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REBECCA CATALANELLOThe district administrators, squeezed in by the retiring superintendent, won't see immediate raises until "funding is adequate."
LAND O'LAKES - Pasco County school officials played administrative shuffle Tuesday night as retiring superintendent John Long secured promotions and three-year contracts for three top administrators in a last-minute agenda change.
None of the three leaders will see immediate pay raises under the plan approved 4-0 by the School Board. Rather, Long asked that the appointees keep their salaries "until such a time that funding is adequate" to adjust their pay.
Effective July 1:
Bob Dorn, administrative assistant over secondary schools for the past seven years, will become assistant superintendent for administration - a position that has gone unfilled since John Gaines retired in 2001. Dorn will continue overseeing high schools and alternative schools but also will supervise new construction, maintenance and information services.
Ruth Reilly, a former elementary principal and director of curriculum and instruction for the past seven years, will replace her longtime colleague Susan Rine, the retiring administrative assistant over elementary schools. In addition to Rine's duties, Reilly will assume oversight of middle schools, a responsibility that currently falls to Dorn.
Ray Gadd, a psychologist best known for his recent work as the district liaison during the Penny for Pasco sales tax increase campaign, will replace Dorn as an administrative assistant. His duties will be different than Dorn's, however: Gadd will oversee human resources, employee relations, planning and governmental relations.
Long said he brought the agenda additions to the board at the last minute because interviews for the positions went late into the afternoon Friday. He said he also forgot that the School Board wouldn't be holding a meeting during the first week of July as it normally does.
"Once you move one person, you have that domino effect to take care of," Long said. "We've done a bit of reorganizing that I think will make the system run more efficiently and more effectively."
In line with those three changes, the School Board also named River Ridge High School principal Tammy Rabon to take Reilly's position.
Rabon, who rose through the ranks from a teacher at that campus in 1994 to become principal in 2000, will be replaced by Schwettman Education Center principal James Michaels. A former physical education teacher, Michaels served as an assistant principal at River Ridge High for close to four years before being transferred to Mitchell High in 2000.
School Board members warned that the changes are the tip of the iceberg as the district enters several years of expected top-level retirements and rapid school construction.
The move also comes in the shadow of a hotly contested superintendent's race.
Though Long and many in the administration are backing district finance chief Chuck Rushe for the spot, three other contenders, including the highly visible state Rep. Heather Fiorentino, are vying for the district's top job.
"We have big, big changes coming," School Board member Marge Whaley said.
Per Whaley's suggestion, the School Board agreed to hold a workshop July 13 to look at what the qualifications are for appointed superintendents in districts the same size as Pasco's.
Whaley, who wants to move to a School Board-appointed system of hiring the district superintendent, also asked lawyer Nancy Alfonso to find out whether it's too late to ask voters on a Nov. 2 ballot to move to eliminate elected superintendents.
In other School Board action Tuesday evening:
The Language Academy charter school in New Port Richey received a 4-0 vote to extend its contract a year through 2004-05. The school spent the past three months under threat of closure because of financial difficulties. But district leaders have been satisfied that the school is on the road to improvement.
Board members approved plans to set up a Pasco School Oversight Committee, a group that will track spending funds from the successful Penny for Pasco sales tax increase. The new committee will exist for 10 years and will consist of six to 12 members who will serve two-year terms. They are not to be school employees or School Board members. The pro-Penny school district officials had promised to create such a committee while campaigning for the tax increase.