Imperial Valley Press

Board OKs superinten­dent salary hike

- BY JULIO MORALES Staff Writer

EL CENTRO — A majority of the Imperial County O ce of Education Board of Trustees recently approved a salary increase requested by Superinten­dent Todd Finnell.

The salary increase was approved by the board during its Feb. 12 regular meeting and was prompted by board policy that requires an annual review of the superinten­dent’s salary.

The base salary increase, from $197,306 to $216,357, represents the first time Finnell has gotten a salary hike since being elected in June 2014.

As part of the process, the board had undertaken a review of the salaries of superinten­dents of local and comparable county o ces of education.

“I’m always appreciate of anything (the board members) provide and respect their authority to set my salary,” Finnell said in an email.

The new base salary makes Finnell the second-highest paid public school superinten­dent in the Valley, behind the $220,000 the El Centro Elementary School District chief earns, according to an agenda report prepared for the Feb. 12 board meeting.

The new base salary includes a 5 percent raise which is retroactiv­e to July 1, 2018. The salary restructur­ing also reflects the eliminatio­n of the superinten­dent’s annual $8,748 car allowance and the addition of the stipend to the former base salary.

The approved salary restructur­ing did not propose any changes to Finnell’s cell phone, doctoral, service club and health and welfare stipends, the agenda report stated.

The four-member board had voted 3-1 to approve the salary increase, with Trustee Gonzalez-Buttner casting the dissenting vote.

For her part, Gonzalez-Buttner said she would like to see Finnell focus his legacy on improving Latino academic proficienc­y and strengthen­ing college readiness.

“All of Imperial County’s children deserve high aspiration­s for success and ICOE can do much to raise student performanc­e dramatical­ly,” Gonzalez-Buttner stated in an email.

She also characteri­zed the reclassifi­cation of the car allowance stipend as salary to be a form of “illegal pension-spiking.”

In response, Finnell disputed Gonzalez-Buttner’s claim, pointing out that the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) allows for an employer’s stipend to be considered salary if certain conditions are met, as they were in his case.

The retroactiv­e 5 percent salary increase represents one of three options the ICOE board had considered for approval. The other two options included a 7 percent and 9 percent increase.

Since 2014, ICOE classified employees have received incrementa­l salary increases amounting to nearly 18 percent, while certificat­ed and management personnel have received increases of 18 percent during the same time frame, the ICOE agenda report stated.

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