Principals and other management employees should not be given
collective raises, rather they should be individually evaluated and
rewarded based on merit
Here we go again.
Another locally elected governing board, this time the Board of the Gilroy Unified School District, is poised to treat nonunion, exempt employees as if they belonged to a union.
It’s long past time for elected officials to get over their aversion to job performance-based raises for nonunion, exempt employees.
If the school board approves the plan tonight, the three unions with which GUSD deals will receive 4.05 percent raises. In addition, the district’s nonunion, exempt employees – school principals and district administrators – applied their across-the-board raise to their salaries.
We’d rather see performance-based raises for all government workers – but at least you can make a reasonable case for across-the-board, interchangeable raises for unionized employees.
You simply can’t make that case for nonunion, exempt employees, especially in a district that is emphasizing accountability, and one that tip-toed into a much ballyhooed discussion about merit pay for teachers last year.
Across-the-board raises for management should not be policy. Each principal, assistant principal, etc. should be evaluated each year against a set of written goals and that employee’s increase ought to be tied to how well he or she met those goals. Those employees who are not meeting expectations ought to receive no increase; those who are meeting expectations ought to receive a moderate percent increase; and those who are exceeding expectations ought to receive higher increases. How this concept is lost on a district searching for leadership and accountability is a true head-scratcher.
Superintendent Deborah Flores’ willingness to support across-the-board raises, along with a typical justification that “[now] we can all focus on student instruction and learning,” is both disappointing and disheartening.
We hope that trustees – especially those who were critical of the 7 percent across-the-board raises that were given to these same employees in February – will vociferously object.
We expect to hear from Trustee Denise Apuzzo, who complained about 7 percent across-the-board raises for this group last February. At that time, she said, “My opinion is, and I’m very plain spoken, there’s people here that deserve a 20 percent increase and there are people that deserve no increase.”
We expect to hear from Trustee Francisco Dominguez, who last February said that he wanted to tie raises for administrators and principals to job performance. At that time, he said that he was concerned about “the future” of nonunion, exempt employee raises.
Words, plain-spoken or otherwise, are useless unless they are tied to deeds. We trust that Apuzzo and Dominguez will ask hard questions about the proposal to give non-performance-based raises to district administrators and school principals.
A foundation is built one brick at a time. The GUSD says that it wants to build a new foundation based on accountability, but instead is proposing business-as-usual bricks.
On behalf of the students, parents and taxpayers that the GUSD serves, we urge them to choose different bricks for the new foundation.
