[Editor’s Note: On Monday evening at 6 in the School District offices, the School Board will convene a special meeting to discuss the bond campaign and the community survey.]
Perhaps the only way the School Board could have been less obtrusive in rewarding itself with a flyspeck pay raise would have been to crouch down over there, behind the tree with a yellow ribbon, after midnight.
Selecting a news-free meeting that would be lightly attended, the Board’s self-tribute innocuously was tucked in as the penultimate item on an innocent-looking agenda.
Not that the increase is going to bust the budget or break the next homeless man who toddles along Irving Place.
The monthly amount, no doubt, could be collected from any class of elementary school students, even penurious ones.
Determined in proportion to a pre-set formula linked to increases for other School District employees, each of the five Board members will benefit from a $4.80 per month bump, to 244.80.
If the raise is no weightier than piffle or gumdrop-sized sugar candy, why schedule the pay increase for one of the least watched evenings of the year?
Why bury it, if guilt were not attached?
The answer rang out across almost vacant Council Chambers when the School Board members were polled. Something about plum pudding and the proof therein.
The tally:
3 to 2 in favor of the pay raise.
Essayist/activist George Laase, who wrote and spoke last evening against the proposition said it was a Generation Gap.
Prof. Patricia Siever and Nancy Goldberg, elders of the Board, turned it down while Karlo Silbiger, Laura Chardiet and Kathy Paspalis, all at least 25 years younger, affirmed the move.
In the afterglow, Mr. Laase said:
For a governmental body that prides itself on its ability to compromise and its unanimous votes on issues that would rip apart others, the CCUSD governing board vote on increasing its member compensation, split straight down generational lines, 3 to 2, to increase their board compensation.
Fact: State legislators just increased their salaries 5 percent.
Not to feel left out of the state salary splurge, members voted to raise their individual monthly compensation by $4.80. Now they must feel complete. Until a new feeling of being put-upon and overworked seeps back into their lives.
The once traditional, unselfish sense of community service, one of doing what is needed when it is needed without a second thought, is falling to the wayside in favor of one more calculated, self-centered and mercenary.
The message: I will serve my community when called, but I will need to be paid for my time and efforts.
