally Begin, the head of
the department for their hospitality. In my previous life in Corporate America,
I always knew that if you wanted to know about a company, you talked to the
secretaries. In a public high school, if you want to know about climate and
culture, talk to the cafeteria staff. Many of these employees have served the
district ably for decades and were very open with their opinions about the
changing demographic in
My third update has to do with Governor Strickland and
his first conversation on School Funding held last Thursday. While the governor
was non-committal, it is becoming clearer that he believes that percentage of
state dollars relative to the total expenditures in K-12 education must
increase. I continue to believe that any such reconfiguration of state funding
is likely to be negative for
The Treasurer’s advisory committee met last week and we had a good discussion about the level of financial detail appropriate for the public. In keeping with tonight’s theme of transparency, as a general rule, I would opt for providing the maximum amount of information, but perhaps in