Olentangy Valley News, July 30, 2003 (Front page)
School district administrators receive raises for 2003-2004
Olentangy Local School District adininistrators can rest assured that they will get their salary increases this year.
On July 21, the school board voted unanimously to raise salaries for many administrative positions, from the principals to the superintendent.
Board member Jim Fedako had reservations about passing the increases before the economic forecast for the fall comes in.
"I think it would be prudent to wait until August to make these changes," he said.
When a motion to table the issue until August failed, Fedako voted for the increases anyway.
“I don't want it to sound like I don't support the administrators," he said. "I just wanted to wait until August."
Fedako said he was worried that some money from property taxes would decrease and the district would be labeled a "fiscal watch" district by the state.
According to Fedako, fiscal watch means that the district's deficit "exceeds 8 percent of the school district's general fluid revenue for the preceding fiscal year."
Other board members said they thought Fedako's caution was unfounded. "I think Mr. Fedako is reading into partial information that will be modified," board President Andy Kerr said. "This is such a small total dollar impact ... it won't have much of an effect on the overall numbers."
Performance salary increases ranged from 2 to 4.5 percent for individual administrators. Some administrators also received a comparison increase to make their salary more competitive with other districts.
According to the district, the performance increases raised the administrative budget by 3.5 percent at a cost of $86,536 to the district.
Another issue addressed at the meeting was the finishing up of the three new buildings set to open this year.
According to builder Bill O'Sullivan the new Liberty High School is basically done. "We just have some seeding and planting to do," he said. "Building construction is basically complete."
The two elementary schools are even further down the line with maintenance crews already inside.
According to the contractors all buildings "came out ahead financially and time-wise." At the time of meeting the district had the keys to both of the elementary schools, and was close to getting the keys to the high school.
Kerr congratulated the builders saying they had done "a great job." Without taking too much time to congratulate each other, Development Committee Chairman David King presented some issues that may come up in the next school year. King said the board will have to look at renovating the old high school and presented a motion for another possible bond issue to be presented at a future meeting.
Superintendent Bill Reimer also presented an item for discussion that involved the district's new Continuous Improvement Plan. The plan is to "facilitate maximnum learning for every student '" In other words, this would be to set up a framework to create an atmosphere conducive to raising student achievement.
According to Reimer, the plan will provide "measures whereby the board can say whether we are accomplishing what we want to."
The ultimate goals for the plan have not yet been approved by the board, but the mission statement has been modified slightly. "It's a simplification of the current plan," Reimer said. "We thought this would be easier understood by the community as a whole."
The vision statement for the plan now begins, "Our students will perform at a level that surpasses or is equal to their predicted level of achievement based on measured ability." The superintendent is still evaluating the performance indicators for the plan and will present them to the board at a later date.
"We're not prepared to present the final indicators, yet," he said.