While teachers, janitors, educational assistants, and other union-represented public school employees in Wisconsin are facing cuts in take-home pay of up to 20 percent, many of their bosses in unrepresented administrative roles are snagging huge raises and bonuses.
Consider the Verona school district, just outside of Madison. The teachers in that district will soon be paying an additional 12.6 percent of their health insurance premiums and almost 6% more of their pension contribution. Despite the cuts, they felt fortunate compared to some other districts and they worked with their school board to save important educational programs. They sacrificed.
Shortly after their contract with all the cuts was extended and ratified, the school board gave the non-union superintendent of the district a 7% raise. Many teachers in the Verona district felt betrayed and hurt.
As reported by Madison.com:
"It's not the dollar figure," insists Jennifer Murphy, a high school math teacher who is president of the Verona Area Education Association, the union representing the teachers.
"We finished negotiations and felt like we were in a pretty good place. We felt lucky compared to other districts, and walked away with a very positive attitude, instead of an us-vs.-them mentality," Murphy says.
...Murphy says the board's decision to significantly hike Gorrell's salary, and his willingness to accept the raise, has brought a flurry of angry comments from teachers and other staff members.
"People really are upset. He could have said, 'No, I'm not going to take the increase this year because my staff isn't getting anything to offset the cuts they're taking.' I guess it feels like a betrayal of that idea of shared sacrifice. There's a fear of the unknown, and questions about how our district will be run. Will it all be top down? For me it symbolizes a lack of commitment ... It's talking the talk, but not walking the walk," she says.
The Verona board claims the superintendent was underpaid compared to administrators in other Dane County, Wisconsin school districts. The raise conveniently matches the amount the superintendent will now pay toward health insurance and retirement as mandated by a recently enacted Wisconsin law - the same law that trimmed the teachers take-home pay and guts the ability of public employee unions to negotiate on behalf of its members. The Verona superintendent is also scheduled to receive a $50,000 longevity bonus in 2013, to be paid into his retirement fund.
In DeForest, Wisconsin, also in Dane County, some super-sized executive pay raises are even more shocking. Citizens in the DeForest school district are talking about recalling school board members, saying the raises were approved in secret in June, 2010 without public input. The raises were only revealed recently after the local teachers union insisted on seeing updated salary information for non-union employees. From the Portage Daily Register:
This adjustment meant two administrators received an increase of $20,000 or more, and six received an increase of $10,000 or more. Two administrators also were promoted and received increases of $20,000 or more. Administrators receiving raises saw the increase as of January, and that base rate will be frozen for the 2011-12 school year.
Like Verona, the DeForest school board also claimed their administrators' salaries were below the county average, but comparing salaries for these positions is pointless. Superintendents and other high-level administrators often have other forms of compensation included in their contracts, like the longevity bonus mentioned above or signing bonuses. Others receive a higher salary but do not participate in the retirement fund or the health insurance plan. Some even have the use of a car as part of their compensation.
In Hudson, Wisconsin, a consortium of local educators calling themselves the Autonomous Educators Group published a comprehensive study (.pdf) last year that concluded, among other things:
The Hudson School District arguably has one of the higher averages for
Administrative Total Compensation, one of the lower averages for Teacher Total Compensation, ranks third from the top in the disparity between the two and first when that disparity is expressed in percentages. These findings are contradictory to public declarations from the Administration and the Board of Education that Hudson administrators are paid “well below” or “at or below average” of administrators in other districts.
Elsewhere in Wisconsin, administrators in Greenfield and Wauwatosa have received hefty raises in each of the previous two years. In De Pere, administrators recently received a 3.1% across-the-board increase. Administrators in Monroe each received a $2,500 raise this year shortly after their board approved a salary freeze for teachers.
More than anything, these raises further deflate already demoralized teaching staffs, and they anger parents who see programs cut and class sizes increased while some administrators cash in.