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Bloomberg ‘Christie Attack on Pay Enrages N.J. Republican Towns Bullied' by Governor’
“He’s doing this to the very communities that elected him,” James O’Neill(Chatham superintendent)... “What he’s telling us is that those people were all smart enough to elect him, but they’re not smart enough to choose who will be superintendent...Lynne Strickland, executive director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, which lobbies for districts, said towns that are used to managing their own affairs are feeling threatened.
“There’s an intense roar that’s sort of rising here,” Strickland said. “Local folks are saying we know best what’s needed for our districts.”
Star Ledger ‘Parsippany school board votes to back schools superintendent contract’
Daily Record OpEd "Superintendent Salary Caps' by Jim O'Neill, Sunday November 21,2010
Bloomberg ‘Christie Attack on Pay Enrages N.J. Republican Towns `Bullied' by Governor’
By Terrence Dopp and Dunstan McNichol - Nov 24, 2010
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s proposal to cap school-superintendent salaries will affect many of the affluent suburban communities that helped the first-term Republican oust Democrat Jon Corzine last year.
Christie plans to hold the salaries of superintendents to no more than $175,000 a year, the same as the governor’s, beginning Feb. 7. Of the 205 school chiefs who earn more, 126 are in communities that gave Christie pluralities in 2009, state education and voting data show.
“He’s doing this to the very communities that elected him,” James O’Neill, who earns $210,000 as superintendent in the Chathams, 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of New York City, said in a Nov. 22 telephone interview. “What he’s telling us is that those people were all smart enough to elect him, but they’re not smart enough to choose who will be superintendent.”
Christie, 48, the first Republican elected New Jersey governor since 1997, has assailed the cost of public education since taking office in January. In seeking to control the nation’s highest property taxes, he attacked teacher pay in April and turned to administrators in July.
Christie’s plan ties superintendents’ base compensation to district size, with salaries in the smallest systems capped at $125,000 and larger ones at $175,000. Christie said the 16 districts with more than 10,000 students could exceed the cap with state approval. Districts can still award performance bonuses. About 70 percent of New Jersey’s school chiefs, or 366, earn more than the proposed caps, according to Christie.
“It’s not a good idea,” said William Librera, 64, who was state education commissioner from 2002 to 2005 and who now conducts superintendent searches for New Jersey districts. “It abridges the basic opportunities and responsibilities of a community.”
$40,000 Cut
The superintendent of Franklin Lakes would get a $40,000 cut under Christie’s rules, said school board member Margaret Bennett. Her district serves a borough of 11,600 people in Bergen County and has a budget of $24 million. It was selected by Forbes.com as one of the nation’s top 10 for communities with average home values exceeding $800,000. Seventy percent of its voters backed Christie.
Bennett said resistance to the caps is coming from across the political spectrum. In New Jersey, school board candidates don’t declare party affiliations.
“Do I think he’s being a bully? Absolutely,” Bennett said in a telephone interview yesterday. “That is the irony, he’s hurting the districts that put him in office.”
Cutting superintendents’ pay would save property-tax payers $9.8 million, according to Christie. Last year, New Jersey spent $25 billion on education, according to the state’s Department of Community Affairs.
Evasive Action
Several school boards, including the Chathams, Parsippany- Troy Hills and Christie’s hometown of Mendham, are trying to circumvent the cap by extending superintendents’ contracts. Christie’s administration this month said none could be renegotiated unless they complied with his new rules, which he said won’t require legislation.
In Parsippany-Troy Hills, the school board on Nov. 9 approved a new five-year contract that gave Superintendent LeRoy Seitz a salary of $234,000 by the 2014-15 school year, according to the governor. It was voided by Morris County’s executive schools superintendent, a state employee, after Christie called Seitz “the new poster boy for greed and arrogance in the New Jersey school systems.”
Parsippany, about 28 miles west of New York City, has a median household income of $85,974, compared with the U.S. average of $52,175, U.S. Census Bureau data show. Fifty-three percent of its voters backed Christie in last year’s election, state records show.
Asking for Sacrifice
More than 50 superintendents had base salaries of at least $200,000 last year, according to state data, including Seitz, who currently makes $212,020.
“If we’re asking teachers to sacrifice, administrators have to sacrifice too,” Christie said at a Nov. 15 townhall meeting in Washington Township. “They cannot be sitting here saying that they are some special privileged class.”
Seitz didn’t return telephone calls. The board of his 7,250-student district has appealed the blocking of his contract extension, said Richard Bozza, executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators, which filed a friend-of-the-court motion supporting the suit.
Christie’s decision to base a superintendents’ salary on what the governor makes is “arbitrary” and doesn’t take into account school administrators’ qualifications, Bozza said.
Political Agenda
The Chathams’ superintendent, O’Neill, said Christie’s pay cap has “nothing to do with fiscal prudence and nothing to do with what’s best for education in New Jersey.”
“It has to do with his political agenda,” O’Neill said.
New Jersey school systems spent $16,491 per student in 2008, according to Census data. That ranked second to New York, which spent $17,173 per pupil. The average was $10,259.
While overall spending may be high, administrative costs are low compared with other states, Bozza said, citing data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
New Jersey and Tennessee are tied for the ninth-lowest administrative spending as a percentage of school budgets, the data show. The two spent 9.5 percent of their money on administration in 2008, compared with a national rate of 10.8 percent.
The Assembly in New Jersey unanimously passed a bipartisan bill on Nov. 22 that seeks to end many perks and bonuses superintendents receive on top of their salaries by creating a uniform state contract. The measure needs approval from the Senate. Both houses are controlled by Democrats.
Spreading Anger
School administrators’ anger over the pay caps will spread to residents, said Senator Ray Lesniak, a Democrat from Elizabeth. Superintendents will “convey their message to the families and to the students,” he said. “They’re going to be very upset.”
In a poll this month by Quinnipiac University asking New Jersey voters whether they considered Christie more of a leader or a bully, 50 percent said leader and 42 percent bully. Fifteen percent of Republicans, and 68 percent of Democrats, described Christie as more of a bully. Overall, he received approval from 51 percent of the 1,362 voters surveyed by telephone Nov. 3-8.
Christie, a former federal prosecutor, said “see you in court” when asked about the Parsippany suit and resistance to the salary cap.
Corporate Pay
“I’m on the side of the taxpayers,” he said at a news conference yesterday in his Trenton office. His opponents are “on the side of superintendents who care more about being paid like corporate CEOs than they care about taxpayers,” Christie said.
O’Neill said he and the Chathams school board recently agreed to a three-year contract extension that granted him 2 percent annual raises. The contract, now on hold, would have pushed him about $45,000 over Christie’s pay threshold, he said.
In his system of 3,900 students from the Chatham borough and township, voters approved a school budget with a $240 average property-tax increase after Christie reduced its state aid by 86 percent this year, O’Neill said. Fifty-nine percent of voters in those communities voted for Christie.
Seventy percent of voters in Wall in Monmouth County voted for him. The township’s school aid dropped 60 percent under Christie’s first budget in March, to $1.9 million. James Habel, the schools superintendent, was paid $200,273 last year.
Hometown Edict
Christie’s edict applies even to his hometown of Mendham, where Superintendent Kristopher Harrison’s base salary is $165,800, or $15,800 above the cap for a district of its size. School board members dodged the rule in September when they approved a five-year contract renewal for Harrison with merit- based raises of 3 percent annually, he said.
“Time will only tell what impact it’s going to have,” Harrison, 38, said in a telephone interview. “My focus is on stability in Mendham Township schools and the achievement of our students.”
Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon, a Republican from Red Bank, said he doesn’t expect political blowback over the issue.
“The average taxpayer is making a fraction of what these people make even with the cap,” O’Scanlon said in a Nov. 22 interview. “They aren’t going to stay up at night weeping over this.”
Lynne Strickland, executive director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, which lobbies for districts, said towns that are used to managing their own affairs are feeling threatened.
“There’s an intense roar that’s sort of rising here,” Strickland said. “Local folks are saying we know best what’s needed for our districts.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Terrence Dopp in Trenton, New Jersey, at tdopp@bloomberg.net; Dunstan McNichol in Trenton, New Jersey, at dmcnichol@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at matannen@bloomberg.net.
Star Ledger ‘Parsippany school board votes to back schools superintendent contract’
The Parsippany Board of Education voted tonight not to rescind the contract of district superintendent LeRoy Seitz, in defiance of a directive from Morris County schools superintendent Kathleen Serafino. The sharply divided board voted 4-4 — with one abstention — not to rescind Seitz’s contract. (Huisman, The Star-Ledger)
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/11/parisppany_school_board_votes.html
Star Ledger ‘Parsippany school board votes to back schools superintendent contract’
Published: Tuesday, November 23, 2010, 10:56 PM Updated: Wednesday, November 24, 2010, 8:14 AM
Matthew Huisman/For The Star-Ledger
— The Parsippany Board of Education voted tonight not to rescind the contract of district superintendent LeRoy Seitz, in defiance of a directive from Morris County schools superintendent Kathleen Serafino. The sharply divided board voted 4-4 — with one abstention — not to rescind Seitz’s contract.
Prior to the vote, the board debated the motion for more than half an hour amid shouts and applause from the audience.
"If we rescind, everything we have done is all over with," said Frank Neglia. "I think the smartest thing is to follow through with what we’ve already approved."
This wasn’t the first time the local board has defied Serafino, who has aligned herself with Gov. Chris Christie. The Parsippany school board filed a lawsuit Monday challenging Serafino’s directive to rescind Seitz’ contract.
But not everyone agreed that the board should continue with the lawsuit and the potential consequences.
"We rushed into this," said Parsippany school board member Michael Strumolo. "You guys painted yourself into this corner and now we are spending money on a lawsuit that should be spent educating children, not in lawsuits to circumvent the governor."
The motion, made by Bob Crawford and seconded by Strumolo, required a two-thirds majority to pass because law requires advance notification of the proposed vote.
Board members Fran Orthwein and Louis Valori along with Strumolo and Crawford voted for the motion. Frank Neglia, Anthony Mancuso, Frank Calabria and Debbie Orme voted against the motion. Andrew Choffo abstained.
On Monday, the board filed a lawsuit seeking a court order that would compel the Serafino and the acting state education commissioner, Rochelle Hendricks to approve the board’s five-year contract for Superintendent LeRoy Seitz.
The Parsippany board voted Nov. 9 to raise Seitz’s salary from $212,020 to $216,040 during the first year of the new contract. He was to receive a 2 percent raise in each of the next four years, which would take his salary to $234,065 by the end of the contract.
On Nov. 15, however, Serafino ordered the board to rescind the contract. That same day, Hendricks warned county superintendents not to approve any contracts before Christie’s cap on superintendent salaries takes effect Feb. 7.
The board set an tentative special meeting for Dec. 1 at 7 p.m.
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Published Sunday 11-21-10 Daily Record -
SUPERINTENDENTT SALARY CAPS
OP-ED
Jim O’Neill, Superintendent, School District of the Chathams
Identifying the problem is easy; bringing attention to the problem is laudable; pretending to have answers to all the problems is disingenuous. Governor Christie is a master politician, has an appealing populist agenda and has become the darling of many in the media. The governor has, in fact, correctly identified many of the difficult and perplexing issues that face New Jersey. Unfortunately, Mr. Christie then decided it was good politics if not good policy, to ridicule, berate and demean the very people who are in a position to help him find long term solutions. This is how citizens of good will, who are eager to contribute to problem solving, find themselves at odds with the governor and sometimes each other.
The Governor has shared: what teachers do while attending a conference; how weak-kneed board members kowtow to every request by a superintendent; the exact dollar amount a superintendent should earn; how to save the pension funds while not contributing state dollars; the benefits of charter schools; the negatives of public schools; what is best for every school district from High Point to Cape May; what was wrong with every administration prior to his own as well as the shortcomings of the NJ Supreme Court not to mention tunnels and federal applications.
Mr. Christie does not trust legislators or locally elected officials and is not interested in their ideas. He is bombastic in his rhetoric, crass in his personal attacks and unequivocal in his assertion that he knows best. Consequently topics which merit discussion are summarily dismissed. Since leadership is determined to be a key factor in every other organization, how was it determined this is not true in school districts? A Board of Education takes legal action he disagrees with and it becomes “all that is wrong with education in NJ.” Apparently, the fact that some superintendents make more money than the governor is sufficient to incur his wrath. Consequently, superintendents in small districts who fill multiple key roles find their salaries will be capped based on the single metric of student enrollment. An enrollment difference of 20 students will relegate a superintendent in a high performing district with a per pupil cost lower than the state average (saving local tax payers millions of dollars annually) to a lower base salary than a low performing district spending millions more. If the pension fund is in jeopardy, why shouldn’t superintendents making more than the proposed caps contribute twice as much to the pension, or why don’t we impose a pension cap rather than a salary cap? How did the governor determine that it is better for a superintendent to retire now and drain the pension fund at an exacerbated rate rather than continue to work and contribute needed dollars? He is doubling down on the mistakes that led to the precipitous retirement of thousands of qualified teachers. Debate about the value of a superintendent or the devastating fiscal impact of more retirements are apparently unnecessary because the governor knows best and should not be challenged. Recently, the governor incorrectly accused boards of circumventing the regulations when in fact, he is ignoring them. The Acting Puppet Commissioner stops the approval of contracts while there is a review even though all contracts have long been on file in the county offices. The Attorney General’s office previously determined that contracts had to be approved according to the existing regulations. But, the governor does not agree! To paraphrase another time and place - once the governor has decided, ‘so let it be written, so let it be done!”
Dedicated School board members serve endless hours for no compensation but stand accused of callous disregard for the expenditure of public funds while the governor engages in reckless name calling which demeans the office he holds. In Morris County the same people who were smart enough to elect the governor are apparently not capable of knowing what is best for their own district. Mr. Christie would have us believe every district in the state is administered poorly and lacks diligent oversight from the board of education. Is it true there no districts out of almost 600 where the Board has proven to be a careful and conscientious guardian of public funds? Are there any districts in the state where the superintendent has provided effective leadership, kept costs down and students are performing well? Is there an isolated case where the board or the superintendent does not fit the stereotype painted by the governor? If a district is spending millions of dollars less than others, should the board members or the superintendent get any of the credit? Local school districts, regardless of student performance and fiscal prudence, will be subject to the cap, but Technical Schools, regardless of how small, are exempt from the cap. The fact that the governor trusts Freeholders but not school boards to oversee districts is proof of political posturing, not fiscal prudence. Does anyone believe that decision making at the state level will save one dollar? What state takeover has resulted in high performance and low cost? The evidence in New Jersey is clear - less intrusion from Trenton will be better and cheaper. Our Republican legislators used to berate Democrats for their intervention in local affairs. Why have those voices fallen silent? I need to know before I buy a Chris Christie sweatshirt.
