from the bcct:
No financial pinch for school chiefs
By: FREDA R. SAVANA
Bucks County Courier Times
A majority of area school administrators received pay raises this year, with several adding on bonuses as large as $11,386. Others deferred their salary hikes or agreed to a pay freeze.
While school teachers' salaries are widely known - and often bitterly disputed - the money that school administrators earn is seldom as public.
Charged with overseeing multi-million dollar budgets, designing curriculum and structuring far-reaching policies, principals, superintendents, business managers and others who are instrumental in school operations typically make six-figure salaries.
That held true in several Bucks County districts and the comprehensive Bucks County Technical High School in Bristol Township this school year, despite a harsh economic climate of budget cuts, threatened teacher layoffs and curtailed academic programs.
Administrators received, on average, 3 percent to 4 percent pay raises in the majority of the 13 Bucks County districts, including Bensalem, Centennial, Morrisville and Neshaminy. Many of those raises, including those in Neshaminy, reflect the administrators' years of service and level of education, officials said.
Other local districts, including Council Rock, have some administrators receiving pay raises and others remaining at their 2008-09 salary levels.
The Bristol school board has approved a 4 percent increase for Superintendent Broadus Davis, but still has to consider pay hikes for other district administrators.
In Pennsbury, executive administrators agreed to forego a 2009-10 salary increase. "That was our way of helping the district to get through this economic situation," said Pennsbury CEO Paul Long.
Executive administrators, including Long, the district assistant superintendents, business administrator and human resources director, work closely with the school board and have individual professional service contracts, officials said. The board typically decides their salary increases each year.
All other administrators belong to the Pennsbury Administrators and Supervisors Association, an Act 93 Meet and Discuss group. The board's agreement with this association includes prescribed salary increases. The 2009-10 increase is 3 percent.
The salaries of PASA members are phased in during their first five years at Pennsbury, which is why the middle school principal's salary appears inflated, at 8 percent, officials said.
To help ease a difficult financial situation, association members didn't receive their annual $3,000 contributions to health retirement accounts, officials said. It was less complicated than figuring out a salary freeze and both yield about the same value, Long said.
Past practice rules
In other Bucks districts, school boards and administrators kept up with past practices during salary considerations - despite the economic downturn.
For instance, in Quakertown, where budget woes caused months of community unrest and taxes went up $105 for the average homeowner, administrator salaries increased an average of 3 percent.
However, to help control costs, key staff, including the superintendent, agreed to defer the effective date of their pay hikes from Sept. 1 to Dec. 1, according to Nancianne Edwards, Quakertown's director of human resources. That saved the district $4,500, she said.
The five staff members also contributed a combined $2,500 to the district's education fund to buy an interactive white board used in the classroom.
Another set of administrators, whose raises have yet to be calculated this year, also agreed to defer anticipated pay hikes of about 3 percent until the end of 2009.
Not all districts are taking this approach.
In New Hope-Solebury, for example, administrators' salaries are linked to the state's Act 1, which sets the percentage the school district is allowed to increase taxes without seeking voter approval.
This year's rate is 4.1 percent.
The increases are provided for, if administrators meet "all of their job responsibilities and achieved all of their annual administrative goals," New Hope-Solebury Superintendent Ray Boccuti said.
Although the small district struggled through its budget process, eliminating late buses, restructuring classes and chopping new textbooks from the spending plan, most administrators received 4 percent pay hikes.
One, the director of pupil services, got a 3 percent raise.
And, like other administrators in various districts throughout the county, Boccuti also got a $5,000 bonus. School board President Rebecca Malamis justified the bonus, explaining the superintendent did two jobs much of the year, filling in when the director of pupil services unexpectedly resigned.
Not all Bucks districts gave their administrators bonuses, officials said.
Bensalem, Bristol and the comprehensive tech school that serves six districts in Lower Bucks didn't award bonuses to administrators in 2009-10, officials said.
However, the Central Bucks School District, the third largest in the state, added an extra $11,386 to its superintendent's $227,720 salary, in the form of a bonus deposited in his retirement account. His individual contract also guarantees him a 5 percent raise every year.
An annuity, equal to 10 percent of his base salary, and an annual car allowance of $6,000, is also part of his contract. His annuity this year was $22,771.
Central Bucks administrators negotiated a new agreement that reduces their guaranteed 3.5 percent pay raise to 2.5 percent starting in the 2010-11 school year.
An employee who earned the median salary of $99,972 in the 2008-09 school year will earn $103,471 in the 2009-10 school year and $106,058 in the 2010-11 school year.
Stephen Corr, president of the Central Bucks school board, estimated the lower pay raises will save the school district $580,000 in salaries over the length of the contract.
Regarding administrator salaries, Central Bucks Superintendent Robert Laws said it has been his district's philosophy to hire the highest quality people, but fewer of them.
"To me," he explained, "salaries need to be viewed adjusted to the depth, breadth, and scope of the responsibilities.
A building principal earning $120,000 that oversees a building of 400 students is very different than a principal earning the same amount who oversees a building of 800 students."
