LOMAPRiETA I-joint- Union -school -district-i

Boards of Trustees approve overly generous benefits to themselves, which include thefollowing: • Fully paid health benefits for trustees and theirfamilies (often exceeding those of teachers and/or with nopayment ceiling • Excessive travel and conference costs • Pension contribution Board of Trustees: Diane Matlock, President Rachelle Lapp, Vice-President Paula Lacey, Member Mario Montana, Member Tricia Rasmussen, Member The Lorna Prieta School District disagrees with the finding. The District does not provide medical benefits for Trustees or any compensation stipends.

Boards of Trustees are approving overly generous benefits to Superintendents and Chancellors, including thefollowing: • Auto allowances (auto leases/purchases, insurance, maintenance, etc.) to superintendents • Housing allowances • Million dollar housing loans at zero or below market interest rates • Guaranteed annual step and/or longevity increases • Signing bonuses • Contract Buyouts • Excessive performance bonuses • Per diem payments when out of the district • Personal technology • Professional memberships and subscription allowances • Excessive travel and entertainment expenses • Salary increases automatically triggered by increases in teacher's salaries which are in addition to other guaranteed salary increases • Pension allowances (in addition to regular STRS/PERS contributions) • Advanced degree stipends • Lifetime medical insurance benefits • Annual physicals Response The Lorna Prieta School District disagrees with the finding. Santa Clara County school districts face considerable challenges in attracting and maintaining qualified applicants for superintendent positions. The high cost of living inthe area, coupled with extreme demands and pressures of the position, have created a market in which compensation packages offering certain benefits are viewed as a necessity. In the vast majority of cases, the benefits are not "overly generous," but in line with the realities of market supply and demand.

Superintendent salaries and increases appear to bear no relationship to the number of schools, students and employees they oversee, nor their district's academic improvement. Response Superintendent salaries often are related to the size of the district, but that is only one of a myriad of factors that determine compensation. Also, many superintendent evaluations do typically take student academic performance into consideration. Student's performance is a major evaluation area for our district.

Boards of Trustees hire costly search firms to recruit successors for retiring or dismissed Superintendents/Chance Ilors. The price of hiring a search firm, weighed against the benefit of bringing in a strong pool of highly qualified candidates, does not seem "costly". The current superintendent is in his year of tenure in 6th the Lorna Prieta School District. The total cost for the hiring of our superintendent was six thousand dollars ($6,000).

Boards of Trustees approve the hiring of multiple private attorneys, in some cases at a tremendous expense. Response School districts often are involved in complex legal issues that require legal expertise in sub-sections of the Education Code, requiring considerable specialized legal capacity, time and energy. Considering all the complex legal issues school districts are required to address, our attorney fees are minimal. Legal cost expenditures are a major area of responsibilities for superintendent.

The operation of 31K-12 school districts andfour (4) community college districts creates excessively high management and administrative costs. Five K-12 school district have excessively high Superintendent costs per student which is reflective of the district's having only one or two schools. Response The Lorna Prieta School District partially agrees with the finding, in that the large number of districts does compound administrative costs. However, to draw cost-benefit conclusions on the basis of superintendent costs per student can be a highly misleading approach.