High and low

The Eugene School Board is set to make Sheldon Berman the highest-paid superintendent in the district’s 120-year history, despite the fact Berman would be taking a base salary pay cut of about $93,000 compared with what he makes now leading the 99,000-student Jefferson County School District in Louisville, Ky.

According to a draft of Berman’s yet-to-be-finalized three-year contract, the school board is offering Berman an annual salary of $180,000, with annual cost-of-living increases and an annual 5 percent raise for a maximum of six years. That would make Berman one of the highest paid school superintendents in Oregon.

But it’s still far below the $273,000 salary Berman makes now in Louisville, according to The Courier-Journal newspaper. Then again, the Eugene School District, with about 16,500 students, is about one-sixth the size of the Louisville district, Kentucky’s largest.

The financially struggling Eugene School District has not publicly released details of its offer to Berman, 62, whom the board hired last month to take over July 1 for retiring Superintendent George Russell. The draft contract was provided to The Register-Guard on Tuesday by Eugene’s Luvass Cobb law firm, which represents the school district, at the request of board Chairman Craig Smith.

Many of the same contract details are in internal school board e-mails obtained earlier this week by the newspaper through a public records request.

The school board hopes to finalize the contract this weekend when Berman is here for a two-day school board retreat, Smith said.

The e-mails say Berman’s total package with the school district is likely to be about $213,080 when other benefits, such as a tax-sheltered annuity, or TSA, and a monthly car allowance, are included.

Russell, finishing his 12th year as superintendent, makes $144,161 a year, according to his contract. And his benefits are almost exactly the same as those being offered Berman, except that Russell’s TSA is currently $2,200 a month, or $26,400 a year. The district is offering Berman monthly TSA payments of $1,016 a month in the first year of his contract ($12,200 annually), and $600 monthly ($7,200 annually) thereafter.

Russell made $149,904 in the 2009-10 school year, but that was scaled back this year after he and other district administrators were asked to take 10 unpaid furlough days. According to his contract, Russell, who was hired in January 1999 at a salary of $101,500, should be making $156,324 now if not for employee concessions in recent years.

The offer to Berman would likely make him the state’s fourth-highest-paid superintendent, and the highest paid for districts of comparable size.

Among the state’s big three school districts, outgoing Beaverton Superintendent Jerry Colonna earns $194,200; Salem-Keizer Superintendent Sandy Husk earns $191,560; and Portland Superintendent Carole Smith earns $190,000, according to officials in those three districts.

Those three districts are by far the largest in Oregon, with student enrollments of about 40,000 each. Beaverton’s new superintendent, Jeff Rose, will earn $185,000, according to the Beaverton School District.

Craig Hawkins, spokesman for the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators, said Eugene is among several in the “second rung” of districts with between 15,000 and 21,000 students. Other districts in that enrollment range include Hillsboro and North Clackamas, where the superintendents currently earn $175,000 and $165,580, respectively, Hawkins said.

Nancy Golden, Springfield School District superintendent, earns $129,940. Springfield has about 10,000 students.

The average superintendent salary in Oregon is $116,870, according to COSA.

The Eugene School Board relied on the consultant — Ray & Associates of Iowa — that the district hired to lead the superintendent search and guide the deal-making with Berman, Smith said. Ray & Associates appointed Jim Mabbott, executive director of the Oregon Association of Education Service Districts, to lead the search.

Smith suggested that Berman’s pay may not be the highest in district history if salaries are adjusted for inflation, noting in particular the compensation package provided Thomas Payzant, superintendent between 1973 and 1978. Payzant was making $43,660 a year and had a $2,400-a-year tax-sheltered annuity when he left the district in the fall of 1978 to take the superintendent post in Oklahoma City, according to a Register-Guard story at the time.

It’s important to consider Berman’s salary in the context of what’s been offered recently in other large school districts in Oregon, Smith said.

Also, the Eugene School Board has said for years that Russell was underpaid, Smith said.

Because Russell’s salary is considered below market value, the board agreed last summer to put a one-time career-ending bonus into Russell’s TSA, according to Russell’s contract.

“The board recognizes that the superintendent’s salary continues to be substantially below market for superintendents in comparable school districts,” says an addendum to Russell’s contract signed in August. “Additionally, the superintendent has foregone salary increases for the past few years … ,” it says.

Thus, the board agreed to provide a one-time payment, to be paid within 60 days of a new superintendent’s contract agreement, that is the difference between Russell’s exiting salary ($144,161) and the salary of the incoming superintendent. If Berman indeed signs this weekend for $180,000 a year, that would mean the district would owe Russell a one-time payment of $35,839 for his annuity. It could also bump up Russell’s payments under the state’s Public Employee Retirement System, or PERS.

Under the terms of the proposed contract, if Berman were to earn a 5 percent raise annually, he would make at least $229,730 entering the sixth year of his tenure in Eugene on July 1, 2016, when he is 67. He would have to be hired for a second three-year contract in 2014 for that to happen. The proposed contract calls for a three-year rollover contract, meaning either party can terminate it in any year prior to June 30. The district can terminate the contract “without cause” but would have to provide a buyout of the “unexpired term,” not to exceed two years, the draft contract says.

Reached on his cell phone in Louisville Tuesday, Berman said he is looking forward to seeing the contract this weekend and that he is “generally happy” with the proposed terms.

“I wouldn’t have said ‘yes’ if I wasn’t,” Berman said. Despite having to take a pay cut, Berman, whose four-year contract in Louisville will expire June 30 after the school board there voted last fall not to renew it, said he is not disappointed with Eugene’s offer.

“This is more about the opportunity than the salary,” he said. The $180,000 offer is equivalent to the salary he made toward the end of his 14-year stint as superintendent of the 2,800-student Hudson Public Schools in Massachusetts, he said.