I attended Wednesday night’s special School Board meeting for a minute or so to watch the official installation of Patti Jaffe as our new Superintendent.
With all due respect to the many community members who were in attendance and who supported the compensation Mrs. Jaffe would be receiving for her services as our Superintendent, I have to admit that I am one of those who must side with Board member Karlo Silbiger and Teachers Union President Dave Mielke.
Ali Delawalla, the CCUSD Assistant Superintendent of Business Services, has been telling us for years that the District’s financial future is dismal. As presented in his first interim report this year, we will face either a $5 million dollar deficit or an $11 million deficit (depending on whether or not the governor’s tax extension proposal passes) two years from now. We are deficit spending at an alarming rate.
With that in mind, I am concerned that we cannot afford the $201,000 base salary that we are now paying Mrs. Jaffe, which more than likely increases to over $220,000 with the addition of her longevity.
Add in her paid vacation days, her medical benefits, etc., and you find yourself pretty darned close to the $240,000 full compensation package that was paid to our last Superintendent, which, by most accounts, people were shocked to learn about after her departure. That the Board explained her compensation package as a total of $217,000.00 baffles me, and I question the math.
Dr. Myrna Rivera Coté’s base salary was $185,000. On top of that, she received a $10,000 a year mileage allowance. Of course, the Board isn’t paying Mrs. Jaffe the additional mileage allowance of $10,000 a year they so generously gave to Dr. Rivera Coté , probably because there was such uproar about mileage allowances last year. I am guessing that to save themselves the aggravation of having to go through the mileage allowance fiasco again, they just built it into Mrs. Jaffe’s salary.
That Board President Scott Zeidman did a comparative study of other districts is all well and good. The problem with that information is that we have no idea what the financial situation is in any of those districts. They may very well be able to afford the salaries they are paying their superintendents.
This isn’t the time to play “Let’s keep up with the Joneses” when employees have taken 5 furlough days this year and are being asked to take 9 furlough days next year in addition to the pay cut they already have taken in the form of another huge medical benefit increase in January of this year.
The bottom line is this: Regardless of what other districts are doing, we have to make prudent choices for CCUSD.
So, as my mother used to say, “If all of your friends jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it, too?”
Ms. Hamme, President,
Assn. of Classified Employees, Culver City, may be contacted at antiquer01@aol.com
