School execs paid more than $140K have nearly tripled

Palm Beach County’s public school system is paying big salaries to a growing number of administrators as Superintendent Robert Avossa expands the school district’s upper-management ranks.

Since Avossa took office in June 2015, the number of officials earning at least $140,000 a year has nearly tripled, from nine to 26, a Palm Beach Post analysis of school district salaries found.

While salaries routinely rise each year in government agencies, the school district’s spike in top earners by far outpaces growth at the middle of the pay range.

In the past two years, district officials say, the number of teachers earning at least $50,000 increased by 5 percent. In the same period, The Post found, the number of officials making at least $120,000 doubled, from 37 to 74.

Alt h ough the top earners include attorneys and other officials not under Avossa’s supervision, the trend is driven in large part by his creation of positions

to more closely manage the county’s more than 180 public schools.

During his tenure, Avossa has created at least 16 highlevel administrative jobs paying $120,000 or more, while boosting the salaries of other positions as he appointed new people to fill them.

Now in his third year at the school district’s helm, Avossa argues that the new positions and higher salaries are a much-needed investment, calling it a correction after several years in which thin management ranks left schools with too little supervision and support.

“My responsibility is to deliver results, and this is one strategy to deliver those results,” Avossa said in an interview. “We’re running the largest organization in the county, with 25,000-plus full- and part-time employees.”

In many cases, Avossa said, the new positions were paid for by eliminating lower-paying positions and consolidating departments. Other new positions, he said, are covered with money from federal grants that can’t be used for raising teacher salaries.

Even so, he conceded that the top of the district’s pay scale has grown at a faster rate than the rest of it.

Across the public school system, 173 people now earn six-figure salaries, up 45 percent from the 119 people who did so two years ago, The Post found.

Board member: Some new posts ‘not needed’

Justin Katz, president of the county teachers union, said that while he respected Avossa’s discretion to compensate top administrators as he sees fit, he called the spike in top salaries “extremely disappointing” considering the tepid growth in teacher pay.

“I think when teachers are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve, you won’t see such outrage when the superintendent asks for a raise for himself or creates high-paying positions that are far removed from the actual classroom,” Katz said.

“Until that time,” he continued, “it’s safe to say that any decisions he makes with regards to his salary or the salaries of his most highly paid administrators will be met with cringes from the rest of the district’s employees.”

Avossa said he is aware of the disparity and frustrated that he can’t raise teacher salaries more quickly. Average teacher pay has increased 6.2 percent since he took office, but sparse increases in money from state lawmakers make large hikes nearly impossible.

Avossa has also raised pay at the bottom of the pay scale. In his first year, Avossa hiked the district’s minimum wage from $8.05 to $10 an hour, providing a substantial boost to hundreds of child care workers, lunchroom aides and security guards. The district’s minimum hourly wage is now $10.50.

While teacher salaries have grown at a slower rate, Avossa said it was critical to professionalize the district’s upper ranks by creating positions and paying more to draw top talent.

“These are difficult decisions,” he said. “I’ve got to do the best I can to get the best people I can. I’m going to keep pushing to raise teacher salaries.”

Not everyone agrees with the need for so many new administrative positions, which include three assistant superintendent positions created last summer.

“I do think that there are a couple of positions that don’t warrant being there,” School Board member Barbara McQuinn said, declining to name the specific posts. “I think that they were not needed inasmuch as the money would have been better used at the school centers.”

McQuinn said she supported Avossa’s ability to hire new administrators to carry out his academic goals but questions his claims that the cost has been completely offset by cuts elsewhere. Much of the slimming of administrative offices, after all, was accomplished by transferring positions to schools.

“We’re not cost-neutral,” she said. “And here’s the thing to me — if we’re not cost-neutral, don’t say we’re cost-neutral.”

New jobs, higher pay

When Avossa took office as Florida’s highest-paid superintendent, he complained that the district was set up with too few high-level executives overseeing too many operations.

At the time, only three executives reported directly to the superintendent, and two of them — the chief academic officer and chief operating officer — were responsible for overseeing nearly all of the district’s roughly 22,000 employees and $2 billion budget.

School Board Chairman Chuck Shaw said in an interview that he agreed with Avossa and supported his efforts to address it.

“I think that the structure that we had, we had people trying to handle too many different pieces of the pie,” Shaw said last week, “and as a result I think our efficiency was not quite where it should have been.”

Avossa, whose $325,000 base salary makes him one of the nation’s highest-paid superintendents, started by creating a deputy superintendent position and appointing friend and former colleague David Christiansen to the post.

Christiansen was hired in 2015 from Lake County public schools at a $175,000 salary. His pay has since risen to $191,000, a 9 percent hike.

Avossa also resumed the long-standing tradition of splitting the roles of chief operating officer and chief financial officer — which former Superintendent Wayne Gent had combined in 2012 — saying the two jobs were too much for one individual.

Avossa made Mike Burke, who had balanced both responsibilities for four years, solely the finance chief and hired a former longtime colleague, Donald Fennoy, from Fulton County, Ga., public schools to be chief operating officer. Today, Fennoy and Burke each earn $185,000 a year.

In his first year, he recruited other longtime colleagues from Fulton County to take top positions.

Gonzalo La Cava, an area superintendent in Fulton, was hired as human resources chief at a salary of $170,000 — $ 36,000 more than his predecessor. Sherri Davis, a Fulton schools administrator, was hired to a new position as chief of administration, earning $145,000.

In February 2016, Avossa announced that he was reducing the number of regional offices, which provide direct oversight of the county’s schools, from fifive to four.

Six “area director” posit ions paying between $105,000 and $124,000 were eliminated. People working in those offices were transferred to positions at schools or into other administrative jobs.

While themove did reduce the total number of employees in those offices, it resulted in the creation of a dozen “instructional superintendent” positions, designed to provide closer supervision of the county’s schools.

The instructional superintendents each make between $ 120,000 and $142,000 and usually are charged with supervising the principals of

either the elementary, middle or high schools in their assigned region.

Avossa said their salaries are paid through federal grant money that can be used

only to support objectives such as employee training and recruiting. That money can’t be used to hire more teachers or increase teacher

salaries, he said.

Avossa: New posts help schools improve

This summer saw a new round of positions created, including three new assistant superintendent posts. The school district maintains that the cost of the jobs was more than offset by the elimination of other positions, including the chief of administration post, vacant since

Davis resigned in December after seven months.

Increasing the number of administrators responsible for supervising the principals is paying off, officials say, with rising test scores

and fewer schools with low ratings from the state.

Last year the number of district- operated F-rated

schools dropped from six to five, while the number of D- rated schools held steady at nine. Some of the F schools, all alternative schools, were shut down last summer.

“It really decentralized what was a very centralized administration,” Shawsaid. “The best example I can give is the instructional superintendents. The direct contact that the instructional superintendents have with the schools has been a very positive thing. I think that’s worked out extremely well.”

While the new positions are a major factor in the growing number of highpaid staffers, they are not the only one.

The number of attorneys making more than $140,000

has also increased with the creation of a second deputy general counsel position and annual pay raises for other long-serving attorneys, none of whom report to Avossa.

Six school district attorneys, including five in the school board general counsel’s office and one in the school board inspector general’s office, now make more than $140,000, up from four two years ago.

Shawsaid that those attorneys earn far less than they would in the private sector and that having more attorneys on staff saves taxpayer dollars by reducing the need to hire outside firms.

Avossa argued that a focus on the number of administrators making a certain amount of money was a narrow indicator of how the school district spends money and should be considered alongside other reforms he

has made, including pushing $5.3 million to the county’s poorest schools last year by reassigning people from regional offices and shifting other funding sources.

“At the end of the day, I ask the constituents a couple of things,” he said. “Are we getting better? Are we improving outcomes for kids? Are we becoming more efficient? Are we increasing

salaries for teachers and low-wage workers? And I feel confident that we’re doing that.”