100 percent raises offensive
Published 12:00 am Saturday, July 12, 2003
It’s a pretty good time to be in Suffolk, particularly if you are connected with the public school system in an administrative capacity.
Later this year the administrative offices will move into luxurious new digs – the Professional Building – being renovated at a cost of $4 million.
And if you are a member of the Suffolk School Board, you hit the jackpot this week to the tune of $5,000 by voting to double your salary. Sitting through those meetings and attending graduation ceremonies is pretty grueling work. And let’s not forget about those tortuous, free, conventions in California.
Suffolk residents are biting the bullet to pay for $42 million high schools and $10 million elementary schools. If anything, school board members should return half their compensation so that school teachers won’t have to pay for needed classroom supplies out of their own pocket, which almost all of them are forced to do.
Seriously, some pay increase may have been in order, but 100 percent is offensive, particularly so to school employees whose salaries were upped only a few percentage points.
In attempting to justify the raise, Board member John Riddick made a point of all the meetings he has to attend and how much more money City Council members make than Board members.
Those are good points. Riddick should quit going to the meetings if he detests them so much, step down from the School Board and run for City Council.