Parsippany's Fight With State Over Superintendent's Salary Could Be Just the Start of a Yearly Battle

The surprise ending of Gov. Chris Christie's battle against the and Superintendent LeRoy Seitz's 2011-12 contract marks the first intermission in what could be a multi-part drama.

After months of threats to , the state with only a minor adjustment to Seitz's salary.

It was a head-scratching turn to a saga that began with the governor attempting to turn Seitz into the "poster boy" for avarice, not just locally but in the national media.

But the state, the Parsippany school board and administrators from other districts are headed to court over the issue, so this year's game of budget bumper cars could play out again a year from now, and possibly much longer. 

For the Christie Administration, it’s a quest to use tax dollars more effectively. For school officials, it’s a fight for fairness and the state constitution. And to some observers, it is entirely avoidable. 

Until recently, the stakes appeared high. Last year, as Christie moved toward imposing a $175,000 maximum cap on salaries for school administrators, he called a contract paying Seitz $220,000 "the definition of greed and arrogance."

As it turned out, the immediate difference between the governor and the school board was only $2,462. That was the amount of Seitz's salary disallowed by Kathleen Serafino, the Morris County executive schools superintendent, when she approved the budget.

As endorsed by Serafino for the state, the allocates $204,125 for Seitz's salary, plus another $16,000 in a reserve account pending the outcome of litigation.

As recently as November, a Wall Street Journal story on the Seitz controversy noted that while capping superintendents' salaries would save less than $10 million, "the symbolism is powerful, however, and Mr. Christie is pushing it hard."

As the rhetoric heated up last summer, a blog post by Bruce Baker, a professor at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, suggested the caps ignore market trends.

Baker, whose data analyses often discomfit policy makers, found 88 public school superintendents in New York were being paid at least $225,000 a year. The top salaries for school administrators in New Jersey are found at private schools, with fewer students, staff and facilities than large public districts, he said.

Adjusting for regional wage growth, the salaries for superintendents in large public districts have crept up slightly since 1997, but other administrators have seen their pay remain flat or trend down, according to Baker.

"As far as I can tell, these maximum salaries are completely arbitrary, but for pegging the highest to the governor’s salary," Baker wrote, adding that Christie's own pay "is not based on any competitive labor market for governors."

In the real world, school districts must compete with other institutions as well as private corporations for top talent, so it is "absurd" to limit them to the artificial, statutory limit set for an elected official, Baker said.

Murray Sabrin, a finance professor at Ramapo College known for his Libertarian and Republican political campaigns, said he sympathizes with Christie's goal of controlling administrators' pay, but welcomes his change of tactics in Parsippany.

Telling local districts what to do with individual contracts not only distracts from larger issues of school performance, it is "the sort of top-down, micro-management from Trenton" that conservatives oppose, Sabrin said.

On the other side, Richard Bozza, executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators, cautioned that Christie's truce with Parsippany does not seem to be part of a general peace initiative.

"It's hard to know what happened there," he said. "I don't know why that was reached, that deal. I was surprised."

The Parsippany school board still has a suit pending against Serafino and the state Department of Education over the cap regulations, and the association filed other suits on behalf of Superintendents James O'Neill, of Chatham, Rene Rovtak, of Long Hill, Robert Holster, of Passaic, and Margaret Dolan, of Westfield.

An appellate court has set a schedule for briefs and responses in May and June. In a March 15 post to members, Maria Lepore, the association's chief counsel, said it may take a year after that process for the court to hold oral arguments. If so, school boards could go through at least the 2012-13 budget process with the same questions and debates as this year.

For the moment, though, the state Department of Education considers virtually all school districts to be in compliance with the cap regulations, according to spokesman Alan Guenther.

Many have taken advantage of the measures used to increase Seitz's allowable salary, including $5,000 extra for overseeing two high schools and 14.99 percent "merit" bonuses, Guenther said.

But the bonuses are single-year measures, he said. In the case of a superintendent of one of the largest districts, like Seitz, the sliding scale caps his base salary at $175,000, Guenther said.

So at the end of the 2011-12 school year, "his base salary reverts to $175,000," and the district must present revised bonus criteria and show Seitz meets it, he said.

That will recur every year of Seitz’s five-year contract, which as negotiated rises to $234,000. But actual pay is "pending the outcome of the litigation," Guenther said. The controls are off "if they win the right to be able to pay superintendents more," he said.

From the education department's perspective, the goal of the caps is "to put more money into the classroom where it belongs," Guenther said.

The school board and the association cite state law saying, "The board or boards employing a superintendent or assistant superintendent of schools shall fix the salaries," which "shall not be reduced during his term of office."

The challengers argue that former Acting Commissioner Rochelle Hendricks directed Serafino and other county superintendents not to approve contracts even before the caps took effect.

"We don't think she [Hendricks] had the power" to cap salaries by regulation, Bozza said. "Only the Legislature can change the law."

In Chatham, O'Neill's contract contained an automatic renewal provision unless the school board notified him a year in advance. That date passed last June 30, before the caps were adopted, according to the association.

When Hendricks told county superintendents to begin scrutinizing contracts, she was preparing them for the pending regulations, according to court documents filed by the state. She told them to "prioritize any critical needs with regards to contract" renewals, according to a motion by Deputy Attorney General Michael C. Walters.

"Existing contracts will be honored," but as they expire, districts must comply with the caps, Guenther said. With the settlement in Parsippany, Jersey City is the only district not in compliance, he said.

The contract gap in New Jersey's second-largest school district is much larger than it ever was in Parsippany. The school board budget would pay Superintendent Charles Epps $268,000 plus $10,000 in expenses and an annuity. He currently makes about $275,000.

As written, though, the salary caps only specify districts up to 10,000 students, while Jersey City has more than 27,000. Unlike Parsippany, Jersey City is one of the 31 putatively poorer school districts targeted for additional aid in the wake of the state Supreme Court's 1985 Abbott v. Burke ruling.

Meanwhile, the governor is searching for a new superintendent for New Jersey's largest public district, Newark. Another Abbott district, it is run by the state. Former Superintendent Clifford Janney, who left after Christie announced he would not be reappointed, was paid about $300,000 a year.