School board member Ben Meiklejohn, a registered Green, challenged new board chairwoman Ellen Alcorn, a Democrat, on procedural grounds at the Dec. 7 meeting. Chaos ensued. (photos/Portland School Department)
Superintendent’s pay raise scuttled again
Greens block move to discuss pay hike in secret
By Chris Busby
A week after joining with Republican school board members to nix a proposed three-percent pay raise for Superintendent Mary Jo O’Connor, Greens on the Portland School Committee killed a motion to discuss the super’s salary in private, and minutes later the meeting adjourned in frustration, with no vote taken on the matter.
Superintendent O’Connor left the meeting midway through this latest discussion of her salary, visibly upset by the turn of events. “I hope we don’t lose our superintendent,” a dejected board chairwoman Ellen Alcorn said after the meeting.
Alcorn said she plans to meet with O’Connor and school district attorney Harry Pringle later this month to discuss the situation. She said she believes the board has until Jan. 1 to finalize this part of O’Connor’s pending three-year contract. O’Connor currently earns an annual salary of over $108,000. A three-percent raise would bring her pay to nearly $112,000 per year.
At a time when “thermostats are being turned down and field trips are being canceled,” that level of compensation is indefensible, said school board member Stephen Spring. He and fellow board members Ben Meiklejohn, Jason Toothaker and Susan Hopkins opposed the motion to revisit O’Connor’s salary behind closed doors.
All four are members of the Green Independent Party. As was demonstrated during last week’s vote on the super’s pay hike and the board’s subsequent caucus to choose new leadership, the officially non-partisan school committee is split along party lines.
The divide is so deep, and acrimony running so high, that board member Otis Thompson said at last night’s meeting he fears the committee is “in danger of being so ineffective that we can’t meet our duties under the law.”
Democrats now hold a five-four majority on the board, but it’s not clear whether they all support a three-percent raise for O’Connor. Two of them – Lori Gramlich and John Coyne – were elected last month. The Dec. 7 meeting was their first as full-fledged board members, and neither took a public position on the size of the super’s raise during last night’s meeting.
As a voting block, the Democrats could, in theory, pass O’Connor’s proposed three-percent raise with a simple majority. Instead, the motion before the board last night was to go into executive session to discuss the matter.
As happened last week, confusion over legal procedure quickly ensued, and a chaotic debate followed that’s left all sides angry and worried about the future of the school system’s leadership.
Once again, it was Meiklejohn who raised objection to the board’s procedure. Alcorn — in her first meeting as chair after being selected, over Meiklejohn, to lead the board by a 5-4 party-line caucus vote last week – moved to adjourn the public portion of the board meeting before going into that executive session.
Meiklejohn objected on procedural grounds, saying the board must first vote on the motion to go behind closed doors before it formally ends the public session.
City government watchdog Steven Scharf, President of the Portland Taxpayers Association, backed Meiklejohn’s assertion during the public comment period Scharf insisted take place, and threatened to bring legal action against the board if it did not follow the rules for holding executive sessions as defined by state law.
Before the vote to meet privately was taken, a second debate arose over whether the board needs a simple majority of five votes to meet in executive session, or whether three-fifths of the board (the equivalent of six votes) is necessary. Scharf’s comments from the audience during this discussion brought a strong rebuke from Thompson, who said if Scharf “won’t stop himself” from making comments during the board’s debate period, “I suggest we have him removed.”
When the vote was taken, the four Greens voted against the motion to meet privately. Meiklejohn, citing state law, argued that since less than three-fifths of the board supported going into executive session, the super’s pay raise would have to be debated in public.
At this point, O’Connor left the meeting. “I can’t sit there,” she was overheard saying to an audience member before she left the room.
Board member Jonathan Radtke, speaking against public debate of the matter, said “it puts us in a delicate position as a school committee to talk about our bargaining positions in public…. We’re in the midst of a negotiation.”
Thompson said the move to discuss O’Connor’s salary in public brings up “legal and ethical and procedural issues.” The board “has never negotiated the superintendent’s salary in public,” he said. Furthermore, Thompson said the school district will have a difficult time attracting another qualified superintendent candidate in the future if it sets a precedent of debating that position’s pay in public.
“The public is demanding openness,” Spring countered. “It seems the most effective thing I can do as a public official is to do my work in the open.”
Despite the Greens’ resistance to discussing the super’s pay in private, Meiklejohn followed Spring’s comments by strongly suggesting a motion be made to discuss O’Connor’s pay in executive session. Meiklejohn said he would support such a motion if it was made on grounds that because her job performance would be discussed in addition to her salary, secrecy was justified.
No one offered such a motion, and Thompson soon moved to adjourn the meeting.
By a 7-2 vote, with Meiklejohn and Toothaker opposed, that last motion carried.
The previous board held three private sessions this fall to discuss O’Connor’s performance and salary. Opposition to the three-percent pay hike proposed as a result of those sessions did not become apparent until last week’s meeting, when Meiklejohn, Spring and Toothaker joined outgoing board members Teri McRae and Jim Dimillo in opposing a three-percent hike. A motion to reduce the size of O’Connor’s raise by half was defeated by a 4-4-1 vote, with Toothaker abstaining out of concern that public discussion of the super’s salary could be illegal.
The board has yet to reach agreement on the legality of that discussion.
Parents of public schoolchildren are beginning to take notice of the board’s political divide and in-fighting. They don’t like what they see.
Before the bulk of the disagreements raged again, Martha Sheils, a member of the Nathan Clifford Elementary School Parent-Teacher Organization, read a letter addressed to the new board and signed by 19 PTO members. “After agreeing to extend the contract of our superintendent… and having an executive session and working with Ms. O’Connor to determine a fair compensation for her efforts, re-opening this discussion was beyond reproach and unethical,” the letter states.
“The school committee is no place for personal attacks on other board members or employees of the district,” Sheils continued. “For the sake of our children, we expect that you all will begin working supportively in a fashion that will enable the district to enhance the already strong efforts underway and become a truly great school system….”
