QOD: Millburn Superintendent Quits to Avoid Salary Cap

I have an answer to the salary cap problem. One that can be drawn from lessons from CMO operated charter schools. CMOs like Uncommon Schools in particular (KIPP/TEAM fails to report their data on their IRS 990s) have "administrators" paid above the NJ district admin cap level (over $200k), including middle level operational managers assigned specifically to NJ charters. These individuals appear as compensated by the non-profit CMO, but do not appear as NJ district employees in the state personnel data files (as do superintendents, etc.), despite the fact that their salaries are largely supported by the public expense of the management fees (and yes, plenty of additional philanthropy).

So, what's the lesson here? New Jersey supts simply need to form a "non-profit" district management company, like a charter CMO. They can then convince local boards of education to not have a superintendent and instead, contract that management company, paying an annual management fee (as do charters) to the management company (let's call it a DMO - district management organization).

Under the umbrella of the DMO, the managers assigned to oversee individual districts could be paid whatever rate the DMO board of directors sets, assuming it collects high enough management fees, which it could with local school board approvals, as a contracted service. These assigned district managers would nolonger be district employees. They would be DMO employees. Their compensation could certainly be (unofficially)agreed upon by individual local boards of education, but the officially approved expense would be the management fee to the DMO, not the salary of the DMO assigned manager (uh... superintendent).

Now, this will add some expense - the overhead of the DMO - as it does in charters (most charter to district spending comparisons totally miss the redundant additional layers of charter management expense which are kept on a separate set of books and may not be fully covered by the management fees).

This approach would have the added benefit for superintendents and their DMO of shielding many of their activities and finances from public disclosure (as it does in privately governed/operated charters).

So indeed there are some lessons to be learned from the charter sector!

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Unknown says:

November 20, 2014 at 3:05 pm

I have an answer to the salary cap problem. One that can be drawn from lessons from CMO operated charter schools. CMOs like Uncommon Schools in particular (KIPP/TEAM fails to report their data on their IRS 990s) have "administrators" paid above the NJ district admin cap level (over $200k), including middle level operational managers assigned specifically to NJ charters. These individuals appear as compensated by the non-profit CMO, but do not appear as NJ district employees in the state personnel data files (as do superintendents, etc.), despite the fact that their salaries are largely supported by the public expense of the management fees (and yes, plenty of additional philanthropy).

So, what's the lesson here? New Jersey supts simply need to form a "non-profit" district management company, like a charter CMO. They can then convince local boards of education to not have a superintendent and instead, contract that management company, paying an annual management fee (as do charters) to the management company (let's call it a DMO - district management organization).

Under the umbrella of the DMO, the managers assigned to oversee individual districts could be paid whatever rate the DMO board of directors sets, assuming it collects high enough management fees, which it could with local school board approvals, as a contracted service. These assigned district managers would nolonger be district employees. They would be DMO employees. Their compensation could certainly be (unofficially)agreed upon by individual local boards of education, but the officially approved expense would be the management fee to the DMO, not the salary of the DMO assigned manager (uh... superintendent).

Now, this will add some expense - the overhead of the DMO - as it does in charters (most charter to district spending comparisons totally miss the redundant additional layers of charter management expense which are kept on a separate set of books and may not be fully covered by the management fees).

This approach would have the added benefit for superintendents and their DMO of shielding many of their activities and finances from public disclosure (as it does in privately governed/operated charters).

So indeed there are some lessons to be learned from the charter sector!

NJ Education Report