The fallout from the recent decision by the Tucson Unified School District Governing Board to award an expensive new contract to Superintendent H.T. Sanchez continues. As more information about the contract and the award process becomes public, questions are being raised about who knew what when and why.
As the District continues to face money woes, there are increased calls for the recall of the Board’s president Adelita Grijalva and Board members Cam Juarez and Kristel Foster. Board member Mark Stegeman discussed those money issues on the popular James T. Harris radion show on Friday. Stegeman told Harris’s audience that the District is “blowing through” cash reserves.
The whole matter has raised questions as to who actually wrote the new contract, who represented the parties in the matter, and can the District really afford the Board’s largess?
To date, Sanchez refuses to identify the author of the contract and even the identity of his attorney if he retained one for the complex multi-year contract.
As a result of the highly questionable process and the reckless spending, residents of the District are beginning to organize a recall effort and candidates are being recruited to replace Grijalva, Juarez and Foster.
Stegeman consituents letter highlights:
On June 9 the board voted to increase the superintendent’s compensation for the previously agreed contract years 2014-15 (ends on June 30) and 2015-16 (begins on July 1) and to extend the contract by two years. The 2014-16 raises were in addition to the performance bonuses agreed in the original contract. I learned of the proposed contract terms only a few hours before the vote, and the district blocked public discussion of the details until after the vote. The raise for year 2014-15 was cancelled on the next day, following objections from TUSD’s legal counsel.
The June 9 board agenda included “Superintendent’s Contract” as an Action item, without details. I had no additional information until an Executive Session held just before the public meeting. Other board members may have known more: Juarez said during the public meeting that the board had received a draft of the new contract a month before. He backtracked a minute later, so now it is unclear who knew what and when they knew it.
You can learn much about the process and the board simply by watching that 18 minutes. The discussion includes some misleading statements, which I address below.
At the end of that discussion the board voted on the new contract. I could not vote Yes, because I had hardly had time to read it, much less digest its implications, and I already knew that I disagreed with the sharp jump in compensation. On the other hand, I did not want to start another search and have the current board choose a new superintendent during an election year (2016). Sandwiched between those considerations, I abstained (rare for me). The vote was 3-1-1, with Hicks voting No.
The next morning (June 10), Central notified the board that TUSD’s legal counsel had objected to the justapproved salary increase for fiscal year 2014-15, which ends at the end of this month. The superintendent signed the contract after striking that provision.
In his letter, Stegeman identifies “Six major problems with the new contract, the process, and the public explanations.”
At this late date retention is hardly an issue for contract years 2014-2015 and 2015-16, but the board still voted to increase total compensation for those two years by at least $125,000 ($30,000 for 2014-15 and $95,000 for 2015-16). If the goal had been retention, then that money should have been added to the end of the contract. The drafting of the new contract was either much quicker than usual, or it happened privately outside of my view, or both. The negative political fallout has been substantial.
The new contract adds $95,000 to the already high compensation for contract year 2015-16.
The superintendent’s original contract, dating from 2013, exchanged a lower base salary in the first two years for high compensation in the third year. The purpose was to increase the likelihood that the superintendent would honor his commitment to stay through the end of the contract. I supported that structure, which made the compensation for 2015-16 very high, even before the new raise.
Since the compensation for 2015-16 was already so high relative to the “market,” it made no sense to add another $95,000. (The raise comes as $75,000 in direct compensation and $20,000 in 20 additional days of paid leave that can be redeemed for $1,000 each.) Moreover, the market is essentially over for 2015-16: it is very unlikely that another district would recruit Sanchez for a school year that begins in just a few weeks.
Therefore, from my viewpoint, the $95,000 raise is basically a gift and unrelated to retention.
The board president minimized the raise, saying during the public meeting:
“There is a slight increase in the annual base….” and later “There was a change in the paid leave days… this is basically making [the leave days in] Dr. Sanchez’s contract the same as other administrators.”
As far as I know, however, no one else in TUSD gets 50 days of paid leave, much less unrestricted paid leave with every day redeemable for cash. (The next page summarizes the compensation package.)
Sanchez’s guaranteed compensation, in any year of the new contract, exceeds that of any other Arizona school superintendent. For comparison, I attached to the email the current superintendent’s contract for the Mesa district, which is the only Arizona school district larger than TUSD. The contracts are not exactly comparable, but the Mesa superintendent’s compensation for next year is about half of what Sanchez will earn in TUSD (and the cost of living is higher in Mesa than in Tucson). The Mesa district is not only larger but outperforms TUSD by almost any available measure.
Nationally, Sanchez’s level of compensation is usually restricted to much larger districts. For example, the two largest school districts in Texas, Houston (more than four times as large as TUSD) and Dallas (more than three times as large) pay their superintendents base salaries of $300,000 and $306,000. Former TUSD superintendent Liz Fagen, currently serving as superintendent of a Colorado district that is larger and richer than TUSD, earns less than that.
After including bonuses and expense allowances, the superintendent’s total compensation in the Houston and Dallas districts is broadly similar to Sanchez’s total compensation, averaged over the three years of his new contract.
TUSD board members defending the new contract have pointed out that the TUSD superintendent earns less per student than other superintendents in Pima County. That means little, because twice the enrollment rarely implies twice the salary. (That is true in Arizona and nationally.) The relevant comparison is to districts of similar size or larger.
The board-approved contract included a retroactive $30,000 raise for contract year 2014-15
The board’s vote to add $30,000 to superintendent’s salary for contract year 2014-15, just a few days before it ends, is even stranger than adding $95,000 to year 2015-16. The raise for 2014-15 obviously had nothing to do with retention and was a gift by any reasonable interpretation. (If the board had waited three more weeks, then that raise would have been literally a gift of public funds, a class 4 felony.)
TUSD’s counsel objected to this provision, on the grounds that statute prohibits a four-year contract, and so it was struck from the contract on the day after the vote. The counsel said that this change requires no new vote by the board.
The structure of the new contract is inconsistent with the stated goal of retaining the superintendent.
On his February 4 radio show, Bill Buckmaster asked the superintendent “Have you had job offers recently?” and he answered:
“Yes sir, I have, you know, outside of the state, and, you know, I have had some. I have had some and I let them know that, you know, we have a five-year strategic plan and I would like to see as much of that through as the board would like me to…”
I am not sure where those offers were, but this kind of conversation has fed the public impression that keeping the superintendent in TUSD requires an unusually high salary.
The problem with this explanation is: if retention were really the issue, then the raise would have been backloaded into the last year of the contract, as the board did in 2013. But the new contract does the opposite.
While increasing the compensation by $95,000 for next year, when it has a minimal effect on retention, the board actually set a lower (though still high) salary in the last two years. Moreover, the 2017-18 salary is only $10,000 higher than the 2016-17 salary.
The new contract thus appears to be more consistent with increasing the superintendent’s short run payoff than with maximizing the chance of his honoring the full term of the contract.
Check back tomorrow for the rest of the story.
Related articles:
Sanchez Tightens Grip, TUSD To Join Pima Suit
Sanchez Picks TUSD Winners To End Contract Controversy
A Closer Look At TUSD’s School Leadership Costs
Attorney General investigation of TUSD called for
Sanchez indicts Tucsonans as bigots