In what the board president called "crappy" timing, the Boone County school board unanimously voted earlier this week to assure their superintendent future pay raises, just as individual employees were learning whether they'd be affected by the county's planned 77 position cuts.
Superintendent John Hudson said the five-member board voted Tuesday to grant him, effective July 1, a four-year contract extension with no pay increase for next school year but annual 3 percent pay increases for the three following years. He currently makes about $131,100 annually.
The raises will equal roughly $4,000 for each of those three years, meaning he'll be making an extra about $12,000 by the final year of his new contract.
Hudson said he asked the board to extend his current four-year contract, which also had 3 percent annual upticks.
Hudson said he's a graduate of the Boone school system and has spent his entire 32-year career in education there, rising from teacher, to principal, to assistant superintendent, to his current role. He said the board wants leadership stability, and said his position is a 24 hours per day, 365 days per year commitment.
"If there's an issue at 8:30 at night, 11 o'clock at night, I am involved, I am on call," he said.
He said the raises wouldn't jeopardize a single student program or job, and when asked whether he needed the money, he said he appreciated the pay and that the school system "gets good value."
"I'm not ashamed of that increase, if that makes sense, and it is very typical in any superintendent's contract that you see," he said.
According to data from the state Department of Education, Hudson, who leads a 4,331-student school system that's lost 268 students over the past two years and is still dropping, had the 14th highest salary among county superintendents in the state.
Manny Arvon, superintendent of the 18,877-student Berkeley County Schools, makes the most at roughly $178,500. His contract is set to increase to $187,600 over the next two years.
Hudson told the Gazette-Mail Tuesday that the board will vote on his recommended cuts to the roughly 660-person school system workforce before March 1, and the cuts would take effect next academic year.
He said the cuts are necessary due to declining tax revenue from the county's sinking coal industry and dropping enrollment, which automatically causes the state school aid funding formula to provide counties fewer dollars.
He said the historical wealth of the coal industry is why Boone has been able to employ as many as 100 more employees than what the state pays for, and why Boone teachers and service personnel have relatively good pay.
Only Putnam County teachers - at about a $51,000 average annual salary - get paid more than Boone teachers, according to education department data that doesn't include certain supplements that can vary from county to county, but excludes the impact of teachers' years of experience that can skew comparisons.
Boone teachers get about $50,500, while Boone service personnel rank third for pay in the state, at a roughly $3,000 average monthly pay. Hudson pointed out he doesn't get the years of experience and other pay raises these employees receive.
Boone school board President Mark Sumpter said the board decided not to give Hudson a pay raise next year due to the cuts, but suggested that if annual, smaller pay raises weren't given in later years, a larger one-time increase might be necessary later to keep the pay competitive. He said many places will be looking for superintendents before the new school year and fiscal year start July 1, and he was concerned Hudson could be hired away.
But he said he's been getting calls from many upset teachers, and is about to shut down his Facebook account because of the treatment online.
"The timing is crappy," Sumpter said. "And if I had to do it over again, maybe I'd wait a little bit."
Carrena Rouse, head of the Boone arm of the American Federation of Teachers union, said kids at Scott High School were crying this week when they learned their band teacher, who moved to the county in December and has a lease, is one of the recommended layoffs. She also said the county's only French teacher and his wife, an English teacher, also are recommended to lose their jobs, and they have a baby due in this summer.
"He is trying to do the right thing for Boone County Schools," Rouse said of Hudson. "I don't think he rationalized or thought about the timeliness of that information or that pay bump."
Reach Ryan Quinn at
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