Posted on 12/20/2004 12:28:48 PM PST by NormsRevenge
New to the Alameda County Board of Education, Dennis Chaconas challenged Superintendent Sheila Jordan's scheduled raise but was rebuffed Tuesday night by a legal opinion claiming her salary was set in stone.
In 2002, the previous set of board members voted to give Jordan a compensation package including a $60,000 raise and $13,125 increase in benefits by January 2006 — a 21 percent increase the first year and a combined 35 percent increase over the next three years.
On Tuesday, Chaconas, the former superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District, made a motion to freeze the scheduled increase in January.
The Alameda County Office of Education legal counsel, however, called the motion out of order because Education Code section 1207 says that in no case can the salary of county superintendents be reduced during their term in office.
Board member Gay Cobb questioned the ruling and said she and Chaconas will pursue an outside legal opinion.
Cobb said the ruling doesn't make sense.
If the local ruling stands, that means newly elected board members can never adjust a superintendent's salary authorized by a previous board, she said, even if the superintendent's performance is a problem.
Cobb also said the motion Tuesday night was not to reduce the salary, but to simply freeze it at its current level.
Prior to her first term, Jordan ran a campaign promising to reduce the salary of superintendent.
But by the start of her second term, Jordan said she had earned a raise.
At the time she was making an annual salary of $115,054.
Jordan's initial salary was substantially lower than her counterparts at county offices of education with similar student populations, according to a 2002 salary survey by the Los Angeles County Office of Education. The average superintendent salary for those counties is $174,575.
But the Alameda County Office of Education has a significantly smaller budget — about $30 million — than those districts, which oversee up to $300 million in funds.
"I have a small budget, but this is a very big job," Jordan said at the time of her raise.
It's hard to do a mediocre job without proper compensation.
Orange County, Florida (Orlando) school board just voted themselves a 20% annual pay increase and kindly gave the teachers of same school district a whopping 3% raise.
Wow!
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