Such payments have been found to be common for local government leaders, despite earning the ire of the state legislature.
An earlier investigation by the Daily News found the payments are common for local city managers, too.
The payments are at least 10 percent of the superintendents’ salaries and add more than $400,000 to the cost of the 34 area school superintendent contracts a year.
Last school year, in addition to salaries, area school leaders received those pension pickups as well as car allowances, tax-sheltered annuities and payments of their Medicare and pension costs, the Dayton Daily News investigation found.
The perks combined to add $692,378 to the combined cost of their compensation.
Public employee pay has come under scrutiny as all local governments have wrestled with a downturn in revenue and cuts in funding from the state. The districts surveyed are eliminating nearly 1,000 education jobs because of budget cuts.
Gov. John Kasich’s spokesman Rob Nichols said Ohio districts spend too little on instruction and too much on “bureaucrats, overhead and red tape.” Recent legislation gives districts “tools to reduce the cost of government,” Nichols said.
“Superintendents are picked by school boards who are accountable to the community and taxpayers,” he said. “At the end of the day they have to look constituents in the eye and ensure them the money was spent wisely.”
Districts “picking up” superintendents’ pension contributions is the most expensive of the perks in this region, costing taxpayers $415,751. Districts already pay the employer share of superintendents’ state pension obligations; all local districts surveyed but one, Kettering, have agreed to pay the superintendents’ shares of that pension payment.
Payments like that would be outlawed under Senate Bill 5, the proposed overhaul of public employees’ collective bargaining rights.
The highest total compensation package in Montgomery County went to Dayton Public’s first-year Superintendent Lori Ward, who was paid $199,500, including a $18,000 stipend for work-related expenses and a $15,000 payment to an investment account. She is slated to receive $202,500 in the upcoming school year, edging out Mason City Schools’ new Superintendent Gail Kist-Kline by $50.
The two women — one heading an urban district in “academic watch” according to the Ohio Department of Education and the other a big suburban district with an “excellent” rating — are atop the list of Miami Valley superintendents total compensation, the Daily News examination found.
The average superintendent base pay locally is $123,818. A survey by the Buckeye Association of School Administrators of 514 Ohio superintendents found an average salary of $107,754. The local average is more than twice the average Ohio teacher salary of $56,995, according to the Ohio Department of Education.
Together, superintendents earned a combined $4.9 million in salary and benefits in 2011 for managing more than 16,860 people and general fund budgets totalling $1.8 billion, the Daily News found.
Nearly every one of the school leaders has financial benefits included in their contracts.
Fourteen school leaders received additional tax-sheltered investments and more than 20 got either vehicle or cell-phone allowances — in some cases, both.
Local elected leaders and industry experts say the perks are necessary to attract top candidates who often manage the communities top employer and are the equivalent of CEOs of private companies.
“I don’t think superintendents are viewed as the CEOs they truly are,” said Rick Lewis, executive director of the Ohio School Boards Association. “I think superintendents are compensated much less than their counterparts in the private sector.”
Dayton school board member Joe Lacey said Ward’s contract is justified and in line with what the other large urban district superintendents make, even in this depressed economy. In Dayton Public, nearly 300 positions have been eliminated and 179 were recently laid off because of budget cuts.
Turnover and “upward mobility” of the job keep the field competitive and help to drive salaries, Lewis said. In any given year, about one-third of districts are searching for new leadership because the average tenure of a superintendent is four years. For urban superintendents it’s even shorter: three years.
Lacey said that played a role in wanting to hire Ward, who worked for the district for 15 years and was the top recommendation of former Superintendent Kurt Stanic to become his successor. “We’re in a competitive environment and we’re trying to get the best for our district,” Lacey said.
Ward also receives $1,500 a month to pay job-related expenses she deems appropriate but the contract says she is not required to provide expenditure documentation of these funds to the school district. The funds — totalling $18,000 a year — could cover lease payments, purchase, insurance and maintenance on Ward’s vehicle, the contract says.
Lacey said he had no problem with that clause when he joined other board members in unanimously approving her contract last year because he assumed it was something previous superintendents had in their contracts.
Lacey noted one thing is not in there: a company car. The district stopped providing a company car to the district’s top leader after former Superintendent Percy Mack left in 2008.
“That raises people’s ire,” he said. “It becomes a symbol of excess.”
Senate Bill 5 impact
State budget cuts and legislation like Senate Bill 5, which would outlaw the pickup of pension costs, has some school boards across the state rethinking the way they compensate their districts’ top administrator.
Some are cutting salary and benefits, while others are finding ways to keep compensation steady in the face of new regulations so they can continue to attract top talent.
“We are seeing that everything and anything is being scrutinized now more than ever before,” said Kathy LaSota, director of services for the Ohio School Boards Association. “We may vary from state to state, but school boards across the nation are scrutinizing what they offer candidates.”
In Springboro, board members have moved to do away with pension pickups and give administrators more time off in exchange.
Jim Rigano, a Clearcreek Twp. resident and member of Educate Springboro, which opposed a November levy request, said the move was a step in the right direction for the district and what he sees as overly generous benefits. The change was also recommended in a 2009 state performance audit of the district.
“We need to move to a point where we have parity between public sector benefits and private sector benefits,” Rigano said. “I think we need that parity for the survival of these school districts. You can’t convince taxpayers to pay more for schools when a lot of that money is going into benefits more generous than the private sector. It’s hard to convince someone to buy you a steak dinner when they are eating ground beef.”
Beavercreek administrators and staff recently agreed to a 2 percent pay cut next year and a pay freeze in 2013 along with eliminating most of teachers’ step pay increases.
The move will save the district $4 million, said Peg Arnold, board president.
Yet if pension pickups become outlawed, the district will increase administrators’ salaries to make up the difference, Arnold said. “Those were given to administrators in lieu of raises,” she said. “It is unfair to turn around and take them away.”
Supporters of SB 5 argue the measure gives school districts “tools” to deal with budget cuts by eliminating perks like pension pickups and step salary increases. But Arnold sees it another way. “They are giving us these tools because they know what they are doing to us on the other end,” she said referring to the billions in cuts to state education spending. “That’s pretty chicken. Take responsibility for what you do.”
Tom Ash, director of government relations for the Buckeye Association of School Administrators, said school boards could end up paying more if no longer allowed to do the pension pickup.
He said that a salary can’t be reduced during the course of a contract under Ohio law and the association views that to mean total compensation, including the pickup.
“That 10 percent would have to be added to the person’s salary,” he said. “Once you put it into salary, then all of a sudden you have additional expenses.”
For example, 14 percent of that added salary amount would have to go to the retirement system, 1.45 percent to Medicare and a certain percentage for worker’s compensation, which varies by district.
“It may make it more transparent if they don’t have the pickup, but it’s also going to cost the boards of education more money.”
Greene County Educational Service Center Superintendent Terry Thomas retired from the district in December 2007 and was rehired in the same position January 2008.
Before the start of his current contract, he had agreed to forgo the pension pickup, but later asked board members to give him the perk. A vote to do so stalled in one meeting and was later approved.
Thomas was out of town on vacation last week but responded via email to a reporter’s inquiry about why he requested the change.
“I made the request because I had received no salary increase in 3.5 years and at that time every superintendent and treasurer in Greene was receiving this same benefit,” he wrote.
Ash, of the Buckeye administrators association, said other school leaders, like in Springboro and Beavercreek, are taking the same cuts other employees are agreeing to in order to help save money.
“When you’re the chief executive officer and you’re asking the staff to freeze their salaries, you also need to set an example. We’re finding a lot of that happening.”
Ash noted that superintendent salaries do not include step increases like many teachers receive.
As outcome-based compensation like merit pay becomes more likely for teachers Ash said he is seeing more districts issue performance bonuses. Superintendents would receive a bump in pay if they meet very specific goals, such as if the district receives an certain state report card rating or meets so many of state standards. The goals have become increasingly more specific in the last 10 years.
“It’s much more objective in terms of evaluating performance. You either make 26 standards or you didn’t make 26 standards. It’s much more quantifiable than trying to evaluate someone on how are your interpersonal skills and giving a mark on a 0-5 scale.”
Staff writer Ed Richter contributed to this report.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2342 or cmagan@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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