An open letter to the Seattle School Board: Rethink idea of a raise and contract extension for the superintendent.
The following is an open letter from parent, Jill MacCorkle, to Seattle’s current and newly elected School Board Directors. At the November 18, 2015 School Board meeting, Directors will be voting on a raise and contract extension for Superintendent Nyland. Jill’s previous email to the board, which compares Superintendents’ compensation across the state, can be found here: letter to directors re Nyland raise. -Carolyn Leith
Dear Directors and Directors-Elect,
I am writing again about the matter before the board of a raise and contract extension for the superintendent. Having gotten no response from any directors to my previous email, I am presenting again my argument against a raise in the attached letter. This contains some revisions from my previous email and is the version that I sent to the media, so if you haven’t read my previous email, feel free to skip it in favor of reading this updated version.
Since the time that I first wrote to the board and now, the superintendent has offered to donate half of the proposed raise back to the district. That was a poor choice of options; parents want a superintendent who is wholehearted, not halfhearted. According to a report on November 6 from KPLU on the State of the Union address given by Dr. Nyland, the superintendent has stated, “My raise is not going to solve any of the issues we have on the table. I’ve done better than anyone else and I will take the smallest raise in the district as far as I know.” First of all, saying that he has done better than anyone else is not exactly a glowing testimony to his work, since the bar for recent superintendents (save Susan Enfield) is so low. His claim that his raise is not going to solve any issues on the table demonstrates what parents and teachers know: that while the superintendent may have an understanding of the issues that are important in the downtown office, he is out of touch on the issues that are ongoing in our buildings and classrooms. There is not a single parent, teacher, or administrator in any of our schools who couldn’t think of a problem they could address with $13,803, the amount of his raise. $13,803 would buy 3000 reams of paper, 920 hardcover books, one month ofORCA cards for Rainier Beach High School students, 552 soccer jerseys, 276 children’s winter coats, 106 graphing calculators, or 500 rat traps for Rogers Elementary. I know An open letter to the Seattle School Board: Rethink idea of a raise and contract extension for the superintendent. | Seattle Education: