Why I Publicly Discussed My Salary

My View

When you work as a public school superintendent, your compensation package will be both widely known and probably criticized. That’s part of the job. The textbook public relations response to such criticism is stoic silence — being aware of and enduring the personal and professional pain of such remarks but not engaging with the critics for fear it will just worsen matters.

I faced this very issue, and I chose to take a different tack.

In November 2011, the Eagle County, Colo., School District, with its 7,000 students, ran a ballot question asking voters to approve $6 million in new taxes to offset cuts resulting from the recession. The measure lost by a 45-55 percent margin, and the superintendent at the time (a capable and experienced leader) had her compensation package roundly criticized by anti-tax forces in the community through unchecked anonymous blogging and signed letters to the editor in the community newspaper.

Now I am Eagle County’s superintendent, and the district again is asking the community for a tax increase to restore lost funding for its schools.

A Tactical Difference

While the timing and conditions differ from the 2011 election, the players on the opposition side remain the same. After reviewing the previous tactics used by referendum opponents, I concluded I should expect (and brace for) the same treatment my predecessor received and prepare to have my salary publicly criticized.

I knew there would be those who would use my salary to attack our schools, as if hammering on my pay would solve the millions of dollars in deferred capital repairs or provide the funds required to have a real impact on educational programs.

This time around, however, I departed from the traditional public relations playbook. I proactively addressed the issue of my compensation and put it in a broader context.

Rather than waiting for the opposition to highlight my pay level and make it an issue of contention as we entered election season, I broke the story myself through a weekly opinion column I write for our local newspaper.

I knew my pay level was going to be raised in the discussion no matter what. So I plainly informed the community of my current salary and how my compensation package is structured (it moves based on the board’s appraisal of my performance and the current funding conditions). I put my compensation package in the context of other superintendents statewide and nationally — showing the range of pay in the superintendent labor market and how it is highly dependent on the size of the district.

I also pointed to leaders of other education organizations, notably private school headmasters who typically oversee far fewer students but do quite well in terms of pay.

It also was helpful to put superintendent compensation into a business context, looking at CEO compensation for organizations of about the same annual budget size as my school district and noting that private-sector leaders far outpace superintendent pay in similarly sized organizations.

Thick Skin Mandatory

Did it work as intended? Well, it’s probably too soon to tell — but, so far, my pay hasn’t been a central issue in the conversation around the school district’s tax proposal. The newspaper column landed gently in the community with no significant pushback. The reports I did receive indicated that while some individuals still questioned the appropriateness of my pay level, the conversations were also in context of the larger labor market and other sector leaders — which was exactly the purpose of my proactive approach.

To date, we’ve been able to have a community conversation about the real merits and costs of the district’s tax proposal, rather than a circus side show and hyper-focus on the superintendent’s pay.

Prudence must come into play when school leaders decide which criticisms to take on and which to ignore. The superintendency requires an especially thick skin that can take a lot of arrows. However, we also must rely on our professional judgment to know when it is right to turn directly into the criticism and expose it to reason and the light of day.