Last week, the Marysville School Board voted to hand out 3.5% raises to Superintendent Diane Mankins and Treasurer Todd Johnson. Mankins is in the third year of her new five-year contract and will now be paid $170,000 per year. Johnson is in his second year of a new five-year contract and will now be paid $133,410 per year.
Keep in mind the teachers only received a 3% raise on their last contract after taking a zero increase, so we find it hard to believe that the voting public would agree to a bump in pay to this level for administrators.
Board members are responsible for hiring the administration and we realize that holdover members Sue Devine and Amy Powers have an allegiance to Mankins and Johnson because they voted to hire them years ago. However, we don’t see the recent raises as being justified in light of the quality of their work. Let’s look at that work to see why there could be questions.
When Mankins first arrived on campus in 2012, she cut the teaching staff by 20 percent and then decided to add a new STEM high school. In order to fill the new school needs, teachers were brought over from the high school and middle school so the budget wasn’t increased. Those moves caused class sizes outside the STEM school to rise to the degree that currently 30 students in a class is more common than before.
On the face of it, the cuts allowed Mankins and Johnson to balance the budget, but also proved to leave enough money for their current raises. The ripple effect from the moves caused the district to lose its excellent rating the school had received from the state during the previous administration. It also caused long-term damage by dividing the student body and forcing students to make a choice as eighth graders that included friends versus education.
Other questionable decisions include the $2.4M STEM school parking lot project that came in well over the $1.6M estimate and the current $11.27M stadium renovation that is more than $2M over the original $8.9M price tag, and not completed yet. It already caused serious problems with last year’s spring track season and graduation, and now threatens the upcoming football season.
For the record, we ardently support the Marysville Schools and that is why we are speaking up – we think it’s time that new members are voted onto the school board with fresh minds, eyes and ears to look over the administration’s performance and ensure residents and taxpayers that they can feel comfortable about how their money is going to be spent before the checks are written.