LIHUE — Some school officials are getting a raise thanks to a Hawaii Board of Education decision to increase of wages for the deputy superintendent, assistant superintendents and complex area superintendents.
The decision came out of a Department of Education Superintendent request and will increase pay range for the deputy superintendent, assistant superintendents and complex area superintendents.
The new pay range for deputy superintendent will be $155 to $180 thousand per year, assistant superintendents pay range will be $145 to $175 thousand per year and complex area superintendents will earn between $135 to $170 thousand per year.
In a memo dated Sept. 20, Superintendent Dr. Christina Kishimoto states performance management and compensation are two key areas of the department’s talent management strategy.
“To attract and retain skilled executive leaders to carry out the mission and vision of the department, fair and competitive salaries are essential,” she said.
According to DOE Communications Director Lindsay Chambers, the current median salary of executive level superintendents is $143.760 and their last pay raise was in 2017.
“The Deputy Superintendent oversees the department’s 15 complex areas and numerous special projects. There are seven assistant superintendents that oversee each HIDOE office,” she said.
Complex area superintendents provide support for all of the schools, k-12, in their complex are and lead the staff at the complex level to provide support for the schools ranging from human resources to response guidance, Chambers said.
In the memo, Kishimoto says that equitable compensation for all department employees is part of the department of education’s strategic plan and will help support a high-performing culture where all employees are effectively contributing to student success.
“Pay increases need to keep pace with inflation as well as be differentiated based on performance,” she said.
Currently, there are 19 positions, not covered by a collective bargaining unit, that would be impacted by the proposed pay increase and will help with future recruitment efforts to fill any potential leadership vacancies within the group.
“Board Policy 500-6 states that the Board shall establish a salary structure that is competitive and commensurate with the duties, responsibilities and authorities of the respective subordinate superintendent positions,” the memo states.
In addition to raises in 2017, superintendents received raises in 2015 and 2016 based on performance and the cost of living.
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Bethany Freudenthal, Crime, courts and county reporter, 652-7891, bfreudenthal@thegardenisland.com
This is absolutely embarrassing. The starting pay for teachers is way too low but the starting pay for superintendents will now exceed the salaries for the governor ($143,748) and most of the county Mayors. Why are the teachers pushing for a surcharge on property taxes when clearly the have sufficient monies for their bloated politburo? Need to fix the distribution of monies within the DOE before throwing kerosene of the fire. No more monies to DOE until there’s a full audit.
This points to Hawaii’s education problems: the self-serving, inefficient, bloated bureaucracy that contributes virtually nothing to providing a real education. So…we pay and the kids are cheated.
RG DeSoto
What a complete ripoff of taxpayer’s money going to these good for nothing executives, which by the way would be better off just getting rid of this unnecessary extra layer of bureaucracy from an already bloated DOE administration that outnumber teachers 13,500 to 11,000.
Why should these executive parasites even be considered for raises when Hawaii schools are rated at the bottom of all 50 States, yet taxpayers on the average fund each student a little above the national? DOE funding is the highest in Hawaii’s annual budget, yet it hasn’t been audited for 10 years and the last audit by Ms Higa was not encouraging at all.
The FBI should do the next audit and arrest these crooks who run the DOE and throw them in jail. I remember the executive principle of Waipahu HS who broke DOE policy and hired his own son’s company to replace a perfectly functioning bell system with a CISCO system that only uses its own products and cannot interface with the existing system costing taxpayers $millions. He was not punished by made to retire with full pension and medical benefits for life. While students and taxpayers are hurt and left holding the bag.
Currently such abuse is routinue in the DOE, when these executives write out a contract and retire often coming back as contractors on the exact contracts they wrote while an executive at the DOE. That is why the FBI should set in, not the State AG office which is probably staffed with family members or friends of these very corrupt DOE executives.
FBI check? Good Idea,call the FBI hotline. Anonymous reporting gladly accepted!