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By Paul Takahashi (contact) 
Friday, Oct. 26, 2012 | 2 a.m.
The Clark County School Board tabled a vote on a new hire contract Thursday after a union official accused the district's human resources chief of picking a friend for a job — and then offering her more money than usual.
The School District has been looking for a new director of school and department recruitment within its Human Resources Division after the former director took another job in the district.
Chief Human Resources Officer Staci Vesneske came to the district in summer 2011, after serving as the assistant superintendent of human resources for Spokane Public Schools in Washington.
Vesneske is now recommending the district hire Melissa Hallead, the executive director of human resources for Vancouver Public Schools in Washington, to be the new director of school and department recruitment in Clark County. Hallead, who has nearly 20 years experience in schools, has a master of education degree from Concordia University and a bachelor's of science degree in business education from Central Washington University.
Vesneske and Hallead served together on the board of Washington School Personnel Association, an organization advocating for school human resources professionals.
A tentative contract to hire Hallead was supposed to go before the School Board Thursday, but the item was pulled from the meeting agenda after an administrative union leader publicly questioned Vesneske's connection with Hallead and her salary offer.
Hallead was offered a first-year salary of about $97,000 for the Clark County position. That is Step G on the administrative salary schedule.
That's higher than what is allowed under the district's contract with the administrative union, said Stephen Augsburger, the executive director of the Clark County Association of School Administrators and Professional-technical Employees.
The administrative contract stipulates that new hires from outside the district must start at Step C, which is four levels below Step G, Augsburger said.
A Step C salary would be about $80,000 for Hallead.
In a time of austerity measures, Hallead was unfairly placed ahead of loyal and longtime district employees, Augsburger argued.
"(Vesneske) is doing a special consideration for a friend," Augsburger said. "It's a slap in the face to every administrator when everyone else has to work laterally across the salary schedule."
Vesneske contends Hallead is a "friendly colleague" who has visited her in Las Vegas several times, but has never stayed at her residence.
And Vesneske is adamant she played an insignificant role in Hallead's hiring process.
When Hallead expressed interest in the position after seeing it posted on the district's website, Vesneske pointed her to a colleague in her department. That's it, she said.
Vesneske didn't review Hallead's file or sit in on the team interview with Hallead. Vesneske also said she didn't write a recommendation for Hallead, choosing another candidate instead.
"I'm not the one who placed her," Vesneske said. "It was a very transparent process."
Furthermore, Vesneske argued the administrative contract allows for Superintendent Dwight Jones to make exceptions, such as placing an administrative candidate at a higher salary than Step C.
Vesneske said an exception was made in Hallead's case because her base salary in Vancouver was $121,861, according to the Kitsap Sun. Even with the Step G salary, Hallead would effectively be taking about a $25,000 pay cut to come to Clark County.
"We didn't go out of our way to recruit (Hallead) because I didn't think she would be interested," Vesneske said. "She took a paycut – just like I did – because we believe in Jones' vision."
Regardless, Augsburger argued the administrative contract states: "In any event, Step F will be the highest placement" for both district and outside candidates. That means even if Hallead could be offered higher than a Step C salary, she must be capped at Step F – not at Step G, Augsburger said. That would mean she would make about $93,000 at most.
That's one interpretation, Vesneske said. The School District is reviewing the hiring process and the salary offer for Hallead and plans come back to the School Board with a recommendation after the review is complete, she said.
"I am very disappointed there are allegations that I influenced (the recommendation for Hallead)," Vesneske said. "Everybody's entitled to their opinion, but our goal is to do what's best to implement the superintendent's vision."
Augsburger remains skeptical however. It's not fair to the hundreds of loyal administrators who have been working for years in the district to have an outside candidate start above them, he said.
Before the current salary freeze, administrators had to remain on Step F for four years and have 18 years of experience in the district before moving up the salary ladder to Step G, Augsburger added, citing the contract.
Now, Hallead – who has no seniority in Clark County – could start at Step G if her contract is approved.
"It doesn't send a good message to those laboring on Step F and have 18 years in the district," Augsburger said. "Everyone needs to be treated fairly."
Oops, the woman must have a record of favoring "choice" (vouchers & charter schools) for the union to oppose her. While I detest favoritism and/or cronyism hiring practices in government, I am suspicious of governmental unions even more. Their agenda is not to protect the general public and taxpayers pocketbooks. Nope, their agenda is to tie the hands of managers so as to allow their members free rein in what they do or, better yet, don't do. And that isn't their main agenda, either. It's using members dues to help install corrupt politicians in office who then do their nasty bidding, even going so far as to okay "sweetheart" contracts that bankrupt municipalities. The union is up to no good here, I believe. Don't trust it as far as you can throw a school building.
From the article:
'Vesneske didn't review Hallead's file or sit in on the team interview with Hallead. Vesneske also said she didn't write a recommendation for Hallead, choosing another candidate instead.'
Seems to me that Augsburger is going after the wrong party.
@lvfacts101. Jerry, Jerry, you do realize that the union opposing this hire in the Administrators union, not CCEA. The executive director of CCEA is John Vellardita. The executive director of the Administrators union is Stephen Augsberger. Nowhere does the story mention CCEA or it's executive director.
This happens a lot with in the District. Admins positions are given to friends even if the other canidate has more experiance and better qualified. Needs to be fixed!
Why on earth does CCSD have a union representing executive level employees? Principals, vice-principals, deans, department heads and assistants/associates and all management and executive employees should be at-will. You think that CCEA [the teachers' bargaining agent] has it insidious tentacles in the District? Start looking at the Administrators' union!
Extremely Qualified
Willing to work for $21,000 less
Union Bosses reject
Why is the Union involved in the management chain
I thought Union hated management
This is a third what some Union Bosses make and half of what some firefighters make
It just never stops with the crooks at CCSD.Jones,Vesneske and everyone else should be fired immediately. The fix in this deal is Vesneske saying she believed in Jones vision and the 'friendly colleague' bs. If these people used guns and did what they do on a daily basis to tax payers they would never get out of prison
The CCSD website has two phone directories on line. One is a school directory and the other is a directory of the administrative offices in CCSD. I used both of those directories and the Transparent Nevada salary and benefit data for CCSD from 2011. This was the latest year that data was available. I feel that the salaries and benefits for 2012 would be at least equal to the 2011 figures, if not slightly higher. There may have also been some turn-over but the costs would be roughly the same.
The first directory that I looked at was the administrative directory. The first thing that I did was to eliminate duplicate names that appeared in more than one listing in the directory. After I did that, I had a listing of approximately 2072 names. After I listed the salary and benefit information for each name from Transparent Nevada, the total was $170,736,957.79. That works out to an average salary and benefit in 2011 for each name of $82,203.64. For a teacher to earn that much in pay and benefits, the teacher would have to have a master's degree with 32 additional credits and be on step 10. For that teacher, the salary and benefits package would total $82,014. The current CCSD contract with CCEA has a salary schedule that has remained the same since the 2008-2009 school year. The salary schedule shows that a teacher with a bachelor's degree and maximum experience makes a total of $57,563 including salary and benefits. The same schedule shows a teacher with a master's degree and maximum experience earns a total of $71,919 with salary and benefits included.
An examination of the administrative listing shows that 1603(77.18%) names make more than the teacher with the bachelor's degree. Of those names, 1229 (59.17%) make more than a teacher with a master's degree.
In the listing, I then looked at positions with titles such as Director, Coordinator, Facilitator, Academic or Program Manager, Principal, Assistant Principal, Dean, or Regional Trainer, as well as Superintendent, Deputy/Associate/Assistant Superintendent. There are 595 positions with those titles. That is approximately 28.7 % of the names on the list. That doesn't include positions listed as supervisors, mentors, or other non-academic positions. To put that number in perspective, if you add the number of elementary school assistant principals, the number of middle school administrators (principals, assistant principals, deans) and high school administrators (principals, assistant principals, and deans) the total is 572. The administrative phone directory shows 495 names with the titles Director, Coordinator, or Facilitator. That is 95 names more than the total number of middle school and high school administrators (principals, assistant principals, and deans). If you just look at the number of directors, coordinators, and academic managers, the total is 352. The total number of administrators (principals, assistant principals, and deans) in high schools is 209. To reach that total of 352, you would also need to include the assistant principals and deans in middle schools. If you included those numbers, the total would be 342, or slightly less than the number of directors, coordinators, and academic managers. The administrative listing makes up approximately 5.46% of the 38,000 CCSD employees.
If you look at the 2012-2013 school year budget, the personnel cost is approximately 1.7 Billion. The 2011 cost of the administrative directory was $170,736,957.79 or just over $10% of the budget for 2012-2013. Those salary and benefit costs are 2011 costs. The actual cost for 2012 will probably be the same if not higher.
The second directory is the School Directory. This lists the principal, assistant principal, dean and office manager of every school in CCSD. The ESD schools and/or other alternative schools are listed in both directories, and have been included in the administrative directory totals. There are 217 elementary schools listed in the directory. There are 211 elementary school principals and 172 assistant principals. There are 216 office managers listed. Some people hold multiple positions or some positions are currently vacant. The 2011 salary and benefits information on Transparent Nevada shows a cost of $58,575,079.88. There are 59 middle schools listed with 58 principals, 70 assistant principals, 63 deans, and 58 office managers. The 2011 salary and benefits listed is $24,470,969.09. There are 47 high schools listed with 41 principals, 100 assistant principals, 68 deans, and 39 office managers. Transparent Nevada shows a salary and benefit cost of $27,527,996.39. The total 2011 salary and benefit cost is $110,574,045.36 for 310 principals, 342 assistant principals, 131 deans, and 313 office managers, or a total of 1096 names, or 2.88% of the approximately 38,000 employees of CCSD. This is approximately 6.5% of the 2012-2013 personnel budget. Again, the 2012 salaries and benefits will likely be the same if not higher. Using the same comparisons to teachers with bachelor's degrees and master's degrees, there are 1022 (93.25%) people who make more than a teacher with a bachelor's degree and maximum experience. There are 816 (74.45%) people who make more than a teacher with a master's degree and maximum experience.
The number of assistant principals and deans for high schools is misleading. While the total number doesn't seem large when viewed against the total number of schools, the distribution is uneven. The number of assistant principals varies from 0 to 5. The number of deans again varies widely, ranging from 0 to 3. In some schools, the total number of assistant principals and deans is 6, while in other schools the total number is 2.
Combining both directories, the number of people totals 3168 or 8.33% of the approximately 38000 CCSD employees. After combining the 2011 salary and benefits costs for both lists, the total comes to $281,311,003.15 or approximately 16.55% of the 2012-2013 personnel budget. The cost for 8.33% of the personnel comes to 16.55% of the personnel costs. Totaling, the administrative personnel from the administrative directory and the principals, assistant principals, and deans from the school listing, you get a total of 1378 administrators. Using a total of 18000 teachers employed by CCSD, you get a teacher to administrator ratio of just over 13 teachers to 1 administrator.
I hope that this analysis serves as a beginning point for a discussion on the number and pay of senior CCSD staff when compared to the number and pay of support staff, teachers, and police officers. As I looked at the data in Transparent Nevada, a number of interesting facts emerged. The Superintendent's office has a total of 5 secretaries, including the two highest paid secretaries. Elizabeth Carrerro had a total pay and benefits in 2011 of $143,720.44, which included $44,487.69 in overtime/call back pay. The next highest was Debra Eloi whose pay and benefits in 2011 totaled $98,583.43. This total also included $17,736.94 in overtime/call back pay. For all 5 secretaries in the Superintendent's office, the overtime/call back pay totaled $67,624.56. Why is all of this overtime/call back pay necessary with 5 secretaries? That total is more than the pay and benefits of a teacher with a bachelor's degree and maximum experience. It is only slightly less than the pay and benefits of a teacher with a master's degree and maximum experience.
Of the 174 names listed as admin secretaries, 151 made more than a teacher with a bachelors degree and maximum experience. Of those 151 people, 62 made more than a teacher with a masters degree and maximum experience.
For all of the 174 names the overtime/callback pay totaled just over 88K. Of the 88K, over 66K or 75% was earned by the secretaries in the office of the Superintendent.
@ Tanker1975...Jerry/lvfacts101 has an appropriate screen handle....his "facts" never make it beyond the 101 level to incorporate higher level and critical thinking. If there is a story with the word "union" you can count of Jerry to be first in line with derogatory comments.
@truthserum. The only mandatory school laws in Nevada are the ones requiring attendence. So you would abolish those, and allow kids to never go to school? What sense does that make? How would you expect those students to support themselves, or do you want to support them on welfare?
Oh, the solution is to force them to work or go to school if they are on welfare? What kind of job do you expect them to get with no skills? How do we attract new businesses to Nevada with an uneducated work force? If you force them to go to school, aren't you requiring them to get an education?
I don't know any teachers that sit in offices, who are you talking about?
Am I the only one who has noticed that "colleges" like Concordia and University of Phoenix (some of which are referred to as "diploma mills") are increasingly showing up on the resumes of many who have masters degrees and Ph.D. and Ed.D. degrees? Some of these places guarantee that you'll have an advanced degree in less than a year taking only on-line courses (and paying a lot of money). The link following this comment sheds a different kind of light on such "colleges -- universities".
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/30...