Board member objects to business manager's salary

Over objections from one very persistent board member, the McCook Public Schools board of education approved a contract for the district's new business manager that will raise that position's salary by $34,730.

Diane Lyons was the only board member who refused to approve a contract that would move Rick Haney from the activities director's position to that of business manager.

Lyons adamantly, and repeatedly, said she could not justify changing the business manager's position from a classified position, as it is now, to an administrative position with its attendant increase in salary.

Lyons said that Peggy Ruppert is currently the business director, that she has been doing the job well and is paid $42,000 yearly.

Ruppert is paid on a classified staff position salary scale because she is not a certified teacher or administrator, said Superintendent Dr. Don Marchant. Ruppert worked at Central Elementary as a secretary before taking the business manager's position a year ago.

The business manager's position does not by state law require a master's degree or a teaching endorsement, Lyons said. However, Dr. Marchant said, classroom experience is an enormous benefit in the business manager's position. Randall Datus, whose position Ruppert filled upon Datus' retirement in 2005, was a classroom teacher for many years before accepting the business manager's position under former Superintendent Jon Burkey, and has teaching and administrative degrees. Datus was paid $79,000 annually.

Dr. Marchant said that teaching and administration degrees, classroom insight and experience in administration and with administrative responsibility are qualities that he thinks are best for the business director's position. He stood firmly by his decision to offer the contract to Haney.

Class B schools of similar size pay their business managers in the range of $80,000, with benefits, said board member Tom Bredvick.

Lyons said that now is the time for the board to look at hiring someone for the position with the stipulation that it would be a classified staff position. Why put the position on the administrator's salary scale if a person on a classified staff salary scale is performing the same responsibilities for $42,000?, she asked.

Dr. Marchant told Lyons that Ruppert's and Haney's genders were not deciding factors in the difference in salaries. "It's not the gender, if that's what you're driving at," Dr. Marchant said to Lyons when she said that the only differences she could see are that one candidate is a male and one is a female, and one has classroom experience and the other does not, although she does have experience working for the school. Lyons said she has nothing personally against Haney.

Bredvick said that Ruppert was hired with the understanding that she take classes and training to move closer to that professional administrator's position, and was offered incentives to do that. Lyons said that Ruppert is leaving the position to be able to spend more time with her family.

"If we fill this position at the administrative level, then we're stuck with it," Lyons said. "There's no justification for the huge difference in salary." She recommended advertising again for the position, this time as a classified staff position.

Board member Jim Coady said that the business manager's position is currently defined as an administrative position, explaining that if Ruppert had had an administrative degree, she, too would have been hired at an administrative level.

Fellow board member Ron Soden said he feared the business manager's office would become "a revolving door" if the position were paid $35,000 to $40,000 a year. "We don't want to be hiring a new business administrative every two to three years," Soden said. "I thought we hired for the best candidate."

Coady said the position was advertised internally and externally and that administrators received 12 applications. Lyons said the board should have been more specific about the position and define the position as a classified staff position when authorizing Dr. Marchant to advertise for it. Bredvick said, "I thought we advertised for the best-qualified candidate." Lyons replied, quickly, "So we let the candidate set the salary?"

Lyons said the increase is hard to justify to patrons and voters when Ruppert performed the same job very competently for $34,730 less a year.

Haney's salary is based on the administrator's base salary of $44,419, plus increases for education and degrees, duration of contract (235 days), experience, assignments and a responsibility factor.

Coady's motion to offer the contract to Haney, placing him on the administrator's salary schedule passed, 5-1, with Lyons the lone "nay."

Haney's new job will become effective June 1.

A decision regarding a replacement for Haney as the activities director has not been made yet.