T Education Santa Clara County Office of Charles Weis,Ph.D. Count;' Superinterulent a/Schools

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 The Santa Clara County Office of Education disagrees with the finding. It is difficult for school districts to attract competent and dedicated candidates for the challenging and highly scrutinized role of trustee. Since trustee stipends are and will remain low, benefits and pension contributions are among the only avenues available to attract and keep qualified candidates. Most Board members provide countless volunteer hours beyond the time dedicated to Board meetings and Office events. The County Board of Education, as well as anumber of local boards, already have reduced travel and conference costs, and strive to incur such costs only when there are significant benefits to the districts.

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 allowances •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 The Santa Clara County Office of Education disagrees with the finding. At the SCCOE, top leadership costs represent less than one-sixth of one percent of the office's total annual budget of $250 million. Additionally, the County Superintendent is responsible for and oversees public school operations that have a combined annual income of over $3.5 billion. Santa Clara County school districts face considerable challenges in attracting and maintaining qualified applicants for superintendent/chancellor positions. The high cost of living in the area, coupled with extreme demands and pressures of the position, have created a market in which compensation packages offering certain benefits are viewed as anecessity. In the vast majority of cases, the benefits are not "overly generous," but in line with the realities of market supply and demand. Compare the average superintendent total compensation as listed in the Grand Jury report (Table 1, pA) of$207,900 to the average pay for CEOs in Silicon Valley. According to the Mercury News (June 5, 2009), the average pay for CEOs last year was $2.2 million-just over 10times as much as the amount paid to public school superintendents. Actually, the average bonus ($242,000) paid to the CEOs exceeded the average salary paid to the superintendents. A comparison of apples to apples-or superintendents to superintendents-similarly refutes the idea the notion of "generous administrative expenses." Response to Grand Jury Report, "Who Really Benefits?" p. 20f6 Looking at the average salaries of superintendents in the Far West region of the United States, a study entitled "Salaries and Wages in California Public Schools 2008-2009" (by ACSAlFoundation for Educational Administration and Educational Research Service, Table B3) found the average salary was $172,646-about $20,000 less than the average salary in Santa Clara County of$192,368. Given the extreme cost-of-living disparity in Silicon Valley as compared to the average of the rest of the Far West region, an additional $20,000 here, combined with an attractive set of benefits, would not seem "overly generous."

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. The Santa Clara County Office of Education disagrees with the finding. School district leaders oversee income of over $3.5 billion tax dollars annually, and nearly 25,000 employees and 260,000 students in over 367 schools. The SCCOE's annual budget is over $250 million. 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. Response to Grand Jury Report, "Who Really Benefits?" p. 30f6

Boards of Trustees hire costly search firms to recruit successors for retiring or dismissed Superintendents/Chancellors. The Santa Clara County Office of Education disagrees with the finding. Many districts do conduct their own searches. One recent example is the Luther Burbank School District in San Jose, for which the SCCOE provided assistance. While some districts do hire search firms, describing the expenditure as "costly" seems to ignore the realities of the market for these positions. The position is crucial to school success, and therefore it is crucial to find the right person for the job. The price of hiring a search firm, weighed against the benefit of bringing in an assortment of qualified candidate, does not seem "costly." A more costly approach would be to undertake anything less than an intensive search for the right candidate.

Boards of Trustees approve the hiring of multiple private attorneys, insome cases at a tremendous expense. The Santa Clara County Office of Education partially agrees with the finding. Boards do sometime hire private attorneys. 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.

The operation of 34K-12 school districts andfour (4)community college districts creates excessively high management and administrative costs. Five K-12 school districts have excessively high Superintendent costsper student which is reflective of the district's having only one or two schools. The Santa Clara County Office of Education 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 ahighly misleading approach.