View this article <http://www.eveningsun.com/Stories/0,1413,140%257E9956%257E2340605,00.html>
View Evening Sun <http://www.eveningsun.com>

Resident concerned over L'town school pay raises <http://www.eveningsun.com/Stories/0,1413,140%257E9956%257E2340605,00.html>

Paul Sharpless objects to pay hike of 4 percent, plus stipends, for district administrators

By ABBY SLUTSKY
Evening Sun

Members of the Littlestown school board were called "lackeys" during a Monday presentation made by a Littlestown resident.

Paul Sharpless, who recently petitioned the Adams County courts to get information about the district's budget for the 2004-05 school year, voiced concern over the board's recent approval of a 4 percent salary increase for administrators.

Sharpless referred to Act 93 of the state School Code, which was put into place in 1984 to grant administrators rights that previously had not been available to them.

In accordance with Act 93, the district has an administrative compensation plan that is used to determine salary increases. The plan calls for a 6.5 percent increase in salary each year.

In July, the board approved the 4 percent salary increase for all of the district's principals, assistant principals, business manager, the curriculum and instruction coordinator and the coordinator of pupil services.

The board also gave stipends to three of the district's administrators, which total $5,830.

Act 93, Sharpless said, does not require the district to increase the business manager's salary and does not refer to stipends at all.

Board president John Warehime said business manager Joni Rudy's salary increase was not related to Act 93 and was merely included in the list of raises for board approval.

Patrick Corrigan, the Pennsylvania School Board Association's director of school personnel services, said it is not rare for business managers to receive the same salary increase as the administrators covered by Act 93.

"A district has every right to handle (salary increases) the way they want to," Corrigan said. "Just in general practice, districts will have (business managers') increases alike."

Sharpless also expressed concern over the $5,830 in stipends given to Alloway Creek principal Carolyn Fiascki, Maple Avenue Middle School assistant principal Timothy Mitzel and high school assistant principal Eric Naylor.

Sharpless said the evaluation results for each of the administrators does not warrant a stipend.

"According to (evaluation percentages), there is no administrator who is considered excellent," Sharpless said. "If I were an administrator, I would want to know what do I need to do to put myself in the position of getting a stipend."

In response, Warehime said, "the stipends were recommended by the superintendent and approved by the board. I'm not going to debate it with you."

Superintendent Robert McConaghy said he did not know why Sharpless said the administrators were not "excellent."

"We don't have a category of good, fair or excellent," McConaghy said.

McConaghy said he would not get into specifics of the reasons for the stipends.

In July, McConaghy said the stipends were given for "outstanding performance above established expectations."

Sharpless also asked the board if it had considered using the stipend money for other expenditures. He said he was surprised the board had no discussion of other uses for the money.

Sharpless also told the board that the district's administrative compensation plan needs to be updated.

McConaghy agreed the policy is antiquated.

"That policy was pre-Act 93," he said, adding the policy needs to be changed to reflect the district's current needs.

Sharpless expressed concern over the way the board works in general.

"I just really feel that the board is running with the dogs," Sharpless said. "They are lackeys of the king and the king, in this case, is the superintendent."

"Mr. Sharpless is trying to attack the board personally and it would not be appropriate or professional behavior to respond in kind," Warehime said.

Sharpless is a longtime critic of the Littlestown school board.

This year, he asked the board to reconsider the 1.83-mill tax hike needed to balance the budget in spite of the $400,000 in cost cuts. That increase amounts to about $90 on a $100,000 home.

Two years ago, Sharpless and two other Littlestown residents conducted an investigation into the district's finances. The three suggested accounting errors, ledger discrepancies and missed checks dating back to 1996 added up to an unaccounted $11 million in district funds.

A month later, the district's own accounting firm found much smaller discrepancies it attributed to computer and human errors.

Contact Abby Slutsky at aslutsky@eveningsun.com .