Pattye Benson

As was noted in comments received on the last post, there are those that have supported Dr. Waters tenure as superintendent in T/E where others are questioning his salary and benefit package. Regardless of how people personally feel about Waters, his time remaining on the job is winding down – a little over a year left on his contract. The discussion needs to shift and focus on the future and the process for hiring his replacement.

T/E’s newly hired Director of Personnel, Jeanne Pocalyko, has background and experience in conducting a successful superintendent search. In her last position as the Human Resources Director for the Dallastown Area School District (DASD), Pocalyko along with DASD school board members, took a ‘community engagement’ approach in their superintendent search. After their successful DASD superintendent search, the group presented ‘Community Engagement for a Successful Superintendent Search’ this past October at the PA School Board Association leadership conference, providing an overview of how to proactively engage the community in the superintendent search process.

The complete DASD presentation is available on their school district website (click here to read). The DASD superintendent search process was comprehensive – using as much stakeholder input as possible, resulting in a process that was fair and open for the community. The public was provided with status reports throughout the process.

According to the report, it appears that T/E and Dallastown school districts share some similarities – 5 elementary schools, 2 middle schools and 1 high school and student enrollment of slightly more than 6,000. In addition, DASD also has a charter school and an ‘alternative education academy’. With the recent hiring of Pocaylko in the T/E School District, I was interested in how she and the DASD designed their approach to finding a new superintendent.

The DASD superintendent search process spanned four months and involved over 150 house of Committee member time. The Committee was comprised of 4 school board directors and the human resource director (Pocaylko). The Committee developed the process using much stakeholder input, estimating that approximately 1,100 District stakeholders participated in the search. The initial search process included stakeholder survey, stakeholder input meetings and advertising of opening.

The stakeholder survey conducted was an online confidential survey, where respondents were asked to selected their top 5 skills and traits of a superintendent and allowed for comments. (Received 700+ responses). This is the summary table of what the respondents viewed as the top 5 skills and traits required in a school district superintendent:

The stakeholder meetings included separate meetings with administrators, teachers, support staff, students and the community. The Committee also met with 4 retired York area superintendents. The data and information obtained was used to develop screening questions for use during the interview process.

The Committee pre-screened the applicants and conducted three rounds of interviews. After developing questions based on the information provided by the stakeholders, the Committee conducted the Round 1 interviews. The Round 2 interviews were conducted by a representative combined group of 30 people – administrators, teachers, parents, support staff, students, community and committee members. The DASD Board conducted their own Round 3 interviews and reviewed the results of the group interview. The decision process included the compilation of stakeholder feedback, interview results and comments from each interview round, reference checks and the school board’s consideration of district needs and input from the Committee.

The final determination and selection of the new Superintendent remained the responsibility of the full School Board. After the superintendent selection process was complete, DASD released a ‘summary report’ to the public.

I would encourage members of the T/E School Board to utilize the expertise and experience of Ms. Pocalyko as they begin the superintendent search for Dan Waters replacement. Reading the various files on the Dallastown Area School District website concerning their superintendent search showed the value in utilizing and encouraging community input and providing an open, transparent process.

Based on Sue Tiede’s notification to retire as TESD Director of Personnel, the school board conducted interviews and last Fall, unanimously approved the hiring of Jeanne Pocalyko as the replacement with a January 2014 start date.

It is now spring — tomorrow is April 1 and I have yet to see (or hear) Ms. Pocaylko, the newly hired voice of the District Personnel Department. Although Pocaylko was hired in January, Sue Tiede continued to be the voice of the District for personnel matters at regular school board and committee meetings.

Typically, I’m guessing that an overlap of two weeks would be the norm as a transition period or maybe, … in certain situations, 30 days. However, in the case of the TESD Director of Personnel position, the overlap between Tiede and Pocalyko began in January and continued through March, ending this past Friday. Well … that’s not entirely accurate. In February, the Board approved extending Tiede’s employment until May 1. Apparently, Tiede will not be ‘on the job’ for the month of April but will be paid the additional month for her unused sick leave. Then at last week’s Board meeting, the Board approved paying Tiede $86/hour, for up to 8 hours, to continue to help Pocalyko in her Director of Personnel job.

It is remarkable that since January the District’s taxpayers have paid the salaries for two Personnel Directors and will continue to do so until May 1. The base salary for Tiede is $178K/yr. and Pocalyko is $167K/yr. In a time when the Board and administration are focused on cost-savings measures and tout the need for fiscal responsibility, it is hard to understand how they rationalize the use of taxpayer dollars in this manner.

It’s not like Pocalyko comes to T/E lacking in experience – she spent the last nine years as the Human Resource director for Dallastown Area School District in York, PA and before that as the Director of Personnel at Upper Merion School District. How could the inner workings of the personnel department of this District be so different from Dallastown and Upper Merion school districts as to require months of on-the-job training from Ms. Tiede?

Once again, this highlights the administration (with school board approval) protecting the most highly compensated District employees while those on the bottom rung – the aides and paras – continue to struggle with the own future economic uncertainty. This should be a real indicator of priorities to District’s aides and paras. The lowest paid employees are considered disposable by some members of the school board and administration but the highest paid administrators continue to get paid more.

Continuing on the subject of personnel matters, is the issue of the superintendent search. According to the terms of his 4-1/2 year superintendent contract, which ends June 30, 2015, Dan Waters needed to give at least 18 months’ notice to the school board to receive all associated contract benefits including retention bonus.

The contract signed February 2, 2010 included a base salary of $225K yearly but that salary will have almost doubled when the contract expires June 2015. Reviewing Waters contract indicates that each January starting in 2011, provides an additional $35K/yr for a competitive market rate adjustment. If you add the $35K yearly adjustment for 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 and $17,500 for January – June 2015, the contract moves to a value of $382,500. Additionally, the contract contains a yearly retention bonus of $5K/yr starting in January 2011 which adds an additional $25K to Waters base salary. The base salary of Waters contract in June 2015 is $407,500 in June 2015.

Waters qualifies for supplement retirement pension – for those who worked in the District 25 years or longer, the supplemental rate is 100% of the final year’s base salary. The idea is to compensate administrators for not taking a compensated leave of absence. When Waters retires, he will receive a supplemental retirement payout of $407,500, his base salary in June 2015. It needs to be clear that Waters salary of $400K+ is the base salary only — health insurance, PSERS, car, etc. benefits are additional.

For comparison sake, Unionville Chadds Ford School District recently renewed Superintendent John Sanville’s employment contract for 4 years. Including a 10% increase, Sanville will make a base salary of $210K/yr starting September 2014. Upper Merion School District recently increased their superintendent’s salary – UMSD Superintendent Jane Callaghan base salary was increased to $202K/yr. I think most would agree that Unionville Chadds Ford and Upper Merion school districts are competitive to T/E yet the base salaries of their superintendents are approximately half of TESD superintendent will receive in 2015.

Although there has been no public announcement from the T/E school board that Waters has given his official notification to retire in June 2015, it is clear that he did. I do not believe that Waters would want to risk losing any contract retention benefits! Not sure why this information was not made public.

So the real question becomes – does the School Board tell the public when the superintendent search begins or does the community find out when the decision is made, as was the case with Director of Personnel. Does the Board look for a replacement at the current $400K+ base salary of the T/E superintendent or in the $200K salary range of neighboring school district superintendents? Will the Board decide to do the search ‘in-house’ themselves as they did with the Director of Personnel? Or will the Board utilize the services of an outside consulting company? Another option in the superintendent search – the Chester County Intermediate Unit. That could be a less expensive route than using a consulting company, but Board member Jim Bruce is also Vice President of CCIU, which may create a conflict of interest. Final thought, how does the superintendent search handle community input – or does it?

The major reason to preemptively discuss the superintendent search is to voice a strong opinion that the search needs to go outside the District. Although school board members have never publically acknowledged the low morale of District employees, those issues continue.

The TESD Finance Committee Meeting and the 2014-15 Budget Workshop 1 was held on Monday, March 10. Click here for the videos of the budget workshop. Please note that there are three separate videos. For those people unable to attend the budget workshop, including myself, I appreciate the District providing the videos. To fully understand the budget discussion, you should also review the agenda and slides prepared by TESD Finance Manager Art McDonnell prepared for the workshop – click here.

The following slide from the budget workshop, ‘Budget Development Summary’ reviews the 2014-15 preliminary budget development and indicates a $3.1 million budget deficit without any tax increase. With the addition of 2.1% Act 1 tax increase and 1.27% referendum exception (combined total 3.37% tax increase) plus the impact ($1.9 million) of the recently signed teachers contract, a deficit of $1.9 million remains.

The budget workshop slide, ”Tax Impact from Act 1 Index and Exception’ indicates that the currently projected $3.37% tax increase will mean an average increase of $166 to the T/E homeowner.

It is interesting to note that the last time the District had a zero percent tax increase was budget year 2004-05, a decade ago. A review of the ‘Tax Increase History’ slide (below) indicates the property tax increases each year since 2004-05:

Earlier this year, the preliminary 2014-15 budget indicated a 3.2% increase. However, Harrisburg subsequently announced an increase in the PSERS exception, which allowed the District’s total allowable increase to go to 3.37% for the 2014-15 budget year.

But here’s the problem – even with a 3.37% increase, the District is still facing a nearly $2 million deficit. Other than a transfer from the fund balance, how does the District resolve the deficit?

In reviewing the budget workshop materials, I noted that there was additional staffing allowances in the budget visa-a-vis the technology upgrade implementation. I thought that the District was utilizing a consultant and technology company for the transition so I was not clear regarding the need for additional staffing and the associated costs.

The Budget Workshop II on April 7 will include discussion of:

• Healthcare Consultant provides “Second Look” for Insurance Costs
• Update 2013-14 Revenue and Expenditure Projections
• Impact of Affordable Care Act
• Monitor Enrollment and Effect on Staffing

It will be interesting to see the revenue and expenditure projections for the 2013-14 school year. If you recall, the District has somehow ‘found’ mega-millions in surplus the last two years. Unfortunately for taxpayers, each year the money has been found after the next year’s budget has been passed (with a tax increase).

For the 2011-12 school year, the budget surplus was $3.9 million and it was nearly $5 million for 2012-13 school year. It’s never been entirely clear where the budget surplus came from although I seem to recall that ‘lower than anticipated insurance costs’ was used to explain a portion of the surplus. Surely, the school board would not approve imposing a 3.4% increase on its taxpayers and discover a budget surplus for the third year in a row. Not sure that there’s any valid explanation if that were to happen.